When I talk about self-love in the books I write, and the workshops I give, it will usually start with cutting yourself some slack, not being hard on yourself, and instead, lavishing yourself with all the lovelinesss you absolutely, positively deserve. But what do you do if a filled-to-the-brim bubble bath and king size bar o’ chocolate don’t cut it?

You go deeper, g-friend.

Y’see, s’far this year, no matter how many bubble-filled baths I had, despite the fact the man I love has asked me to be his forever girl, or how many burly-girl performances I’ve taken part in, lovin’ myself has been harder than usual. I didn’t get it. I was being nice to myself, I love the skin I’m in, so what was the deal?

I had shit that needed sortin’.

So in the last month, I’ve dealt with some big, icky bills that were attached to a past relationship, which well…I’d been ignoring. Not on a conscious level, but, because of their reminder to my past, I’d locked them away, literally, in a storage unit. l’ve now dealt with them – hurrah! And to celebrate, built a big-ass bonfire and burned all the paperwork, along with all the photos from that relationship, in a beautiful letting go ceremony with the beau. Letting go of the past to make room for my beautiful new love-filled future – it felt freakin’ incredible.

I’ve been doing some AMAZING spiritual learning ’bout myself. I’ve worked with the gorgeous Kay Gillard who, not only shares my love for old-skool addidas gazelles and The Longpigs – ahh 1996, we miss you – but is a lipstick-wearing, shamanic healer o’ awesomeness. The girl is incredz. I wanted to know myself, as in REALLY know myself, I wanted to know why I did the things I did, the things I KNEW I did, but didn’t like. The work we’re doing together has blown my mind – I feel like freakin’ She-ra. ‘Cept brunette. The girl rocks. Hard.

I’m part o’ the most kick-ass girl-gang ever. Every other Monday, we meet on line, and our leader-girl Corrina Gordon-Barnes hosts a virtual business class, ‘cept it’s not a boring snoring business class, it’s a fun, inspir-o class with crazy-assed amounts o’ learning. I used to say that I’m not a business-y kind o’ girl, and that I was just playing at it, but now I know that playing IS my work, and I can make, do, be, write AND create a delicious flow o’ money too – hurrah! These girls will be totally responsible for the SASSY domination that will reign supreme in the months and years to come.

I guess what I’m trying to say, is that your shit doesn’t go away. No matter how pretty the handbag you choose to carry it in. So if you’re on a mission to truly love yourself, then you need to deal with it. Face your fears. Head on. Today, is a leap day, we’ve got an extra day to do something awesome for ourselves – do you know what I did? I got up, and drew a self-portrait where I was totally in love with myself, then stuck it on here for the world to see. I’m putting myself out there, literally.

What are you going to do?

(Just so you know, if the beau hadn’t proposed to me in oh la la land – what? Had I not mentioned that I was engaged?! – then I was totes going to propose to him today, I know, how thoroughly modern, right?!)

So, I’m still jonesing for all things Francais, I’ve watched Amelie, Moulin Rouge and Midnight in Paris on repeat, and then, on Saturday morning, I was pointed, via facebook, to the most delicious french movie, Cleo de 5 a 7.

Now, at the risk o’ sounding faux hipster and wanky like someone who drinks in Shoreditch a lot and dresses like Alexa Chung, I am something o’ a Jean Luc Godard fan-girl. In fact, when I WAS faux hipster and wanky at university I wrote entire essays that read like love letters to French New Wave cinema, but this movie wasn’t recommended to me because o’ my past new wave wanky-ness, nor was it because o’ my love for all things Francais, but because of the amazing tarot deck used in the opening sequence.

It is quite the set. I’ve done a li’l research – what can I say? I’m a geek-girl -  and found out that it’s the Astro Mythological deck by Mlle Lenormand and I want it.
I’m drawn to it.
It makes me want to don my headscarf and oversized hoop earrings.
It’s all techni-colour gorgeousness and full o’ symbolism and I want to spend entire days exploring them and letting them take me on magickal adventures. And if I can’t afford the Dali deck which I’m coveting so badly, then this is deffo a far more reasonable and purse-friendly option to cure my tarot card fix.

