Expose yourself challenge
In January 2020, I took the challenge to expose myself on Facebook for 16 days.
I wrote 16 personal stories, challenges, and life lessons.
I’m sharing them here so that you can get to know me better as I believe that showing with authenticity and vulnerability is the best way to build meaningful relationships.
Here we go!
[EXPOSED DAY 1] Where there is challenge, there is growth
Dec 2004. I’m in France celebrating Christmas with my family when we learn that a Tsunami just hit Southeast Asia. Appalled, we watch on TV the images of chaos and tragedy.
I’m 26 and freshly graduated in international law and humanitarian aid.
I must go.
I apply with an NGO and I'm recruited. They need people badly and are taking on newbies.
I pack my suitcase and leave for a training in Paris. But when I arrive they don’t need my profile in the Tsunami response anymore but would I be willing to go to Darfur instead? A conflict has started in this region of Sudan and there are a lot of displaced people in need of assistance. I would be in charge of food distributions in a refugee camp.
Sure.
And off I go!
After an epic journey (including a helicopter ride, a 4x4 drive through the desert and an encounter with local rebels armed to the teeth) I arrive where I’ll spend the next 6 months.
I’m shocked by the living conditions, less than basic. It’s hot as hell. We live in makeshifts straw and plastic sheeting huts, like the refugees we are helping. We live off canned and dry food. Obviously, no running water or electricity. The water we use is brown and some expats got hepatitis and typhoid already.
Way less glamorous than what I imagined (picture Angelina Jolie in Beyond Borders…)
And the expats don’t seem very friendly…
I get the right to call my parents for 5 min with the satellite phone. I cry. It’s really hard and I don’t think I can stay 6 months like this.
But I bite the bullet and decide to give it a try.
I dive into the work. Waking up with the sun, on the field the whole day, 7 days a week. Distributing food to 80,000 people each month.
I lose 10 kg in 3 months.
But I stay.
And I start loving it. I discover the beauty of living so simply. A sense of purpose. Friendships. My first love story. The dark nights full of stars. The silence of the desert.
I feel more alive than ever.
I have found my passion.
After this first mission, I would go on for another 13 years…
In this 1st mission, I learned the value of sticking to a commitment, of going through the difficulties and what can sometimes feel impossible.
Because where there is challenge, there is growth.
[EXPOSED DAY 2] Let's talk about sex.
You might know that I work as a love coach for women… but did you know that I’m a sex, love & relationship coach by training?
That’s right.
When I first heard about Layla Martin’s training I was intrigued but I thought “me, a sex coach, no way!”
But 2 years later I was ready. So ready that I even choose female sexuality as my 2nd major.
Why would I want to study sexuality?
Why wouldn’t I?!
There are a few things I wish we all learned in school and sexuality is definitely one of them.
Knowledge of our body (do you know the clitoris is purely designed for pleasure with its 8000 nerves endings?)
Desire (do you know the difference between spontaneous and responsive desire?)
Pleasure & orgasm (do you know all the different type of orgasms we can experience?)
Sexual energy (do you know we can use it to boost our creativity – among other things…?)
But also consent, boundaries, communication…
Sex is so important in our lives, yet most of us don’t talk about it freely (or at all…), and it’s still associated with so much shame and guilt.
I wish we could talk openly about it, educate our youth about it, own our desires, know and express our boundaries.
Yes, I’m passionate about sex ed and I might do something about it someday...
But for now, I use my expertise on sexuality with my clients on their path to love.
I teach them
how to fall in love with their body
how to use their sexual energy to feel confident
how to rewrite their sexual narrative
how to express their boundaries
[EXPOSED Day 3] Desire + Action = Results
I’m in deep relaxation at the end of a yoga class.
I’m in India, studying intensively to become a yoga teacher. At this point I’m here for me. After years of humanitarian missions and a lot of stress, I want to reconnect and take care of myself first and foremost. I thought that a month long of meditation, yoga, chanting and vegetarian meals in an ashram in Kerala would be just what I needed. And it is.
Do I want to teach yoga? I’m not sure at all.
But then, lying down in this dozy state, an idea pops up: I have to share yoga in Palestine!
