Authenticity

This is something I have struggled with so much in my life. Growing up, we didn’t have much money. I went to a very good primary school and was surrounded by exceptionally rich children on all sides. Although I was awarded a bursary for Grade 8, I begged my parents to please move me to another school, which they did. Here I had an opportunity to totally reinvent myself, be a new person, because nobody liked Junior School Hayley, not even Hayley. She was soft, she was super smart, and a real do-gooder.

So come high school, I now had the opportunity to become Cool Hayley. She was a terror to teachers, and didn’t care about her school work, but man was she popular. Other girls wished they could be as daring as I was. I was on fire. My marks were shocking, and my reputation quite tatty with the teachers, but finally I was accepted and I was cool!

And then I left school, and started clubbing with my best friend from childhood (actually who am I kidding, Cool Hayley started catching trains into Joburg CBD at 15). And now I was competing with her for the attention of boys. Never having been particularly pretty, or having the nicest clothes, or hair style, I morphed into the person I saw she was when she spoke to boys. I tried my best to imitate her every move.

Then I raced straight into moving in with my boyfriend, and by 22 I was engaged and a mom. So my twenties were all about being first a wife and mom, and then a single mom, and by the time I turned around, I was late thirties and I had no clue who Hayley was. Cool, nerdy, mommy, who knew what the DNA was, and what made the engine run. Sure as hell not her!

I was superbly fortunate in that I was nudged at the age of 37 by meeting some phenomenal life teachers, who made me see that I was not only okay, no matter what life, ,y family, my friends, my teachers had told me. I was in fact INCREDIBLE and I could stop fighting EVERYBODY and be at peace with Hayley the Authentic. That people would not only like her, but love her. that marching to the beat of her own drum was something that made her actually create her OWN music! My path is ever ongoing, but how I wish I had known from a young age that I would be okay. that the Universe had me and what a beautiful butterfly I would one day be.

Just be you, everybody else is taken.

Fear is a 4 letter word

As a South African, specifically a South African woman, over the past few months, fear has been palpable. We have all felt it, we have all seen how other women have been affected by it.

We have watched as people around our country, men and women alike, have stood up and said NO MORE! We have bandied around the weak. We have encouraged and motivated the scared. We have taken to the streets to make our voices heard. Support groups have been started. Facebook pages with over half a million followers have simply popped up, stating that they refuse to leave the country, and that they want to STAY and make our country better and healthier and safer for us all/

So where the politicians, and powers that be, have mongered fear. Stirred up our anxiety, and made us afraid to even exist, the people are saying its ENOUGH! Nobody is naive. We are aware that there has been so much damage caused. We know that we need to look forward, and not backwards, and we need to brace ourselves for the crime that still is very much a part of our every day lives. But we need to create jobs. We need to help people be trained, and find employment, so that crime is not the natural reaction.

We need to stand together and combined, declare, that FEAR IS A FOUR LETTER WORD!