As for the movie. I LOVED it. As in really loved it. It’s an hour and a half (despite the title) in the life of Cleo, a singer who, after her tarot reading that fore tells bad news, whiles away a couple of hours in the cafés, shops and streets of Paris awaiting the results of medical tests. Like all French New Wave, it’s clever and tres swanksville, it also paints the most delicious black and white portrait of the French capital at the height of the sixties too – tres magnifique. You can buy a copy at Amazon, or like me, watch it on Youtube while pretending to smoke Gauloises cigarettes and swish your hair in a very ohh la la way.

Don’t fret, just because I’m now engaged, this won’t become a wedding obsess-o blogginz with me in the starring role as Bridezilla, but there maybe a few wedding inspired posts because…well, besides from being really rather excited ’bout it all,  there might be other members o’ girl-kind out there who, like me, haven’t kept a wedding book since they were 13, and find the idea of actually planning such an event all kinds of daunting. It’s not just me, is it? IS IT?!

Who knew when that beautiful Viking beau o’ mine got down on one knee (he did you know, at the top of the Eiffel Tower. At sunset. In sub-arctic conditions. It was truly the most beautiful, special and most magickal moment o’ my entire life – I might blog about it, but I might not too, I quite like the idea of keeping that evening contained inside our very own love-filled Paris sno-globe) that this wedding malarky could be such a minefield?

The good news is that the beau has proposed to me with the intention of actually getting married. I know that’s generally the idea, but I’ve been asked before y’know, and I don’t think the idea of getting married actually entered his head. (He was all about the grand gestures, totally unable to back them up, hence why he is now an ex – hurrah!) So for me, this is the first, and last, time I’m engaged to be married and I’m filled to the brim with excitement about it all.
Now, I LOVE my beautiful beau with all my big thumpity heart, that much I know for sure.
Everything else wedding-y? Not so much.
I’m not a conventional kinda girl. Both the beau and I march very much to the beat of our own drums, it just so happens that our drums beat out a pretty snazzy rhythm when they’re played together, so anything that we plan is going to be very ‘us’, but, and we’ve only been engaged for a week, we’ve realised pretty quickly, that there’s a rule book, etiquette, and all sorts of crazy shenanigans that comes with planning a wedding. We had a moment, last week where we broke out in hives with the worry of who to invite, parties, etc. so we dealt with it the only way we know how.
We ate cake.
Oh, and then we ripped up the wedding rule book and created our own. It looks a little bit like this…

Let’s start with being engaged. People, this is a BIG deal. Once we’d told our close friends and fam, I mentioned it on facebook. We got 95 responses of love and excitement. However, through our actual post box? 4 cards.
Is facebook now the accepted way to express love-stuff for something so big and monumental? Well, at the risk of sounding diva-like, not in my world. So if you’re a friend or family member reading this, and you’re happy that the beau and I have declared our love stuff to the world, we’d like a card please. Thank you. (I’m the same about birthdays and ANY occasion really. I LOVE a card. And how’s a girl to make a scrapbook o’ this event o’ awesomeness with facebook messages? Just sayin’.)

Then there’s ACTUALLY getting married. Now, this is kinda awkward, what with neither the beau nor I wanting to actually get married. We deffo want a ceremony though, but we’re not seeking permission, we’re not asking if it’s okay for us to be together forever, we simply want the opportunity, in the presence of our gods and goddesses and friends and fam, to declare our big beautiful love stuff to each other. Oh, and have fun whilst we do it. Which is why we’ll be having an intimate handfasting, in the most beautiful locale, with the people we love and who love us. Happy sigh.

