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Binah Says
Revealing the wisdom within everyone.
Binah Says
Binah of Georgia Barnett: Journey Back to Self-Love
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In this episode of Binah Says, I sit down with Georgia Barnett - Founder of the Self Love Club - for a deeply vulnerable conversation about the journey back to loving ourselves.
Why is it so hard for women to love themselves? And what happens when we finally stop fighting who we are and begin learning how to love the girl/woman we’ve been all along?
We cried. We laughed. We howled! We opened our hearts and went into the places so many women experience but don’t always feel safe enough to talk about.
We talk about what it means to stop being at war with your body and become your own healer, to transform the inner critic into your greatest cheerleader, and to understand that self-love is not a body size. It’s an energy.
Georgia shares her journey of reconnecting with the Wild Woman Archetype (must read - Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés), trusting intuition as one of our greatest superpowers, and finding healing through women’s circles, creativity, and community. Because sometimes the medicine we’re searching for is simply having people who remind us that we don’t have to do life alone.
We also explore the pressure women feel to settle down, become mothers, and follow a timeline that may not belong to their soul. Should every woman become a mother? What are the tradeoffs of motherhood? And what happens when we surrender our expectations and allow the universe to write a story greater than the one we planned?
From Kabbalah’s teaching of certainty beyond logic to the importance of finding your tribe, nourishing your soul, creating, and learning to love yourself through every season of becoming, this conversation is an invitation to trust your intuition, surrender the timeline, and come home to yourself.
We close the episode with a beautiful prayer from Georgia that I hope stays with you long after the conversation ends.
Thank you, Georgia, for sharing your unique wisdom with us on this episode!
Before we begin, let's give a quick shout out to the sponsor of this episode, Love Life Cafe, my favorite conscious, sustainable, plant-based cafe in Miami. They have redefined what it means to eat well through real whole food ingredients, infused with intention. You literally taste the love in their food. They believe that what we eat has the power to heal, connect, and inspire change around the world. Living a life filled with love for one another and our planet. Now let's dive into the episode. Hi everyone. Welcome to Bina Says. I'm so excited for this next episode to introduce my dear friend Georgia Barnett. Georgia, welcome finally.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for having me. I'm so honored and grateful to be here.
SPEAKER_05It feels like we've been friends for much longer than just this summer in Miami that we've spent together. And I'm so excited to have you here to talk all things self-love, womanhood, sisterhood, community. You are a woman of the world, a wild woman, as we'll as we'll talk about what that even is. And I feel so blessed to have you in my life. You've brought so many incredible experiences already, and I know we're meant to do so much more in this world together. You're the founder of the Self-Love Club, which is incredible. This is like the top club in the world because we all need this club. We do all need this club. Um, and I want to hear more about your story. We talked a little bit, you know, personally about it, and I realize that it's one that's meant to be shared with the world. Um, so yeah, let's get into it.
SPEAKER_01How does that sound? Sounds incredible. I'm so excited, and yeah, let's get into it. I'm so grateful to be here.
SPEAKER_05Why do you think it's so hard for women to love themselves?
SPEAKER_01This is a great question. And women have been taught for a really long time to judge ourselves. The outside world is always sending us messages about who we're supposed to be and how we're supposed to fit a specific mold. And this has led us to be confused and to not step in our power and to not learn how to use our voice and speak our truth and own who we are. And on top of that, which we'll go into a lot more, there lives a wound that is so deep in so many women, and that is the sisterhood wound. Makes me emotional. Um, where we are taught not to take up space in case we offend another woman for taking up space, or that if we see another woman or another girl standing in her confidence and in her power, owning her body successful, that it kind of we've been taught to be wary of that, or to be paranoid of that, or to not to mistrust that, which has led women to not trust ourselves, to not trust our inner voice, and to not trust other women. And so we grow up looking to the outside world for validation or meaning or how that makes us need to be right or to be seen, and it can be really confusing because we're all so different, and women, we can't be put in one box and we don't fit a certain mould. But women, there is this, it's it's really sad. So many women don't love themselves because we haven't been taught to go inwards, to listen to ourselves, to say, hey, these are the things that make me me, that make me unique, that I am this perfectly imperfect mosaic with pieces that don't fit quite neatly and perfectly, but that's what makes me me. You know, I went to an all-girls private school from the age of three years old, and we had to wear the same uniform, and we were taught to, you know, want to do the same thing. So if you stood out or you're a bit unique or you were a bit different, you felt that. Um, and so I think from a really young age, women have been taught that they need to blend in instead of stand out.
SPEAKER_05So you grew up in London?
SPEAKER_01It I actually was born in Leeds, which is like three hours north of London.
SPEAKER_05Okay, and what was that like growing up in London?
SPEAKER_01It was incredible on one hand because I grew up in nature, um, kind of just out of the suburbs. So from a young age, I was playing in nature and using my imagination and you know, connecting to forest fairies and playing, but living in a community or a society where we were kind of told that you have to, you know, have a great education, you have to go to a good school, and you have to go to a good university and almost follow a path that so many people have before you, that was really difficult and confusing.
SPEAKER_05Um when did you realize that path wasn't for you?
SPEAKER_01I, from a really young age, remember, I actually remember my dad dropping me off at a party. I must have been like five or six, and I just said, Daddy, I don't want to go to this party. Like, I you know the movie Spider-Man, and he always says, Who am I? Like, I from a really young age felt like I was bitten by a radioactive spider because I'm really sensitive and I feel feelings and I feel energy, but I didn't know what that was to be a highly sensitive person. I just knew that I felt things that I couldn't quite explain, and I always felt like I didn't fit in. I didn't know where I fit. I never felt like I could quite place myself. So that was really hard growing up for me. Uming that I was just really, really, really sensitive, and my family didn't really understand it, my friend didn't really understand it, and um that kind of was the start of this journey that I'm on now of self-discovery.
