Living on purpose

My own lived experience of mental illness, grief and the challenges faced by those around me are the very reason I am here today doing the work I choose to do. I changed my whole career to create Big Love Movement although I didn’t realise I’d been shifting towards this change for a long time. Throughout my life I have felt anxious, depressed, disconnected and sometimes, very lost and alone. There have been tremendous highlights along the way, inspirational experiences and people to share it all with however it is the most challenging times that nudged me to create Big Love Movement.

As a teenager, I scratched my arms and took painkillers for an imagined, or sensed pain, not a physical pain anyone could see or understand. At 13 years old I lost my father very suddenly whilst on a family holiday and quite literally everything changed, a life-changing event that transformed the shape of how I had imagined my life would be.

My career started in fashion, a girl’s dream of being a designer and creating beautiful things became my reality, I studied shoe design and then began a long and amazing career as a shoe buyer. I travelled, I was creative and I had the wardrobe of my dreams but I struggled with relationships and no matter how hard I worked I felt I was being held back in my career somehow.

My anxiety became more familiar and a regular visitor, especially at night. My mental health was a balancing act that I kept well hidden or so I thought, my mood was hard to control or anticipate and my confidence, happiness and energy were feeling depleted. I was ignoring the fact I wasn’t able to be 100% myself because my wellbeing was out of balance, my emotional and mental health was suffering and it wasn’t long before my physical health was impacted too.

In 2017, our stepdad passed away far sooner than anyone had realised was possible and this is the moment I call, The Nudge.

I was unhappy, my relationships were a struggle and never worked out, friendships fell away and I couldn’t connect with my team at work the way others seemed to so easily. Since my father passed in 1997 to that nudge in 2018 it felt like I had dragged my way through my experiences. Something had to change and that change needed to be with me.

I recognise so easily now all the ways my emotional and mental health impacted my relationships, the way I would interact with my family, my friends and the people I would meet. I can see so clearly the way my physical health was directly related to the way I was feeling in my body, the negative repetitive and exhausting thoughts I’d have and how those thoughts affected my confidence to be able to be myself and connect with those around me. With the knowledge I now have and the time I have allowed myself to get comfortable with the uncomfortable experiences I have learnt so much, it’s so clear to me that everything is connected, that my wellbeing is multi-layered and now I know the ways I can support myself and sustain my wellbeing.

My mental health was not often good but back then I couldn’t recognise when I was struggling or what I could do to change how I was feeling. The challenges I experienced by not understanding my own body and wellbeing meant I disconnected from myself and therefore found it harder and harder to connect with anyone else. The Nudge made me do things differently, I began to fully implement the tools and resources I had collected over the years and I sought the support and further training I needed to develop my knowledge so I could support myself and create positive change.

My intention for Big Love Movement is to shake up how we think, speak and feel about mental health, to educate, inspire and empower people who feel disconnected and challenged by their emotional health, to help them to understand their bodies more, and reconnect them to themselves so they can lead a calm and more connected life.

I know I can’t do this work alone, but I’ve started it and I intend to create the positive change we need to see in the world, to challenge the stigma and to support people so they can thrive rather than simply survive.

I use yoga, mindfulness, breath-work and mindset practices to help people develop self-awareness, to get to know themselves on a deeper level and to build their toolkit of resources to support and sustain their wellbeing, allowing them to connect to themselves and to others. I educate and inspire through knowledge and personal experience. Empowerment comes from within and I believe it starts with knowledge and compassionate awareness.

This is empowered wellbeing and this is why I created Big Love Movement.

Becki

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If you have a team or a community you wish to support in this way, get in touch, let’s have the conversation and create positive change together!