Guests. People assume they’re invited. People have already asked for an invitation. My mum took it as red that I might invite a cousin twice removed.
I won’t.
Despite appearances, I’m an introverted extrovert, I don’t dig big show-y things. Neither does the beau. In fact, we’re still undecided about whether to even have an engagement party, because neither of us like a huge fuss. Our ‘celebration o’ love stuff’ as I’ve taken to affectionately calling it, isn’t a show with must-have tickets, it’s a celebration of our love for each other and we only want people there that we love and who love us back. Not a cousin twice removed who I haven’t seen since I was 8.

Cost. We had a moment of sweaty palpitations thinking about how much it might all cost, so we plan on doing everything very much on a budget, we also have the most talented, creative bunch o’ friends and family, so over the coming months we will be enlisting their help to create all kinds o’ handmade gorgeousness. I can’t wait to look around me on the day that I declare love stuff and know that everything there has been made with love by people that we both love. Perfect-o.

Most importantly, and I’m writing this now so that if I find myself falling into a bridezilla-type-haze and getting a messy or stressy head about it all, I can re-read it and remember what this union is actually all about, because whether you do it in a church, in a field at a festival or under water, it’s not about ‘one perfect day’, it’s about celebrating all the reasons you love each other and your commitment to create a gazillion perfect days together in whatever imperfect form that they come in.

PS: Despite creating our own rulebook, I have however, found myself getting rather excited about what I like to call ‘online offbeat wedding porn’. If you need inspir-o for your own wedding, check out these websites that celebrate the unconventional, the quirky and in some cases VERY strange!

www.rocknrollbride.com
http://offbeatbride.com
http://whimsicalwonderlandweddings.com/

Enough.

Seriously, enough already.

Every year, when London Fashion Week rolls around, you will find me rolling my eyes at the complete predictability of it all.
In the same way that, every year, come what may, on the 27th December, you’ll be bombarded with celebrities pimping their exercise DVDs and the diet industry launching a never-ending supply of supposed ‘I-can-make-you-thin’ prodz, London Fashion Week sparks the same debate – fashion models are too skinny, there should be more voluptuous women on the catwalk, yada, yada, yada.

I’m a size 18. I’m hot. I have a gorgeous friend who is a size 8, she’s hot too. Society would like to label us ‘fat’ and ‘thin’ yet we both totally rock the bodies we’re in, because the size written on the label in our knickers, is NOT an indication of our awesomeness. Last night, I went to the dress rehearsal for our burlesque show on Saturday, and the girls I perform alongside are a truly delicious array of lovely shapes and sizes because, despite what the media will have you believe, girl-kind come in a gazillion different juicy-juicy forms, not just ’skinny’ and ‘fat’.

Putting a ‘voluptuous’ (which in media terminology usually means a UK size 12) model on the catwalk isn’t an insta-fix to the crazy-assed obsession we have with body image in our society right now, in the same way that highlighting how ’skinny’ someone is, or creating niche markets for ‘plus’ size girls won’t cut it either.

Last week, Adele was called a ‘little bit fat’ by Karl Lagerfeld, and then, when she won 7 Grammys at the weekend, the media celebrated the awesome talent of ‘curvy Adele’. What’s the size of her hips got to do with either Karl OR her freakin’ AMAZING talent?

Nothing. It’s bullshit.

As a self-esteem coach and agony aunt for Mizz magazine, I find myself continually exasperated/fucked off/annoyed by society’s endless need to label and define girl-kind by their body size, and as for the endless ‘fat’ and ‘thin’ debate, it just perpetuates the message that no matter what your size, as a girl/woman in the world, you’re never ‘quite’ good enough. Which, FYI, is simply not true. I work on a daily basis in all my work to ensure that girls and women of ALL shapes and sizes, love themselves JUST AS THEY ARE.

I know, controversial, right?