SPEAKER_05So you're in London, you're you're you're there until what age?
SPEAKER_01Um until yeah, so I uh went to university at 18, but that was also interesting, kind of realizing wow, what you know, those questions come up. What who do I want to be? What do I want to do? Um, and so after school went to university to study history of art because I loved art. But there was this catalyst of realizing, okay, whoa, I just really enjoyed lectures and being at university, but I did not know where to go. I didn't want to go out clubbing really. I couldn't find my tribe. Um, and I realized that there this me just really wanted to come out. But another part of what we were talking about before is I think so many of us as women aren't taught to say no or voice our needs or stand up for what we believe in. And so I that was really hard for me. I was such a people pleaser. I would say yes to so many different things and so many different people because I didn't know how to say no, and there was a part of me that wanted to fit in. Um, and on top of that, just never feeling comfortable in my skin or in my body, and that developed an eating disorder. Um, trying to control what I looked like so that I would feel like I fitted in with everyone, you know, at school or at university, or what it means to be a woman, what it means to be beautiful. I was fed many different messages around that and around kind of what my body needs to look like or how I need to be in the world in order to go and be successful. So that was actually a catalyst of quite a dark period of my life, just being 18, 19, 20, and feeling so lonely yet surrounded by people all the time. Because of course, you live with so many different girls in a house, and it was quite there. Well, there many times where I just felt really lonely, really sad, really confused, and didn't have spaces to talk about it.
SPEAKER_05So this was a a dark period in your life, and to see where you are now, which is like you're bringing so much light into the world, specifically around self-love and building a collective and a community of people that just uplift each other, is like powerful to see because you came from such a dark place that truthfully I think so many of us go through, but we never talk about. And we were recently in a woman's circle, and you brought up this eating disorder that you had, and immediately th at least three other women said, Yeah, me too. I also had one. So just by opening the door to these kinds of conversations is healing. And we I know we both believe this that community is the medicine. You know, it's not take this pill, it's not, you know, try this latest trend. It's really just being together in community, like-minded people, sharing our experience and and healing through that. Thank you for being such a bright light in this world today.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much. You know, it took many years to be able to talk about it, which is now why I'm so passionate about the work that I do and helping women love themselves and find food freedom and body freedom and reclaiming their life and learning to truly love who they are, because for so many years my eating disorder robbed me of that, and it was so dark and so lonely, and I actually lost so many years of my life from hiding from the world that actually going through this experience helped me understand wow, I went through this for a reason, and I really hope that if there are other women struggling with what I struggled through, to know that they are not alone and that we're all walking each other home. And as soon as I started to talk about it, it was so healing for me to be in spaces with women to know, wow, I'm not going through this on my own, and so many women can relate. And as I would talk about it more, women would say that, wow, Georgia, thank you so much. You know, I also struggle with this, and I felt really alone, and I didn't know that I could talk about it. So it's it became my why that we need to be able to feel seen and heard and safe and supported because the outside world can be so judgmental. Um, so to create these pockets where you are seen for who you are, and I get to be seen for who I am, and that healed me more than talk therapy ever did. You know, the first time I walked into a women's circle, and it didn't matter if I'd binged or what my body looked like or how beautiful I was, or what university I went to, or what car I drove, but actually just another woman looking in my eyes and seeing into my soul, and she saw me for who I am, and I remember just marvelling in this space, thinking this is incredible, this is what the world needs, and I have to create these spaces. I feel so lucky that I am so led by purpose. Like this is the very thing that gets me up every single day.
SPEAKER_05You're so on fire. You are like a walking firecracker, Georgia. Everywhere you go, it's like Georgia's here, her presence is known. It's it's so beautiful to see to see.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much. It's it's it's really interesting for me because people say that all the time. Like, Georgia, your energy is crazy. Like, how you how are you so alive all the time? And I just say, Well, I'm genuinely so lit up by life. Meeting new people makes me so happy. And because little G was so alone for so long, so every single day is almost this reclamation of that, you know, dancing wildly and freely and speaking my truth and taking up space and being who I am. It's I'm not even consciously thinking about it anymore, it just is because I am so lit up by life.
SPEAKER_05Hmm. So I want to touch upon you know, when you were in this dark phase, when did you realize that you needed to ask for help and that this problem was bigger than you?