I’ve worked there with Doctors Without Borders and I’ve seen the conflict impact on the people’s mental health. Yoga would be a powerful yet simple way to release stress, anxiety and depression and develop peace of mind. And there’s no need for space, equipment or specific physical condition to practice yoga. Everyone can do it.
Yes, yoga would be ideal for Palestinians….
In 2015 this dream becomes true as we organize a training in Palestine for 21 women to become yoga teachers. These women work as teachers, psychologists, midwives, social workers, hospital clown (yes!) and serve the most vulnerable communities in refugee camps, Bedouin villages and schools.
Since then, they have been teaching yoga to hundreds of people in their communities
It took me 2 years to make it happen.
Looking back, I don’t think I ever doubted it.
I believed in my idea (I also went and checked with the concerned if they were interested… they were).
I planned. Curriculum. Logistics. Finances. Communication.
I learned. How to run a crowdfunding campaign from scratch, how to make videos to promote the project, how to build a website.
I asked for help and I received an incredible support from so many people.
Desire + Action = Results
That’s what I learned there.
And that’s what I see every day with coaching.
What about you?
What do you want?
What can you do today to take a step in that direction?
[EXPOSED Day 4] Working on yourself doesn’t always have to be hard
I was shocked when a friend going to psychoanalysis told me how difficult it was, how gloomy she felt after each session. She had been in analysis for years and these side-effects were normal and acceptable to her.
I also hear women interested in working with me saying: “I’ve already done so much WORK on myself, I’m not sure I’ll have the energy”
I want to challenge this idea that self-development is always synonym with hard WORK. That it takes energy.
So yes, self-development and healing require touching some of your darkest parts – memories, emotions, traumas.
It might be f*cking painful at times. It requires energy… in addition to a lot of courage. Especially if you have been keeping your wounds under the rug for years.
But it doesn’t always have to be hard and painful.
My self-development included dancing unapologetically in the Mexican jungle with another 40 women, breathing through layers of emotions, being held by lovely human beings along the way… and a lot of pleasure.
One way to heal is to feel.
Not pushing or forcing anything.
Just allowing yourself to feel.
Gently and slowly feeling your fear of being rejected or abandoned, your broken heart, your rage or whatever hasn’t been allowed, hasn’t been processed.
And then feel the joy, the pleasure, the love that are always there, underneath.
When you do that, you teach your nervous system to self-regulate.
you learn that it's ok to feel any emotions.
you learn that you can take yourself back to safety.
AND when you start feeling, you start releasing energy trapped in your body.
Because it takes a LOT of energy to keep wounds and unwanted emotions under lock.
Not feeling – distracting or numbing yourself in whatever way – actually takes MUCH MORE energy than feeling.
So by “working on yourself” you will eventually RECLAIM your energy
[EXPOSED Day 5] Being a love coach doesn’t mean that I have it all figured out in the love department
Yes, I am in a loving relationship.
Does it mean we spend our time eyes-gazing, speaking loving words and feeding each other strawberries?
Errr no
We argue about ridiculous things as the fridge organization or the correct timing to shift gears
And when I get triggered, I can quickly start acting like a grumpy child.
Before this relationship, my love life was kind of a disaster.
It’s right when I was picking my coaching specialty – helping single women get ready for love, aka healthy relationships – that things finally unlocked for me and that my current relationship took off #synchronicity
Do my struggles – past and present – make me feel like an imposter?
Nope. Absolutely not.
It’s precisely BECAUSE I struggled hard in love that I know I can help.
Because on my way to a healthy relationship I learned a thing or 2 I wish I knew back then.
[EXPOSED Day 6] I’ve always been an achiever
I got this from my parents, both Aries, action oriented and efficient people.
But god knows this is also a syndrome from our society.
Do do do, go go go.
A culture of performance.
As an achiever, working as a humanitarian was perfect.
I got to DO and my actions were so “important”, as the results they were leading to.
I got burnt out in my first mission in Darfur. 6 months of working 24/7. Nothing surprising.
But when I got burnt out for the second time… in an ashram (yes, you read correctly ) I finally understood.
It had nothing to do with the circumstances (whether a humanitarian mission or an ashram).
It had to do with me.
Me and my need to do which was stronger than my need to take care of myself.
This was a turning point.
I started seeing how my need to do was driven by wanting to get validation, to be acknowledged.