Niches, labels, ‘fat’ and ‘thin debates just continue to highlight the differences between girl-kind, which is why I’m on a mission to create media products that celebrate women in ALL their fabulous forms, not just for the clothes they wear or the size of their hips – don’t get me wrong, I LOVE clothes, shoes and make-up, but they most deffo don’t define me – but for their talents and skillz, their business savvy and their YOU-nique qualities too – get ready, the SASSY-fication o’ girl-kind is coming, g-friends – you in?

The future is bright, the future is girl-shaped. And FYI. That’s the shape you’re currently in, ‘k?!

Yep, that super-hot viking o’ mine got down on one knee and asked me to marry him in Ohh la la land, Paris! I said ‘oui’, obv.

It was the most heart-thumping-ly, deliciously perfect moment o’ my life and I am VERY reluctant to leave my Parisian bubble of love stuff, so normal blog-girl service will resume next week. In the meantime, while I LOVE any excuse to celebrate all things love and heart-shaped,  you absolutely, positively DON’T need a designated day to do lots of kissing, tell the people you love how much they mean to you, and most importantly, show yourself the BIG love – so go do it now.Go on, I dare you.

Love is the answer. No matter what the question.

When I get an idea in my head and heart, I run with it as if my life freakin’ depends on it.

At the beginning of this year, I was ready to rock 2012. I was ALL over it. I shouted crazy loud to the universe, BRING IT. I am SO ready for this shit.

‘Cept, I think I put a li’l bit too much pressure on myself, because let me tell you, five weeks in and I was beat.

This weekend, I was seriously at risk of burning out, I set myself crazy deadlines and in amongst all of that, life happens, it throws you curveballs, and you have to be flexible. I think that’s my biggest lesson of the year so far, not just because I’ve discovered the joy of yoga – love me the yoga, but because I’m seeing the benefits of not being so rigid about things, and feeling them intuitively instead.
I really rather like it.

I have a list of amazing things I’m going to create, be and do this year, but I was putting crazy-pressure on my sweet self to get them all done, like…now, but guess what? I’ve got a whole year to do it in, in fact I’ve got an entire lifetime, and if life takes me off list? Then that’s really cool as well, I get to make the rules and decide how to prioritise my energy, that’s the deal when you’re SASSY – hurrah!

The end of Jan was shitty.
Simple as that. But shit does happen. It’s how you deal with it that really matters, so after I threw a proper diva like tantrum declaring the end of the world as we know it, ate four French Fancies in a row and wallowed rather self-indulgently at my pity party for one, I asked myself what do I need right now?

A break. Time out from the to-do list. Enter beautiful beau who is taking me to Paris next week – ohh la la! Seriously, it’s the best gift anyone could ever give me – I love New York, and my heart will always be in San Fransisco, but Paris is where my magick happens – you’ll read all about it in the book – and I’m going to use our time there to fill up on that gorgeous magick that the sparkly Eiffel tower illuminates, to kiss my beau as much as actually possible, to walk the streets o’ Paris, to people watch, to peruse li’l book shops, to eat nutella filled crepes and go watch girls in frilly knickers at the Moulin Rouge – wohhhhhhoooooooo!

A social media break. I LOVE social media, but until the 13th of Feb, as of now, I’m on a holibobs from all o’ that. Apparently the world WON’T end if I step away from it, I’m testing that theory.

Go to bed early. My head is filled with a gazzillion thoughts and if I let it, it would keep me up all night with book ideas, features to pitch, ways to build my beauty-full business, but to put all those into action I need to be in my bed before 10pm – rock n’ roll? No. How I roll? Yes.

NOT being a workaholic. Instead, making stuff happen at the right time and right place – it’s a freakin’ revelation.

Shedding my skin. Not literally, although I am a HUGE fan o’ dry brushing, if you don’t do it, give it a go. No, I’m talking about getting rid of photos from my past. I LOVE photos so much, but the things I need to remember are in my heart, so I dumped them. All of them. I feel lighter and so much happier not to have past relationship reminders in this relationship – let it go, it’s awesome!

What do you need right now?