SPEAKER_01Yes. It was years of trying to do it on my own without really realizing it. So it started with, you know, body dysmorphia and kind of controlling what I was eating and going to the gym, you know, three, four, five gym classes a day to try and control what my body looked like a day.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01To the other side of emotionally eating, but then this kind of uncontrollable binging that I j I couldn't stop. And it it was so many different things. It was being alone and comforting myself. It was also when I was angry that I couldn't voice my needs, I didn't know how to express my needs, I didn't know how to express my feelings because we're not taught how to do that. So I used food to shovel it down. Food became so many different things for me. It was procrastination, it was loneliness, it was anger, it was fear, it was frustration. It was my best friend and my worst enemy at the same time, and it was so confusing. And I had this little voice in my head, as soon as things would go right, like, oh, let's mess things up now, because I didn't believe that I was worthy enough to invite in good things. So this gave me this excuse to kind of stay in this place, but it was actually so painful, and I couldn't understand why I couldn't stop. And I would just say to myself, it's okay, you'll every day was day one, you know, you'll start tomorrow, you'll start tomorrow, you'll start tomorrow. And I tried so hard to control it, but it wasn't it wasn't anything to do with willpower. And so I had gone to Shanghai actually when I was 21 after university to do an internship, and ended up loving this internship and stayed for six months and was writing for a magazine, and that's when also I found my soul fire because I was going around the city and I was interviewing people and you know creating an art blog and just doing lots of different things, and for the first time in my life, I could be me without being told who I'm supposed to be, but at the same time, this eating disorder was a big part of me, so I didn't I looked in the mirror and I really didn't see me, and it was robbing me of so much, just trying to control my food every day and then binging, and then I'll and then I found bulimia, and that was also really, really, really hard. So I left Shanghai and kind of six, seven months later, thinking I was gonna go back, and I just remembered saying, I need my mum, like I just need my mum. Um, I can't do this on my own anymore, like I just I don't understand why I can't I stop binging, why? You know, and I would go to a therapist and I'd say, I will do anything, I'll do anything. Just tell me how to stop binging. And so together, me and my mum found this really amazing clinic in London, and it was very ahead of its time, so it was like in 2013, and this clinic really wanted to help me rebuild myself and get me into my body. So I had I went there every single day for six months, and I had to meditate and do art therapy, and they would ask me questions about the things that I loved to do, and I realized I loved writing poetry. And through this process, I really understood it was never about the food, it was never about what my body looked like, it was never about those messages that I was taught. My soul was so hungry. My soul was so hungry. She was just starved of meaningful connection and experiences and spaces where I got to be seen for who I am and to hug and to laugh and to dance without judgment and to wear clothes that I want to wear and to have tattoos if I want to have tattoos, and to have wild curly hair and not have to straighten it to feel like I need to be like everyone else, you know, and that my freckles are mine, and it and I remember writing this poem, and I said, every freckle, dimple, stretch mark, and scar creates the blueprint of who you are. It's gonna make me cry, but like I deserved to have all these amazing things that I wanted to have in my life, and that was because I was given a space to really be seen. Never before was I asked those questions. You kind of go through life, and your mum will tell you what to do, or your sister will tell you what to do, or friends will do you really want to do that? Why would you want to do that? Why are you wearing that? Do you want to get married? You're not gonna get married if you if you look like that. You don't want to, you need to go do this job and be a proper human being, you know. Don't wear that, don't have tattoos. Love my dad so much, but he used to say to me, Um, I have a tattoo on the back of my neck, and he would say, Don't wear your hair, Dad Georgia. I don't want your friends to see tattoos. And I'd say, but it's my body, and I love my tattoos. So if that's okay if you don't like them, but I love them. But it took me a long time to get to that place that this vessel, she's mine. So that that's where the wild woman came alive. And after leaving that clinic, I realized I can't be in this rat race of in London getting on the tube every single day and going to a job that doesn't serve me and sitting at an office at my desk eating my lunch lettuce leaves and no one's talking to me. Like there has to be more. Um, and that I'm so grateful for my eating disorder because it it allowed me to go on the most powerful journey that I'm still on in my life.
SPEAKER_05Wow, that's so powerful to say that you're grateful for such a dark period in your life for something that brought you, because it brought you this light. And we were talking about that in Kabbalah this week when you came to the class. What what from our class resonated with your journey thus far? Because for me, everything you just said right now, I went through in my own unique way, in my own unique experience, and wanting to I'm gonna I'm gonna cry.
SPEAKER_03Wow, this is tough. I was waiting for this day. I always wondered. I always wondered when I would talk about this. It tore me up inside. For years I wasn't myself.
SPEAKER_01The worst part is when when it's so dark and you don't know where to turn and you feel so ashamed to talk about it.
SPEAKER_03I think we need tissues about it.
SPEAKER_05We brought the tissues out because we're getting very deep. Yes. And this is amazing. For me, I felt like social media honestly brought me this disorder, but it also cured me of it. I remember there was this trend at the time. What am I eating in a day? And you would love to see what other women were eating in a day and what they were doing, but in reality, we're all so unique and so different. And so you brought this up comparison, which is one of the six self-love destroyers, which I recently found out about from reading my friend's book, A Soulful Marriage. And I have all six of them, and I want to talk with you one by one for all about all six. Um, but you we compare, we compare, and then we think that we're supposed to be like other people when we're not. We're supposed to embrace who we are and completely write our own way of doing things that feels good and unique to us, not depending on what other people believe is right for us. And so for me, you know, I didn't get to go to a center, um, but it was all internal, and it took me years of figuring it out for myself and falling and getting back up and saying, okay, if I label this food bad and I don't eat it for a week, well then when I tell myself I can have a little bit of it, well, then I'm gonna eat the same amount I would have had if I told myself I could eat it for an entire week. So this was a process, it took months. I eventually figured out this is not the right way. So it was trial and error, right? Complete trial and error. Completely. Something you mentioned to me was when you went to this center, they basically helped you heal your relationship with food again. What was that process like?