I understood why (growing up validation was rare and when it happened, it felt so good!)
I realized that no amount of achievements will ever matter.
I realized that I didn’t actually need to do anything to be worthy.
Because I already was.
Because we all are.
I’m still an achiever. I still love to take action and see results. Create a masterclass, take on a challenge or paint my living room. Ask my partner – a disciple of Zen Mindfulness – who desperately tries to introduce me to the subtle art of Doing nothing
But I know that my actions and their results have nothing to do with my worthiness.
I now support women to source this worthiness within so that they stop looking for validation from outside (for example by attracting the wrong partners.)
[EXPOSED Day 7] On commitment
My only commitment used to be my Spotify account. 10$/month
When the bank offered me loan opportunities so I could buy a car for example, I smiled.
For 20 years I never lived in the same place for more than a year. My longest contract lasted 14 months. No house, no car, no bills, no children, and most of the time no boyfriend.
I got a pink suitcase, short missions, friends all over the world and intense experiences.
I got to follow my desires moment to moment
I could sometimes feel a longing for something else…
The possibility to plan holidays ahead of time.
A place where I could have my things.
Someone to come home to after a mission.
Would it be this thing called stability?
Yet I couldn’t figure out where to start.
Deciding where to live was complicated. Raised on 4 continents, I don’t really have roots.
I tried to settle in Abidjan, in Ivory Coast. But it didn’t work out.
I packed my suitcase and went back on my journey, traveling, changing career, shifting inside and attracting my partner on the way.
I met a man who had the same wandering background and the same desire for grounding.
We fell in love and decided to commit to each other.
And things moved quickly (except for Covid that kept us apart for 5 months…)
I arrived 6 months ago in Brazil.
I bought my first car , my first house , we got dogs
Finally doing in my 40s what people do in their 20 or 30s
From time to time I still feel the desire to hop on a bus or a plane to a new place…
But overall it feels good. I enjoy sleeping in the same bed every day, the calm, the routine.
And I realize this new stability offers me another form of freedom, more energy, new possibilities.
[EXPOSED Day 8] Identify
I tried fitting in for a long time
It started when I was 13.
I arrived in France for the first time after living abroad with my family. From Tokyo to a middle-size French town, the transition was… rough. But at 13 you NEED to blend in. So, I traded Michael Jackson and Technotronic for Francis Cabrel & Jean-Jacques Goldman . I begged my mum to buy me clothes from the few acceptable brands, even though they were not my style at all .
Still, “they” didn’t get me. And I didn’t get them. I didn’t belong and I felt isolated.
Since then, I got better at integration… I adapted based on the group I was part of.
First came the skaters’ group in my early 20s. Even though I didn’t skate, I adopted their baggy clothes, hip-hop and spent countless hours watching skate.
Then I joined the humanitarians. Work hard, party hard. Khakis pants and T-shirt of the organization to be easily identified (or rather who you work for).
Afterwards I immersed into the yoga community. Serving as a volunteer of a traditional organization, I wore a yellow-white uniform for 15 months.
But it is probably in this environment, working on seeing beyond my ego, beyond the “I” that I started touching and owning who I was really.
As I continued my self-discovery journey, I finally mingled with the sacred/tantra/shamanic community, once again adopting their clothing and attitude.
At this point, I was moving from one community to the other while doing inner work. I got to reclaim who I was underneath the social conditioning, underneath all the layers of identity that I had created over the years.
I learned that belonging is a universal need, as vital as our need for love and safety. Our brain still associate rejection from the group as a risk of death (as in the past belonging was essential to survival).
I realized I could be exactly who I wanted to be and still belong.
I could be a goal-oriented achiever AND a pleasure seeker.
I could be French AND a global citizen at heart.
I could be intellectual AND wild.
I didn’t need to fit in a box
And neither do you.
[EXPOSED Day 9] My dad was my greatest teacher
He taught me
how to write an essay
how to pack a suitcase efficiently
how to make boeuf bourguignon
But also respect, tolerance, hard work and courage.
The most important lesson he taught me was his last one.
When he learnt about his disease and its ineluctable outcome, he didn’t fight, he didn’t blame. He accepted the idea of dying.
He didn’t change anything. He was living the life he wanted.
