I was born to be a mother

/ Pelagia Pais - Self Empowerment Coach/
I was born to be a mother

This piece came to me this morning. It started with the title. Once sentence. I felt the calling to come and sit down and just start writing. I had no clear idea of what was going to come next, although I had a vague idea. This thought and sentence has been present in my life in different levels of intensity and awareness.

It feels a little bit uncomfortable to publish it, yet, the calling to do it, is here and I feel I must abide. One deep breath, and I press ‘publish’.

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Mud, Sweat & Fear: The Journey to Braveheart

/ Pelagia Pais - Self Empowerment Coach/
Mud, Sweat & Fear: The Journey to Braveheart

Online Snapshots versus Reality

I must say, I love all those stories of the successful turning around from nothing to lots. If you are coming here for that, you will be disappointed, there are loads of those all over the internet. This is me, right in the middle of the muddy, messy part of my life, of having my own business and not being successful, yet.

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'I am fat'

/ Pelagia Pais - Women's Empowerment Coach/
'I am fat'

There you go, I can finally say (or write) this in a way that brings no strong reaction or emotion within me. I see it as a simple neutral statement that describes my body. My body is fat. I am fat.

This has not always been like this. Not so long ago, I would have cringed, felt deep shame, denied it, or chosen whatever other words I could think of, that felt more soothing to my self-perception.

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'Shallow'

/ Pelagia Pais - Women's Empowerment Coach/
'Shallow'

I started watching ‘A Star is Born’ the other day. I haven’t even finished watching the whole movie and the song ‘Shallow’ keeps coming to my head. I looked at the lyrics and they spoke to me and they spoke to what I offer in my Women’s Empowerment Coaching sessions.

So much so, that here I am writing about this song.

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'What about me?' The Before - part I

/ Pelagia Pais/
'What about me?' The Before - part I

‘What about me?’ This question popped into my mind several times in my life.

I am giver. I spent a lifetime giving my love, attention, energy, to work and people. I gave, again and again, and there would be times, when I would somehow stop and ask myself: ‘What about me?’

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This is the first part of a two part post. A before and after account of what has changed in me. How I became aware of the many aspects of being me and what it means in practice to become aware, the transformation and the benefits.

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My energy, my mood and the Moon

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My energy, my mood and the Moon

This post will be a mixture of the ‘Books that changed my life’ posts I have shared on my social media (check Instagram or Facebook) and a longer reflection on this subject and my experience.

I read ‘Code Red: Know your flow, unlock your monthly super powers and create a bloody amazing life. Period’ by Lisa Lister back in 2017. I don’t quite remember how the book came to me but when I read it, it changed my view of my menstrual cycle quite dramatically. What I once saw as a painful and uncomfortable monthly nuisance, I could now see as something different. I could see that by understanding my cycle I could understand myself better. My moods, my energy and how to harness this knowing into making time to honour the different stages of the cycle.

As I read the book, for the first time in my life, I actually had the time and disposition to observe my body better and try and identify all the phases of my menstrual cycle. As time went on, I started getting confused and then frustrated, because my cycle seemed to not conform to the descriptions in the book.

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From Noticing to Change

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From Noticing to Change

Some months, on the first day of my period, just like today, all I feel like doing is this:

Recline

Read a book

Watch something light on TV

Knit

Listen to an audiobook

Nap

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Agony

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Agony

At the beginning of the year I spent a couple of months back in Portugal, where I come from. During that time a lot happened. It was intense and there has been a memory from the past, that keeps wanting to be released and shared here. During this particular time in Portugal, this desire to share that story was intensified, to a point where it felt suffocating not to and there was an intense urgency for doing it. Eventually the urgency disappeared and now I am just waiting for a time that feels right, inside of me.

I wrote something about that memory. I will be sharing it soon. For now, I want to share a poem I wrote about how that agony felt inside of me then and in a much lower intensity, is still felt now.

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