SPEAKER_01Wow, it was a process that continue as you say, you know, it's a process and you can't un learn something in a day. So that was really difficult. But what was so freeing was at first they said to me, Georgia, you can binge. I said, What are you talking about? No, I can't. Of course you can. Get all the food that you want to eat. And sit down and eat it. So what are you talking about? But she said, Matt, and I'll never forget my therapist, she said, but eat it, eat it mindfully, eat it slowly, and leave something on your plate. And I was like, well, no, that's not the whole point. Like, the point is that I go in a shop and get all these things in this, like kind of, you know, erratic but like secretive state. So it was almost like she gave me this permission and it took, it took the the weight, the taboo away from it, that it wasn't this thing that I needed to feel so ashamed and so embarrassed about. Because this it was happening a lot in secret. My sister would find like ice cream boxes that I hid, or my mum would find cookie packets, and you know, they'd ask me about it, and it was so embarrassing, you know, before I really understood. So then when she kind of helped me realize it's if I can give this part of me love, because it's just a part of me that is asking for love, sit with it, be with it, and that was this incredible light bulb moment. But going through this process, I also was learning a lot and unlearning a lot. So this urge in that moment, because it was linked to a feeling, was really hard. I would leave therapy and I would just want to go binge. And the learning and unlearning in the trial and the error and falling down the pothole and scrambling back up happened so many times for years, even after, but I would just never give up, even in times where it was relentless, there was always a message there. And I also started to learn, even if I could just hold that trigger and that feeling for a minute longer, that was a win, you know. And actually, in that moment, when that little voice is telling me to what is it actually asking for? Is it hunger or is it emotional hunger? Does my soul crave or yearn for something right now? And so I started to be with it and be with myself in that moment, like gee, you're good, you know, and then so I would just develop my inner self-love cheerleader and just talk to myself, literally talk to myself if I was talking to my best friend, or little me, and then just be like, gee, you're okay, you're okay, you're okay. Like, what do you need in this moment? If you need it, okay, we can have that if you want it. And even just giving myself that permission, as you say, was just helped so much. Um, so the centre really helped me understand that let's give this part of me love because it's just this shadow that is yearning to come into the light. What you're talking about social media and looking to what other people are doing, we've had so many messages all the time. And one of the things I had to really learn was to not to listen and be around dinner tables, and women would say, No, I don't eat that, I'm on a diet, or I don't eat sugar, or I don't eat gluten, or yeah, I'm I'm drinking these shakes, or I'm doing this because I've got a wedding, or why are you eating that? Or no, I don't have a bite of dessert, absolutely not. And during my recovery, that was so difficult to be in those spaces. I still had to exist in the world as I'm trying to heal, um, to really try and cut that out and remember what another woman is doing is not mine. I'm healing, I'm relearning to try different foods and rediscover what my body loves and what are the foods that maybe don't make it feel so good. Um, but actually learning to try everything was a process. You also have to let go of control, and so many women struggle with the surrender because we think that if we surrender, we're gonna lose control. But that's the antithesis of an eating disorder is actually regaining your own self-called back control by surrendering and redeveloping that listening to our body because she knows, she knows when we're hungry, she knows when we're full, but those things can get very skew-wiffed, so you know, and the hot the food hunger versus the soul hunger. So taking that time whilst I was eating to cut out all the white noise, and that I'm giving myself permission because I'm on a journey of self-discovery.
SPEAKER_05That permission is so important to be able to eat everything, and I think rather than judge food as good or bad based on calories alone, I began to notice how my body was feeling. Yes. So I would say, okay, I ate this and then I felt like this. Yes. And it was feedback for me. I ate this and then I felt not as good. So then my I started to build what I was putting into this vessel based on how I was feeling, not based on what other people were telling me was right or wrong. And it's still a process that's evolving.
SPEAKER_01Because we're always evolving. Exactly. Our body's always changing.
SPEAKER_05So, right now, for example, I'm vegetarian, and it's something that my body is feeling really good doing. And for the first time this morning, I had a shake with no powders, no additives, no supplements, no collagen. Everyone's trying to feed us something that they could sell us. And it was just raw, natural fruit and nuts, and it felt the most nourishing for my body, for my mind, for my soul. And it was something I always wanted, a point I always wanted to get to in my life. And it's taken me however long, but I'm finally here, and it feels so good.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's so juicy and so yummy when we really listen to our body and what it wants, and also real food from nature. Wow, there's the keto diet and being a vegan and being vegetarian or only eating meat, or the I've done the craziest things. I've eaten only grapefruits, I've, you know, just crazy diets that people would tell, you know, would talk to each other about, and everyone's hopping from one diet to the next. But one person's medicine is another person's poison. And we have to realise that like we're our own healer, and you know your body more than anyone. So that's incredible that you know what makes it feel alive and what lights you up, and you get to get excited about making raw, delicious, like nature's candy.
SPEAKER_05Nature's candy.
SPEAKER_01In a drink.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Amazing.
SPEAKER_05So back to what we were talking about earlier, which was this concept of why is self-love missing in our life? Yes. There are these self-love destroyers. Um, that once you put a name to them, once you identify them and become aware of them, that opens you up to essentially overcoming them and just noticing that it's happening so that then you can take a proactive action to do the opposite. So these six love destroyers are number one, critical self-talk, which we all do. It's that voice that you talked about that was in your head that things were going right, and then all of a sudden you said, Let me mess this up somehow. Number two, comparison, which we've talked about comparing ourselves to women that we don't even know online, to maybe family members, friends, women on the street. We're just in this constant mode of looking externally to tell ourselves how we should be feeling inside. Perfectionism. This one's big. Big one. This one's a big one. We have to unlearn that we are perfectly imperfect and embrace our imperfections. Suppressing emotions.
SPEAKER_01Huge one for women.
SPEAKER_05So you also alluded to this connection you had with food in a as a way of suppressing your emotions rather than processing them, talking about them. I love the way you said how it food became your best friend and your worst nightmare, your enemy. Because that's really how it feels.
SPEAKER_01People pleasing, it's a big one for women, especially sensitive women, and especially when we've not been taught to say no. So people pleasing is is actually also a it affects all of those, and it it really affects um a woman's nervous system by suppressing our emotions, which turns into a whole long list of autoimmune diseases. And women actually suffer a lot more from autoimmune diseases than men because we typically hold our emotions.
SPEAKER_05And this was a big one for me. This was like probably the number one I was doing all the time, which was uh my friend Rachel calls it destination addict. So it's that saying that you you tell yourself, I'll be happy when this happens. So I'll be happy when I fit into a size small. Yeah, I'll be happy when for me it was a certain number on the scale, and I was measuring every day, every day. And being there. It was But you never get there. You never get there, you only get there by releasing the when part.