He carried on with his job even as his physical capacities diminished significantly.
Until his last days that we got to spend together.
My dad was the embodiment of responsibility, of doing the right thing.
As a son, a husband, a father, a friend, an employee, an employer.
But there he taught me another meaning of responsibility.
He taught me that no matter what happens, you remain free to choose how you want to react. Instead of enduring life, you get to decide. How you think, feel and act.
Today this concept of responsibility is my guiding principle.
When something challenging happens in my life, in my relationship, I try to go back to it. What do I want to make of it?
What do I want to feel about it?
What do I want to do about it?
It is not easy. I sometimes slide back in the victim mode, blaming my partner or the universe. But over time and with practice, the more I accept responsibility, the more power I feel I have over my experience.
[EXPOSED Day 10] My “negative” emotions
Anger is an old pal. From a young age I understood this one could be expressed openly. She comes and goes easily, she doesn’t get stuck. I know what to do with her (kicking pillows on Rage Against the Machine is quite efficient). I even got to feel some pleasure brought by her powerful energy, feeling like Kali the Hindu goddess of destruction.
I’m well acquainted with Sadness. Sometimes she shows up right after Anger’s grand performance as if waiting for the path to be clear. Sometimes I know why she is visiting – when I feel misunderstood, when I think of my dad…. Sometimes I have no idea what made her come up. I don’t need to know. She feels more like melancholy, nostalgia, or saudade as they say in Brazil. It might be hormonal, the collective pain body or an old wound. I know how to take care of her. Crying. Asking to be held. Sleeping.
Fear comes in many colors.
The sudden threat – as the sound of shootings back in my humanitarian days – that can make me either super reactive, cold-blooded, or the opposite, paralyzed, numb. For years I didn’t know I could do something about it. I let my body formed an armor to cope with the stress. I started releasing when I discovered I could intentionally use my body (shaking remains the best) and breathwork.
There are also the deep-rooted fears, for ex. the fear of not finding a partner that I felt for a long time, or her friend the fear of being in a relationship that I discovered while working on myself.
And the inevitable fear: when taking an important decision and moving towards change. I allow her, just not in the driver’s seat.
When Jealousy appears – for ex. when one of my successful peers shares a big win – I now take her pang for a reminder of what I want, of my dreams. Thanks jealousy!
I’m getting to know Shame better. Shame of being seen as imperfect. Shame of being wrong. She really feels yucky... She makes me feel like a little girl who’s made a mistake and who’s going to be scolded by her mom. I feel the knot in my stomach and I try to understand what is there to learn. I try and come back to my sense of worth, to take responsibility for my actions and not for others’ emotions.
This relationship with my emotions is still very much a work in progress.
But I’ve learned that our emotions (especially the uncomfortable ones ) can bring so much wisdom, as they compel us to look at unresolved issues and eventually to grow.
I’ve learned how to process them by allowing and feeling them in my body, using breath, sound and movement to let them run through and out of me, instead of ignoring them or delving into them.
Finally, I understood that emotions, as intense as they can feel, are ONLY emotions. They always go away at some point. Always.
[EXPOSED Day 11] My truth about love coaching
I’ve had people asking me if love coaching meant giving tips to make their first date go well; helping them know if this is the one; or even matchmaking.
Some coaches out there definitely offer these services. How to write a bio and pick a photo for dating online, what to wear and to say on dates…
But what I do is very VERY different.
I won’t tell you what to do. I will not give you my opinion.
No, I will help you find your own keys.
And this is mostly about creating a new relationship with yourself first and foremost.
Getting to know yourself, becoming aware of your beliefs, of your stories, of how you
you treat yourself.
Accepting and loving who you are – your personality, your qualities, your flaws, your body.
Taking responsibility – stop waiting for the other person or the world to give you what you want and need, and start giving it to yourself (love, respect, pleasure).
