Being Bold

Being bold is effing hard, but it doesn't make you any less bold for feeling the weight of just how hard it is. Get this, I woke up one day with a case of the motivation Mondays; you know, ready to conquer life and discard all my bad habits, change my lifestyle choices, rid of any bad coping mechanisms, and really try to embody this dream version of myself. Now, before I go into this any farther, I truly want to know if this has ever happened to you. You just wake up one day feeling like you could sub out for Superman. If you've answered yes, then you know exactly what I mean what I say this is a really awesome experience for like 24 hours then all the sudden the crash hits and shit gets real.

I truly believe that the more emotional weight we put behind a bold decision, the harder the crash really is. During quarantine there was a mass movement of people who became more wildly aware of how their egos show up in their lives and what their relationship to themselves really looks like. Myself included. Being forced to spend a lot of time alone in a small New York City apartment gave me an opportunity to evaluate pretty much every decision I have ever made in my life. This included the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the reckless, and the ones I tried to forget. What I realized was that there were all these things that happened as a child I didn't think were a big deal and as I stand here now at 26 years old, I see the impact they really had in how I saw and navigated the world around me. It gave me an opportunity to face the things I have spent my entire life running from and finally have a chance to truly move forward. I was ready, and I knew because even if I was terrified to my absolute core, I knew I could and would survive anyway. Being bold doesn't mean being fearless, it means doing something even if you're afraid, and for a moment I want to honor the part no one wants to talk about; the chaotic middle part thats rising to the climax of the story.

I am a sexual assault, rape, and abuse survivor. Every step of the process of recovering and moving forward has been challenging. To be honest, most of the time I find myself thinking I have things figured out, only to shortly realize there was a whole slew of options I hadn't seen yet. I had come to terms with much of my past and had built a career based upon being strong in mind, body, and spirit. If there was something about myself or my life that I didn't love, I worked hard to change it. Since I chose a career in fitness, the line between what is you and what is your job can easily become blurred. Fitness doesn't start and stop when you show up for work, its an entire lifestyle and it was so easy for me to get caught up in working on something all the time. Of course there was my actual job which included constantly striving to be a better trainer. Then there was my own personal fitness, where the bar has the potential to move and up forever. Then finally, all the parts that lead to me being better at the other two; the food I ate, the way I recovered, the people I spent time with, the way I "hung out", what I read, wrote, spoke about, everything. I never stopped working at it.

Then 2020 hit and I was forced to do the one thing I have never liked doing; sit still in one place. Possibly my greatest challenge yet, and also my most powerful. I learned a lot about myself, like why I lived my life working non stop for example. I realized a lot of it came down to this sense of shame I was carrying around with me like a suitcase filled with bricks. It weighed me down without ever realizing that the suitcase wasn't a part of me even though I was so used to it being there, I could let it go at any time.

The next question was how in the hell do you start facing your sense of shame head on, because this emotion, similar to other low vibrating feelings, can be the Bowser level of taking power back over your own life (if that joke was lost on you.. go play super mario brothers at some point in your life.) For me personally, the kind of shame im referring to was reduced to what it meant to me to be called a hoe. A consistent theme in my life from my abusers, social media culture, and even some family & friends, was pretty much that showing skin was suggestive and that was grounds for being degraded or disrespected. That meant something like posting a provocative photo on social media was taboo as all hell. Now, I understand that this isn't everyones reality, but it was mine.

If you take a glance at my social media, you'll quickly realize that even if I believed provocative photos were taboo, I was still hell bent on posting them anyway. For as long as I can remember I have been hyper sexualized but for the most part I honestly like the sexy essence that I carry. I have always found my power in the more taboo, more risky, more alluring things in life. Once I was mindful enough to realize that, I realized that one of my greatest fears or "red buttons" was to be someone who actually collected money for something sensual or risquè. I never realized this, because I am a huge advocate for sex workers, strippers, gogo dancers, or really for people in general doing whatever the hell they want. So how is it possible that someone who holds so much purely non-judgemental space for other people, was judging themselves for every last little thing. I decided I was ready to face it once and for all, even with a loose plan that was scarier than all hell.

Fast forward to the moment I sat down to write this piece. I am 48 hours in after my "jump in the deep end" move, and I am FEELING the weight of being bold. I shared my story on my social media and signed up for and committed to promoting an OnlyFans for 30 days. In our culture right now, onlyfan girls are the bundt of an insane amount of jokes and people in general are constantly dragging on it. Now first things first, contrary to popular belief this site is for far more than just explicit content (Ill pause for the eye-roll). Tis true, I swear. But lets be real with each other, to sign up for, promote, or even do this kind of work takes a certain type of person. That type of person is someone who doesn't let the opinions of others effect their decision, they take pride in how they look or what they can do, they are confident, and the skills that they have developed or the way they look has taken so much time and effort that people often forget to consider beyond just what they see. I want to embody this type of freeing confidence, so I did one of the few things I am terrified of.

In an attempt to practice vulnerability and all the other things I preach to my athletes, clients, and loved ones, I chose to share the real deal of how this one unfolds. The "buyers remorse" is real, Im scared to look at my phone, my thoughts often go down rabbit holes that take a bit to pull myself out of, theres a wild knot in my chest and belly that haven't gone away, but heres what I do know, the hardest part is over. The bandaid was ripped off and I jumped, the good news is i'm still the same person I was before. I still have the same values, the same ethics, the same principles, and so much more. This changed nothing about ME except for now having one extra platform to check for a bit and coming up with more creative ways to avoid bizarre requests and messages. Theres a lot of power in accepting this bit of truth and accpeting it into my personal belief system.

Moral of the story today, do it anyway, whatever it is. We don't have to hide from uncomfortable emotions anymore, sometimes the most freeing thing in the entire world is to stop running turn around and face it head on. Im living proof that being uncomfortable is absolutely real and absolutely valid, and sometimes all it's really trying to do is show you just how far forward you are moving. I have no idea where this journey is going to take me, I have no idea what the hell will possibly come up from it, but I can tell you, it will be definitely be one hell of a good story. Stay Tuned.