SPEAKER_01The surrender. Right. Totally. Wow, those are powerful because so many people go through their lives actually not even realizing that those are the very things that are robbing them of their own self-love.
SPEAKER_05How has your attachment to the physical body changed throughout this healing journey for you?
SPEAKER_01Changed so much because I also had to go through such a process with my physical body changing. So I had to get comfortable in the discomfort of my body changing. And, you know, as women, our bodies changing all the time. But once I was healing from needing to stay stuck in a smaller body, let's say, and restricting my food, then of course I went to the other end and was just binging all the time to then really going to try and find this place of balance, also over-exercising to not exercising at all, to refinding, bringing exercise back into my life, discovering how I can move my body in a way that feels good for me. Like, how does George's body love to move? Um, so it was it's really been a process, but during that I understood, wow, I'm really strong. I love to feel strong, I have a lot of energy, and so kind of my meditation and movement has you know, throwing balls at a wall or throwing weights around, lifting heavy, practicing pull-ups, and that was so fun because it wasn't about what my body looked like, it was about understanding there's so much energy, and she wants to feel strong and she wants to feel alive. And for so many years, I didn't dance. I wouldn't go in the sea when my friends were going on this in the sea because I, you know, would sit with the bags, I didn't want to be seen in my body. I didn't want to go out, even though all I wanted to do was dance, but I felt too kind of ashamed or insecure to dance freely in my body. So once I started also just having self-love dance parties in my kitchen or living room by myself every morning, that really helped me get into my body. So it was it's really been this um journey of surrender for sure, and learning to love where I am in the moment, and that it's changing at every different time. So I I really had to cultivate this trust with myself and my body because when you have an eating disorder, you typically don't trust your body because you're trying to make it fit a certain size or a certain mold, or then I would binge and I couldn't understand why I'm doing it, why am I doing it? And I would be so upset. I would literally shoot bullets at my body with my mind. I was so mean to her. So it was also a process of like, I I love you so much, like every single day. Just thank you, thank you, thank you for getting me up in the morning, like thank you that my heart is beating, thank you that my lungs are helping me breathe. And I would say, you know, I I've got really strong legs, but I used to be so jealous of women that had really skinny legs because that for me was what beauty was. So once I started to love weightlifting or kind of functional classes, I was like, wow, that's so cool that I've got strong legs. Thank you that my legs are really strong. So I had really re teaching my inner critic to be my inner self-love cheerleader and my inner bestie and to feed into her every single day. So even if we don't look in the mirror and see something perfect, just I would say to myself, you know, I'm a work in progress, and thank you so much for everything that you're doing for me, and we're on the same team. That was huge. It was instead of being at war, that I it was me and my body, and we're separate entities, like, and that she's never left me. Like throughout this whole period, I was so mean to her, and she never left.
SPEAKER_00So, like she never left me now.
SPEAKER_01So it really it was that. Wow. Um, and just but that was also part of the journey of self-discovery, and that's what I love to help women with too, figuring out the way that you love to move. For someone, it's yoga, getting on the mat, helping them breathe. For some, it's going on a long run that helps them get into their body. You know, for some it's dancing, for some, it's water sports. So that really like rediscovering the ways that that movement makes me feel so good and energized, um, which then also helps the food, you know, and figuring, okay, what makes my body feel really good when I'm moving.
SPEAKER_05I realized I had the formula backwards. So I was focusing on the physical and then thinking about how to get to the physical through, you know, movement or training or eating, rather than start with what are the ways I feel joy in moving my body, what feels good, and then I want my body to look exactly how it's gonna look, doing those things that I love. Yes. And I now more than ever, you know, watching my sister go through uh her two pregnancies and give birth and realizing how amazing this vessel that we've been given, especially as women, is unbelievable. Constantly changing, you know, embracing that and just being comfortable with this idea that we're always going to be changing in life. So, why are we trying to fit this image that we think will bring us joy and happiness and love from other people? If we can just bring that from ourselves deep inside, and then embrace whatever we look like in that moment in time.
SPEAKER_01And it's so true. It's when you see someone else or another woman, and you are inspired by her, a lot of the time I'm not actually I'm not looking at her body size, I'm just it's it's an energy, it's a feeling, it's she's so lit up. It's not self-love, it's not a body size, like it truly is an energy, and I think that's what we need to help women rewrite. Um, because actually, when you try to fit your body or torture your body or make it smaller, you're just you know, you're making your soul feel small.
SPEAKER_05When you came to the women's circle where we first met, you said you wanted to be a wild woman and run naked and howl at the moon. And I was like totally entranced by this, and I said, Wow, that's exactly what I want to do too. And not enough women, I think, allow themselves to do that, and so as we as our friendship has blossomed, I've you know realized where in my own life can I bring out this wild woman? And this wild woman is not reckless, she's not rebellious, but she's in touch with her natural instincts, her inner wisdom. So, what is the wild woman like for you? How do you express her? How do you bring her forth? And how can more women connect to her? I love the wild woman so much.
SPEAKER_01This is my dream for all women to reconnect to that wild woman because inside every single woman is a wild woman. She's where we came from. We sat in tribe, we danced under the moon with our feet on the earth, you know, we birthed each other's babies, we sat in a red tent and told each other's stories and learned from one another. And the wild woman for me is she beats to the beat of her own drum. She dances to her own tune, she just she knows who she is, and inside all of us is this incredible intuition that is our superpower, and this incredible gift that everything the woman has, but the modern world has taught us to disconnect from our body and from our vessel. So the wild woman is is a homecoming, it's a reclamation, it's coming back to listening, listening to that, because inside of every woman there is that voice that knows, and there is that desire to feel free and to be who she is. So, yeah, that she's brave and she speaks her truth, and it's that feminine leadership, that leading with a strong spine, but an open heart, holding hands, inspiring one another, rooting for each other, you know, fixing each other, shining each other's crowns. Like the wild woman knows that she's in tribe and she's in sisterhood, and when she wins, when another woman wins, she wins too, you know, and she's dancing on that fight with other women. So for so for so many years, I just didn't feel that I could be myself. And so reclaiming myself was reclaiming the wild woman.