The easiest way to understand my work is to read about my clients’ results:
I got to see my own worth and what I had to bring to a relationship
I opened up to love after years of pushing it away
I identified my relationships patterns and reset my emotional functioning
I stopped seeing men who were not treating me the way I wanted, revised my criteria which allowed me to find someone I would not have considered before
But also:
I got my confidence back
I feel good in my own skin and at peace
I stopped overthinking and downward spiral and renewed with my intuition
I now know what I want – and don’t want
I’m learning to not take things personally
I recognize what is my responsibility
I’m now prioritizing myself
I developed a new relationship with my body
I’m dealing with my emotions in a healthy way
I’m expressing myself, allowing myself to be vulnerable without being afraid of what people think
I’ve learned to say No
I healed my shame and guilt related to my sexuality
I got my turn-on and pleasure back
[EXPOSED Day 12]
A few years ago, I worked on a fantastic project in Senegal. The idea was to improve the lives of 7,500 children and teenagers, all young workers, through a system of savings and loans directly managed by them. They were at the heart of the project, not as beneficiaries but as actors. They were the ones expressing the need for such a program and the ones running it.
For me this was a refreshing change compared to the previous projects I worked for. In emergency life-saving programs, we had no choice other than “doing for” them, substituting the authorities or the people themselves: running hospitals, vaccination campaigns or food distribution. At the time, I must admit I enjoyed being efficient and creating results. I loved being a “doer”.
But this project in Senegal opened my eyes to another possibility: supporting change instead of implementing it.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime
This idea inspired the project in Palestine – instead of teaching yoga, we trained yoga teachers so that they could in turn teach hundreds of people in a more sustainable way, to be the actors of change in their community.
This is what I do now in my work as a coach. I use tools and I ask questions but more importantly I “hold space”. This somehow enigmatic expression is about creating a space where the client feels safe and encouraged to explore within herself – feeling what needs to be felt, listening to her own inner voice, taping in her wisdom, finding her power.
Recently a client asked me for my opinion. I answered it didn’t matter. What mattered was HER “opinion” (truth, wisdom, energy...).
I believe we all have our keys inside us. Some practices can help us access them – meditation, walks in nature, breathwork...
But another person’s presence and attention can help you to go further and deeper into finding YOU.
[EXPOSED Day 13] Not abandoning myself
In my first post I wrote about how deciding to stay in the mission despite the challenges turned out to be one of the best decisions in my life.
But today I thought about the time I took the opposite decision.
I was a young head of mission in South Sudan when my colleague Alexandra died suddenly. We had been living and working together for 6 months and she had become a friend. One night she started feeling sick and the next day she died in front of us from malaria.
The whole team was under complete shock and disbelief. We did what we had to do. Inform the headquarters. Manage the repatriation of the body. Continue working – we were supporting thousands of people through medical and nutritional activities.
I tried to bury my feelings (back then I had no clue how to take care of them.) I was the boss. I felt I had to show the example. I put on the autopilot mode and got back to work. But when shortly after we faced an armed robbery and a shooting around our hospital, it was just too much. I had reached my limits.
I decided to quit.
It was hard. I was afraid to disappoint but most of all I felt extremely guilty to “abandon” my team. I felt like a captain leaving the ship in the middle of the storm.
But I knew I couldn’t support them anymore. I couldn’t deal with the daily challenges of the mission anymore.
And I had to take care of myself…
I had to learn to be supported.
I had to learn to be there for myself.
I didn’t know it back then but it was one of the first steps on my path to self-love.
[EXPOSED Day 14] Sisterhood
The sound of the cheering is exhilarating. My feeling is hard to describe. Something I have experienced as a kid. Pure joy.
One by one we are cat-walking in front of 40 other women. Our bodies are adorned with silk, feathers or gold as if they were a temple. Walking slowly, sensuously, enjoying ourselves, expressing who we are unapologetically while being seen and supported by sisters.
More than the show itself, what awakens my joy is the group energy. The love, the support that we are feeling for each other.
This ritual marked the end of an intensive retreat in Mexico as part of our 1-year coaching certification. It took months to get to this level of trust, and we got there through allowing ourselves to be seen in our most glorious moments as well as in our darkest hours:
Daring to celebrate openly our qualities, our wins and our prides without fearing condemnation. Turning the paradigm of women connecting through mutual victimization and what sucked in our lives. And giving ourselves permission to shine and inspiring one another to shine.
Sharing our challenges, our shame, guilt, fears and our deepest wounds – Including how we had been judged, criticized and betrayed by friends, sisters or mothers.
I’m incredibly grateful to be part of a community of fierce and loving women leading the way. And I feel inspired to offer similar containers where women can feel safe enough to express themselves freely, to connect in their joy and radiance, and support each other. Because we need more of this.
