The power of knowing you are enough - Ellie Feakins

The power of knowing You are Enough

Simple statement right, it doesn’t grab your attention like a bright pink neon sign shouting loudly, it feels more like a quiet whisper but it is that quiet whisper of, ‘I Am Enough’  that changed everything for me!

I feel hugely honoured to be writing this piece for the fabulous Lucy, we initially connected over  our burning passion & desire for every girl & woman to stand in their power of knowing they are enough, a few conversations talking like old friends, a couple of instagram lives & one of Lucy’s empowering t shirts popped in the post and the rest they say is history & here I am writing my story!

So, this is me! I am 44 years old, fanatical about throwing myself in the sea all year round, a wife to my husband Carl, a mother of two teenagers, Millie 16 & Tom 13 & a crazy Sprocker Ruby, I absolutely love dancing, kitchen dancing always a winner much to my children’s embarrassment, I cry easily, I moan about housework & how much washing there is, I love boots, empowering slogan t shirts(hurray for Lucy) and I love painting!

In  the two years since the pandemic started I have certified as an IBCC Body Confidence Coach & most recently as a Life coach. I run Be Confident You creative workshops for girls to inspire, empower & equip them to be their most confident selves & also deliver Just Create sessions in schools to enable young people to explore creativity & develop confidence in communicating their creative voice, all of this has come about from my own journey of not believing I was good enough!

From the outside it might be easy to think that ah life is sorted for her right, we are so good at doing that aren’t we, making a quick assumption based on the exterior of someones life but I can promise you it has been a journey of moving beyond crippling self doubt, insecurity, anxiety, depression & an underlying belief that I just wasn’t good enough that I had carried around like a heavy bag weighing me down for years & if you had told me this is what I would be doing now there is no way I would have believed it was possible!

When I look back I sometimes wonder where that belief of, ‘I’m not good enough’ seeped its way into my life & again, when you look at the exterior it wouldn’t necessarily make sense, I did okay at school, I came from a loving home, I had friends, I won a gold medal in gymnastics, won first place in a piano competition, I passed GCSE’s, passed a levels, received a first class honours in my textiles degree, so logically it doesn’t make sense right??? 

We can spend our time doing the things that prove, ‘our enoughness’ the things that we get taught in school, that are filtered through societal norms & through others opinions & expectations about doing well, succeeding & being, ‘good’,  all of the above things that I talked about would fit neatly into that category, boxes ticked!!! But, that is just it, life doesn’t fit neatly into a box, we are human, full of feelings, emotions, passions, pain, potential & dreams, we are meant to break out of the damn box but when we aren’t aware of that we filter ourselves to fit, to be acceptable, to be liked, to be good enough, to prove our worthiness.

This belief of not being good enough affected one particular area where I really believed I wasn’t enough and that  was in my body! I believed my body was a disappointment, I wasn’t feminine enough, curvy enough, womanly enough, busty enough, attractive enough! I had bought into the lie that the most important thing about my body was how it looked, that I was only worthy if I looked a certain way & the detrimental impact it had on my life was huge, the ripple effect it had on my life was huge, it seeped into so many areas of my life! It affected me emotionally, mentally, physically, socially, relationally & sexually. It affected my relationship with my husband, I felt insecure in my marriage, I was caught in the comparison trap, always believing that my husband found other women way more appealing to me! I had become so fixated on the exterior of my body that I had lost sight of the magic that was inside this vessel of mine!

It  was when I first started  studying to become a Body Confidence Coach after picking up a book in a charity shop(that’s a whole other story on the magic of the universe) I had this realisation that the way I felt about my body was a reflection of how I felt in my life in general just, ‘not good enough’! I realised that for years, I had become a spectator in my life, observing myself from the outside, rather than being a full participant, fully living & experiencing life in & through my body. It was then that I had this moment of I don’t want to live like this anymore, I knew I needed to see myself & my body through different glasses, a new perspective, a perspective that saw myself as more than a body, moving away from being an external observer, viewing myself in the mirror & magnifying all that i believed wasn’t right about me & spinning its on its head, seeing myself for who I really was & living from the inside out.

In that moment I chose to believe that I was enough, I didn’t have to do or be anything to prove my enoughness, I was enough right there in that moment just as I was & the door was opened & I wedged my foot in it & jumped off the, ‘I am not enough’ train!!!! I saw this glimmer of possibility that things could be different & it was the beginning of a journey of acceptance & cultivating a relationship with myself & my body based on kindness, compassion, appreciation & respecting & valuing myself. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t a quick fix, I had to unlearn, excavate, untangle & unravel all those unhelpful toxic limiting beliefs, I had to challenge & be curious about what I was taking on as my truth but there was no going back!!! I had to stop listening to the inner dialogue & narrative that told me what I was not & where I lacked & stop feeling the need to fix, improve, better, modify myself and allow myself to put down new roots based on the truth that I was enough! It created space & energy for me to focus on what matters.

 I felt empowered  & reconnected to myself & also that there was a purpose to my journey! I was reminded of a  promise I made during quite a traumatic period in my life. Whilst I was literally finishing my art degree my wonderful Uncle died by suicide, at the age I am now! The promise I made was that, I would do everything in my power to ensure that no one ever felt shame of who they were in my company.

What followed was this passion to devote myself, my energy & my time to learning, studying, training & certifying, growing, stepping out of my comfort zone on numerous occasions because I am so passionate about girls & women breaking out of the, ‘not good enough’ cycle, breaking free from the limiting beliefs, mindsets & narratives that hold them captive & seeing the absolute magic & gold in who they are so they can become the happiest, confident, accepting, self assured, self believing, empowered version of themselves. Did I tell you I’m a gold digger!!!

Thank you so much for reading my story & my heart is that in it you find hope & belief that is possible for you to know that, ‘You Are Enough’ that it is possible to change the story & narrative you may hold about yourself, that maybe now is the time to look in a different mirror, the one that reflects back the truth of who you are:

You are all kinds of fabulous!