SPEAKER_05When did you reclaim her and what was that process like for you?
SPEAKER_01I left London, got my dream job at a magazine, and after I'd left therapy, and thought, okay, that's it, I've got the the destination, I'm arriving. And I realized my soul was still empty. And so I decided to go to Tel Aviv on a one-way ticket, and I'll figure it out. And I land and I went to the desert, to an ashram in the desert, and there was this music festival called Zorba. And I get to Zorba, and um so many people are running up to me.
SPEAKER_00Hi, Georgia, you want to come, you want to dance?
SPEAKER_01And I was thinking this wow, I can't believe this exists, where people are just meeting each other and dancing, and they're so themselves, and they don't need to take drugs or drink alcohol to feel free and to connect to the beat of music and to being in nature and stomping with their feet on the earth. And I just knew in that moment I've got to do that too. I need to run wild and free in the desert, and it was really interesting actually, because so many people were stripping naked, but I was still healing for my eating disorder, and being inside of my body was still uncomfortable then 2015, 2016. And I said to myself, one day, one day, I'm gonna be back in this ashram. I'm gonna be back in the desert at sunrise, and I am going to run naked, and my wild woman's gonna be free. And that was this moment. I called my parents, I said, Yeah, I'm not coming home. And then I found a woman's circle, and I arrived at this woman's circle, and it was the coolest thing ever. Women of all ages and nationalities and backgrounds and religions sitting together, all one, there's no hierarchy, and listening to other women's stories and knowing wow, we all go through the same things, we really are a tribe, and that was where the self-love club was born. You know, and then I went to a women's retreat and I realized to myself I've got to create these spaces for women more and more and more to be in other spaces of unconditional love, of collaboration over competition, because another woman that is following her juicy dreams and soul goals is so inspiring and is going to heal the world, and it inspires me and other women to do the same. And that we don't that we deserve to take up space, that we should take up space, and that there's room for all of us, and that was a big piece of this desire for me because I was in this space of unconditional love, and I hadn't ever really been in those spaces. It was always, you know, women are taught to push through glass ceilings and were taught to stand on each other to get to the top, to get the best job or the best opportunities, or the best, you know, whatever it is. Um, and so that was so healing to know that these spaces existed. And yeah, I just it's the self-love club. And I opened a Facebook page and Started running women's circles on my roof where we would dance and howl at the moon and sing and play instruments and drink cacao and write from the depths of our soul and look into each other's eyes and hold space. I want to hear about you and I want to know about your journey because you are so incredible and you feel the same about me, and how a space of so many different women of different ages, different backgrounds, different journeys all come back to the same root of sisterhood, of this inner wisdom that lives so deeply inside all of us, and it is still changing my life.
SPEAKER_05Wow, it's changing my life. I'm seeing it unfold. And I just feel so blessed. Yes, like me too.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's I came to Miami for a week and it's been four months. Like I just never left because why? Because of tribe, because of community, because of spaces where we get to sing and be together. And I was brought by someone to your women's circle, and now we're sat here together and we've created events together because I see you and see this incredible goddess in front of me with this open heart that we've only just met, but yet our souls have known each other. There's this inner knowing. Because even before we spoke about the fact that we both had eating disorders, there there's just this yumminess, this this sisterhood.
SPEAKER_05And I think finding your tribe is so important no matter where you are. And it's actually one of the key things in longevity. I was recently watching the That's crazy.
SPEAKER_04I just spoke about that today. Really?
SPEAKER_05I I was watching Live to 100. I never watch TV, but if I do, it's like something along the lines of like returning to Earth, Nature, documentary. And so I put on Live to 100 and finding your tribe, having a community, one that's centered around faith, is were like two of the key points in the greater theme of connection. So there were four main points, and connection takes up 25% of how you can live a long life. And it's not by being on your phone all day, scrolling and texting people. Like it's really connecting in person, face to face, without the technology, without the masks, without our egos, without judging each other, but just being present and loving each other unconditionally and supporting each other.
SPEAKER_01And um just joy for the sake of joy, you know, like those spaces where our inner child gets to come out and feel alive. But also as women, it's actually like biologically, we're supposed to be together, supposed to heal together. When women are in rooms of other women, our oxytocin, our love hormone, raises and helps our serotonin and our dopamine, it helps balance our nervous system. So, you know, COVID was an example of how loneliness caused so much because we were separated from each other, and so yeah, that the connection and community is the way home, like is the greatest medicine of all to know because as human beings, we really we just want to feel safe and seen and held and supported, and when we get to enter those spaces, that's why when people say, Oh, what your energy, because it's that, it's that feeling, it's like oh, I've landed, I'm home. And you know, uh us having Shabbat dinner and talking all night and laughing and bonding and sharing stories and is that, and it's just yeah, that reminder, a how lucky we are, but that it's so needed in the world.
SPEAKER_05I feel like in today's world so much pressure is put around um, you know, romantic relationships, and we crave this love that we have in a romantic relationship because we're maybe missing that from either our families or from our close friends, from soul sisters. So it's how can we actually create an environment, a community around ourselves that we still feel that love in so that we're not, you know, racing to find the one, settling with someone that maybe isn't right for us because we're a certain age, because we want this pretty picture that we're promised if we have it, we'll be happy. So that was something that I learned in a circle, and I said, wow, it's so true. You know, women are starving to find their soulmate, to settle down, to get married, but maybe it's because they truly don't feel this sense of tribe and community that we were born to feel completely.