Healing the sisterhood wound doesn’t take golden feathers in a Mexican jungle . It can be done in everyday life with these simple tools*:
Celebrations
Celebrate yourself/brag (yes!) about something fantastic you did or that happened in your life.
Clearings
Share with someone what you are struggling with and allow yourself to be seen and heard.
Desires
Take your time to identify what you really want, what you desire and share it without toning it down!
* Learnt from my fantastic teacher Layla Martin
[EXPOSED Day 15] I’ve always been super determined
I would have an idea and I would go for it; I would find ways to make it happen no matter what
When I was 17, I watched the movie Manhattan and I decided I had to see NYC. The next summer I got my first job in the city as an Au pair.
Later, as I fell in love with Brazil and wanted to know the country better, I found someone whom I convinced to pay for my travel expenses in exchange for a research there.
Same for the yoga teachers training I organized in Palestine. Raising 10,000€ in a month. Finding specialized teachers. A yoga studio.
Nothing seemed impossible.
But when it came to my love life, I had a diametrically opposed approach. Well in fact, I had no approach. I was totally passive.
I would spend so much time thinking about a guy I liked or telling my girlfriends how much I wanted to be in a relationship but I wasn’t taking any action. Either to meet new people, or to change my type of attraction (which was NOT a healthy one…)
I had no clue. I thought there was nothing I could do. That who I was attracted to was outside of my control. I thought love just happened. That I should just continue floating until maybe one day I would magically meet my guy.
I might have stayed single for a while with this (non-existing) strategy.
Fortunately, I came across my teacher that set me on a path of self-discovery. Over the next 18 months
I understood why my love life had been what it is, touching and releasing past wounds and limiting beliefs.
I decided that I was freaking worthy of love.
I chose what was essential for me in a relationship.
And more importantly, I made finding a partner my goal.
Finally deciding to invest in my love life as I had done in other aspects of my life.
This was exactly 3 years ago.
Today, I’m building a life together with my partner after dreaming about it for so long.
And I get to help women doing the same.
Investing in themselves so they can have what they most desire.
[EXPOSED Day 16] Reclaiming the Feminine
I’m just coming out of my first S factor dance class*. With another 15 women we dropped into our body, moving our hips, arching our backs, walking sensually and slooowly.
After a lifetime of mostly ignoring my body I first reconnected with her through yoga and meditation. Yes, this seated practice allowed me to be really present with my body, paying attention to my sensations moment to moment.
But it was really through dance that I discovered yet another level of connection with my body.
Here I’m not talking about ballet or salsa but about free flow movement. Ecstatic dance. Contact dance. Or just any form of intuitive movement. Where you let your body guide you instead of the opposite. Where you listen to her and follow her.
Dance and this new connection with my body have been a portal for me to tap into my feminine. There, I could feel free, sensual and powerful.
The most magical moments were dancing while being surrounded by other women.
Giving ourselves permission to be free.
Giving each other permission to be whatever we want.
Celebrating who we are and celebrating each other.
It was not about looking pretty or performing in any way.
It was not for the male gaze.
It was for us.
Most of us are not taught how to live fully in our body.
Especially women.
There is so much judgment and pressure about how a woman is supposed to look…
That so many women have a poor body image, feel ashamed of being too much or not enough.
There is so much sexual abuse…
That naturally we shut down, we turn the light off because it feels too dangerous.
The Feminine is guarded.
And it happens in our body. We tense, we create an armour and we disconnect.
But our body is also the place to heal.
Through movement and presence, we can reconnect with our body and release deep pain and trauma.
And on the other side of pain there is pleasure. When we move, when we allow ourselves to feel all the colours of our emotions, when we explore, we teach our body that pleasure is not only accessible but also safe.
Mindful movement is an incredible way to bring women back to their wholeness, to reclaim their sensuality… and their power.
One of my deepest dreams is that women love and accept themselves the way they are outside and inside. I want women to reclaim their body, to find their confidence and to get in touch with their life force longing to be set free.
I believe we can lead a revolution… simply by connecting with our body.
Let’s do this!
* If you’re curious about it, watch the Netflix documentary: “Strip down. Rise up”.
