Hi, I'm Marie-Claude!
My childhood was a whirlwind of moving from country to country. I grew up in a diverse range of places including Africa, South East Asia, North Africa and France.
This nomadic existence meant I attended 10 different schools, having to adapt to different educational systems, frequently being the ‘new girl on the block’ and leaving behind friends, along with a small part of myself.
My chaotic upbringing brought numerous challenges including feeling disconnected, the worry of not ‘fitting in’ and the anxiety that I would ‘fail’. I constantly felt the need to validate myself in order to become loved and accepted.
The upside to this diverse lifestyle was; the fabulous adventures, discovering exciting places and meeting new people with whom I could forge friendships. My unorthodox childhood sparked my curiosity and led to my eternal optimism.
During this period my passion for connecting and sharing became my source of happiness. My core strengths of ‘joie de vivre’, resilience, adaptability and creativity grew with the challenges in my life.
Much of my early adulthood was spent juggling the demands and responsibilities of rearing a family andshaping a home whilst searching for my role in society.
Along the way I lost track of myself and sank into a dark period of anorexia and depression. My body suffered because my soul was malnourished. Self-restrictions and limiting beliefs bound me, clipped my wings and for a while I lost my purposeful self. Life circumstances and traumas knock our confidence. We become trapped by our own fears and negative self-beliefs and we build walls behind which we hide, to protect ourselves.
When my daughters reached teenage years I embraced a university career which helped me break the walls of self-doubts. Reclaiming the true person within me and allowing myself to be guided by my personal values helped me regain my faith in life.
Like many people, my next challenge came at the approach of retirement, at the end of my career. The French word ‘retiré’ translates as ‘being removed’ or ‘discarded’ and is associated with withdrawal from ‘active life’. I became very anxious: “Will I become redundant, put aside, scrapped, old?”
Some soul searching is required to transform our ‘midlife passage’ into a joyous journey. We need to ask difficult questions in order to honour our Self and allow the happier version of ourselves to be born.
Who in the world am I?
What is my calling?
What have I learnt from my experience and wisdom?
What have I been good at?
What can I take forward?
Through the Harmonizing Emotional & Confidence Coaching process, I learned to connect with my true self and slowly I overcame my anxieties. I learned to understand and fall in love with my new self and I unearthed some fresh talents along the way. I learnt to recognise the people, places and things that energised me, made me feel happy, alive and fulfilled and let go of those which made me feel low.
In this stage of turmoil, only my truth stood up in the end: trust in what I feel and what I learnt about myself, trust in my body, and trust in the present, connected, free and joyful. I understood that my purpose is to love and grow and empower people to grow into that ‘rich’ version of themselves.
"Freedom is being you without anyone’s permission"