SPEAKER_01And I always say that you can, you know, it's it's soul nutrition, it's soul nourishment. You can drink all the green juices or inject peptides or do all of the wellness things, but if your soul is not nourish, and a big part of that is sisterhood and human connection, then you're never gonna find that joy. And people ask me all the time, you know, you're 35, and don't you want to find the one? And don't you want to settle down, and don't you want to get married? And but you're a woman, and don't you want to be a mum? Because that's the thing that you were put on this earth to do, and all of those things can exist. But for me, my soulmates are women every time, and I think there's a reason why women have their partners, and we love men and women, we love partners, but women need other women, we need each other.
SPEAKER_03We do.
SPEAKER_01There's a beautiful book called Um Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton, she's British, and not that I'm ruining the book, but she'll go through her whole story, and the final few pages of the book are that everything I know about my romantic relationships and everything I know about love, I got in my relationships with women, and it's it's that, it's that that tribe.
SPEAKER_05And now Anne Hathaway is I think for all of us showing that women can have children later in life, and it's even potentially increases our longevity. So I think it only takes one to rewrite the script today for the entire world. So that was that was funny. That was like everything everyone was talking about. Did you see Anne Hathaway having a baby in her 40s?
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah, but it's definitely moving, which is incredible, and it also gives women the opportunity to have that self-love journey with themselves because we are the greatest love story of our own lives, and we weren't ever taught that. So when we get to understand that and give ourselves that permission and put ourselves first and discover our soul nourishment, it's the most powerful gift that we can give ourselves. And I think women, we go through so many deaths and rebirth cycles, and our bodies are always changing, and we're changing, um, which is it's wild. Um, but through those many different um phases, like it's so important to have that relationship with yourself, but also have a support system, you know. That when you become a man, they say it takes a village, and I've seen it with my sister and and my friends, um, that it does, you know, and and community is so important for that.
SPEAKER_05How has your relationship with God or the universe, whatever your word for this energy force is, how has it changed throughout your life and your journey?
SPEAKER_01I love that question. Growing up, I believed in God, and my Judaism was very important to me. Um that was instilled in me from a young age, but it wasn't forced upon me, it was something that I remember talking to God always when I was little, when I was younger. And as but as I started going on my self-love journey, I really that was when I really, because I started to pray and I really started to connect to something greater than me. Um, and throughout my journey of reconnecting to the wild woman and understanding that a woman's body and our cycles are so connected to mother nature and this incredible energy that that really kind of sparked my connection to the universe and my love. Everyone knows me, knows me that I'm obsessed with the moon, that my love for the moon and the full moon and needing to howl of the moon, but this incredible, powerful force, this feminine force that literally pulls the tides on the planet and affects our body. And the in Kabbalah when they talk about um certainty over logic and that just trusting in the unknown, that was a having faith in the unknown was such a big part of my healing journey because I had to, I just had to trust myself and trust that I was being supported and guided in the something bigger than me that was holding me, and that kind of really yeah, that was that sparked my um connection to the universe. So when I'm connecting or thinking of a greater force, it's been so powerful, and also that that again has helped me be in Miami, truly, like from the second I landed, thinking I was gonna be here for a week and just trusting, like speaking to the universe every day, like thank you, I know you've got me, and then like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, just all these incredible things. Yep, that's how it works, that's how it works, but that, yeah, just this this trust and and inner knowing that there's something greater than me, um, and that guided me. I think the the proof in that was very big.
SPEAKER_05I've experienced the beauty of surrendering and of wanting to not be in control and the miracles that come from that. We were talking about you know, my relationship specifically uh the other night at my apartment.
SPEAKER_01Best story ever.
SPEAKER_05And it was fully in that moment where I told the universe, you know, your plan for me is so much better than what I could possibly come up with. Like, please write this story for me. Please. And and you have to just start noticing the signs and the messages that the universe is wanting to tell you. For me, it's anytime I see something in threes, a month's 11-11. It's a sign. Oh, yours is 11-11. So it's like if the universe wants me to go somewhere, it will show me three times. Like it will show me on a package of food made in so and so. It will all of a sudden a friend of mine will be going there, or someone will say something about this place, and it and I'm like, okay, this is the universe guiding me. Wow. So we just have to be open to trusting and listening and recognizing that we are so small. Yeah. But like we're so small, but we're also everything.
SPEAKER_04You know, it's that paradox. Oh, there's a beautiful phrase.
SPEAKER_01That's somebody told me the other day, and I can't remember now, but it's like, be humble for you are made of oh, at we dust or something, but then be something for you are made of stars, but be noble, oh that was it. I think be humble because you are made of dust, but be noble because you are made of stars. Which when you told so beautifully your love story, it was that moment, and I loved that so much. Like, why would I try and control what's supposed to be for me? Like, okay, I'm leaving up to you, and then it was like fireworks, like everything happened as it was supposed to happen.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's how life's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01Just people are so actually so afraid of the unknown, but actually, there's so much beauty in the unknown. Like, it's the yummiest.
SPEAKER_05It is at a recent circle. There was a feeling that was expressed by some women, and you shared this feeling, and I want to talk about it so that other women feel as though this opinion and this feeling matters. And over the last 20 years, there's been an ongoing trend where more couples are deciding intentionally not to have children. How can you relate to this trend? And what do you think this means about overall women and their sense of purpose and necessarily tying that to motherhood or not?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a great question. So many women have this feeling that they know that they want to be mums, mothers, and there are women that don't necessarily, but there haven't been enough spaces where we get to talk about it because you know it's nature, that's the very thing that we are supposed to do, of course. And I don't know if I want to be a mum, and people say to me, but you'd be such a great mum, and I've thought about it and I felt into it, and seeing my daughter and playing with her, and that feels amazing, and also it I'm very okay if I don't become a mum, but it's this is definitely not spoken about enough, and actually on dates is the first thing men ask me, which makes sense. But do you want to have kids? And I pause before sharing, and then I say, Well, you know, I've got to speak the truth. But I think there is there is this pressure on women because of our bodies and because we have a ticking time clock. That's another question I get asked a lot all the time. Don't you want to freeze your eggs? You're 35, you should really start thinking about it. And I'm I'm in trust, you know. If he comes, he comes, and if that happens, it happens, and that lights me up and that excites me so much. Um, but that there is definitely part of kind of how we've been taught to be in the world and how we need to show up. The motherhood aspect is something that is very potent, and I also see it working a lot with women and creating spaces for women that yes, it's so incredible, but it does make me sad that a lot of women feel that they have to sacrifice so many things when they become a mum and they're always scrambling to catch up. They don't feel that they're a good enough partner, or they're a good enough friend, or they're a good enough mum, or they're good enough at their job because I feel like as women we've been sold a lie in a way that we can have it all. Yes, we can have it all, and we've come so far, but there's a trade-off to everything, and I have seen the light go out in some women's eyes because they forget who they are aside from being a mum. Being a mum, I'm sure, of course, is one of the greatest gifts that you know we create life inside of us. It's unbelievable, it's magic, and a woman is so many incredible things. That's what makes us so unique in who we are, because we have so many gifts and so much magic to share. And when women that are mums allow themselves to refill up their cup, big big part of why women's circles are so important for mums, and to have spaces where they can receive, and that they too have soul desires, and that this vessel was somebody else's home, essentially, and still is for a long time, you know, when women breastfeed um or looking after their babies, but that you know, mums have to re-kind of relearn to fall back in love with this body and to put herself first, and that's one of my favourite parts of a women's circle when mums that are empty nesters, their kids leave the nest and they realize, wow, I want to go dancing again, or I want to start a business, or I want to go on a trip, or I want to just go to ceramics class and feel how it feels to play with clay because creativity is so important for women, it's just the biggest part of our life force energy. And the antithesis also of depression and eating disorder is creativity, it's the very opposite. So when we allow ourselves to be creative in whatever form that wants to take, that is a big part of our self-love. And I think so much pressure is put on mums and how they need to show up and how they need to be, and they pour and they pour and they pour from a cup from a well until it's empty and they pour even more. And there is just this, as women, we're we're nurturers and we're selfless, but mums, it's like that lioness, you know, like they will do whatever it takes, and it's it's incredible, like it's that raw wild woman, and they too need their cups pouring into, and they too deserve to fill up their plate of soul nourishment. And I think this needs to be spoken about a lot because you know, I was actually on the phone to my sister, which was so interesting, and she was saying, Oh my god, Georgia, you do so much, you're working out and you're networking, and you're running women's circles and you're meeting people all the time. Like, I just you know, she was saying she took my nephew to forest school and then felt guilty that she took an hour outside of her work, so then she had to scramble to spend the rest of her day working, but then she felt bad that then she didn't get back to this friend or that you know she needs to make dinner for her husband. And every day can be groundhog day unless you have awareness around that, and coming back to that point of it takes a village, women understanding that they deserve to receive help as well, and coming back to that comparison, each one of our journeys is so unique, and so I get that message a lot, and for me, I'm so lit up by my purpose and wanting to create spaces for women that that feels like my baby and my thing that I want to nurture right now. Um, so I hope if there is another woman watching or listening to this and that is in a similar place, that there's no right or wrong answer, and it's okay not to 100% know. It's okay to be figuring it out as well as you go, because we're all doing that, and that she so deserves to have things that she's passionate about, and that we don't have to, you know, kind of give up on one or the other. And if any women don't want to be mums, that's also so okay.
SPEAKER_05Thank you for sharing that perspective with us.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for asking. And to wrap up our episode, I wanted to ask you this last question What does your soul know today that your younger self desperately needed to know that being my authentic self is the greatest gift of self-love. And the more I am my authentic self, it helps give other people permission to be who they are and to be their authentic self too, and that every single part of me that felt like she had to change to be seen as worthy in the world, that actually she definitely doesn't have to, and that being sensitive is a superpower, it's so so magical. Thank you.
SPEAKER_05Thank you, Georgia. Will you actually, before we sign off, will you I you're such a channel for the words of the universe? Will you bring forth a prayer for all men and women on this beautiful earth, in this human experience, on this soul journey? Will you share some words channel for us? Thank you so much for asking.
SPEAKER_01To everyone that is listening or needs to hear, to know that you are so seen, so held, so worthy exactly as you are, that you are your own unique work of art. You are a beautiful mosaic piece, and in those tiny cracks, that's where the light shines through. That you are so worthy of so much love, and that the world needs all your magic and all of your gifts. So wrap your arms around yourself and give yourself a hug. And let's create a catalyst so that everybody feels hugged and loved, and to know that the world needs all of us to take up space and to be who we are, and that your body is the keeper of your magic and the home of your soul and always your way back home.
SPEAKER_05Thank you, Georgia.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so so much. This was incredible, and thank you for being you and for making this possible for me and so many other people to share their story, to shine their light, and that you continue to do the same. The world needs you.
SPEAKER_05It brings me so much joy to be able to do this and to share your wisdom with the whole world.
SPEAKER_02Oh, let's do a howl. Yes. Okay, one, two, three.
SPEAKER_01Love it.
SPEAKER_05Thanks for tuning in to be Nases.