Even if you don't feel it right now, even if you don't think it even if you don't believe it believe may I?

Strongly.

I encourage everybody to challenge the notion of feeling like your selfish if you love yourself or you'll selfish if you have compassion for yourself, because I can promise you that if you take the time to really value yourself and put yourself first and nurture yourself in the way that you would your best friend or your child you love or you'll love on, then you will be so much broader on so much bigger and have so much more love and compassion for others that the world will be a much more beautiful place.

My name is common Braintree, and I'm here to share my story.

My story is a story of hope, and it's also proof that you can go through all sorts of things and that there is a chance to recover.

It started out for May.

As young as I could remember, I always felt like I didn't understand the world didn't make sense to me I didn't feel like I was the same as anybody else, So it led me.

Teoh start searching from a very, very young age, even as young as 67 years old, that I was looking for some sense of hopes on sense of happiness.

When I was 14 years old, I discovered the power of surfing.

I realized, well, surfing is something that might give May some life, some freedom, something joyful.

And so my eyes got opened up to so many different possibilities and for seven years that managed to at least suppress and prevent me from this other side to May, this darker hidden side of where I didn't feel like the world made sense.

So then I went into a really critical event.

It was a six dog W Chris surfing event, and it was the event that was either gonna make me get onto the women's world circuit to all or not.

And when I rocked up at the event, they told me that I wasn't in the event.

It was like the lead had come off in this big wave off.

Problems just became exposed.

I didn't have that outlet anymore to suppress and push it, push it down.

Which leads me to the next part of my journey.

I decided that maybe searching deeper into a spiritual journey, I might be able to find the answers.

So I booked a trip to the dialect Lama One bag backpack on my back and off I went to India thinking that it was just gonna be as easy and Cruzi as all my other travels had Bean in the past.

But then when I got to India and arrived at the Delhi airport and there wasn't many hotels available because it was in the middle of the night and so I had to just take this really crabby, really shaped really nasty to be honest hotel that that nine, I didn't get much sleep.

It'll and I was worn down.

So all I could think about was getting on this bus and I would be with the Dalai Lama.

And I was about to book my ticket with this agency and a little boy will young boy, 12 14 year old boy came over to me and he started chatting to me and he said, Oh, diet book with this agency because they were involved with the murder of a lady named Dawn Griggs, who was an Australian who had been there three weeks before.

May you, he could tell that I was looking stressed and a little bit bewildered, and he said He'll he'll look after May he'll take me to a government tourist agency.

Turns out that they were a non government tourist agency and they were running a scam, and that instead of getting me to where I wanted to go, they ended up coercing and manipulating May to go to a place called Catch Me.

When I got off the plane, the brother off the the young men, that was that it actually sold me the ticket.

His brother was there waiting to pick me up.

And before I even got Teoh the place where I would be supposedly only staying for a couple of nights, Hey had found a way to stop manipulating and pressuring May into a fearful place that a men must batch for women here and that I should that I must hand over my tickets and my passports and my bank, Hud's and everything to him so that he can take care of that.

Because if I was to be caught out as a woman.

He without a man matching form A that I would be in a lot of trouble and a lot of danger.

So that happened within the first hour off arriving and catch me.

And and there wasn't really any options for May to go and run to someone Teoh get, like, some sort of help from someone that spoke English that could understand me.

And I was already really, really scared.

So, you know, within the first hour, I felt like I was already being captivated and losing all my power and freedom and control to e didn't think I was ever going to leave for for most of that time.

At some point in the in the journey, the oldest brother did start to get really curious as to how much money my parents had.

And so he forced me to make a phone call to my father.

That was the phone call that was able to drop the number of of where I actually Waas.

And so that was the way that they were able to get the embassies and the police in Australia and in India working all together to track down where I waas and implement a rescue, and they sent police one afternoon and I felt it literally just walked me up.

And I realized that that I might actually get toe leave.

I might actually get toe leave off this boat and have life again in the way where I can take my freedom Backwards can be mine again.

It's taken May 15 years to be able to even acknowledge that, and to release myself from the shame and the guilt off the experience and to not feel like it's my fault.

When I look back now at the whole thing all together, collectively in regards to like who I am right now, in this moment I feel like a whole person, so I feel like I wouldn't take any of it back.

I have no regrets because I feel enriched with all the colors of life, all the flavors of life, all the good and the bad, and I've got the wisdom and the experience from all the good and the bad.

So for May, it's it's a sense off of this unconditional love all off my whole being and all my experiences and So I've never felt full on more alive and more happy then then then ever.

And I believe that it's because of my life, so I wouldn't I wouldn't take it back.

I strongly I encourage everybody to challenge the notion of feeling like your selfish if you love yourself for your selfish.

If you have compassion of yourself, because I can promise you that if you take the time to really value yourself and put yourself first and nurture yourself in the way that you would your best friend or your child that you love or you'll love all, then you will be so much brighter and so much bigger and have so much more love and compassion for others that the world will be a much more beautiful place.

So if I was to start working with somebody and they wanted Teoh find out how they could go about loving themselves more and developing that compassion, then the number one tip, I would say to anyone is that whatever you're feeling doesn't matter what it is.

If it is shame or if it's depression, it's guilt.

Anger.

So the tip is whenever these emotions arise.

Loved, um, don't try to push them away.

If you find yourself trying to run away from these emotions or resisting these emotions, then they won't go away.

They will keep coming back in another way, shape or form.

I strongly encourage you to open your arms to that emotion as if it is a part of you.

Because it is.

It's a part of you with unconditional love may make it completely okay to feel it.

Know that it's actually feeling the emotion isn't going to hurt you cause it's there anyway.

Welcome it in feeling and see with that, knowing that it's okay.

And then you'll be pleasantly surprised that it will actually stop to soften and will stop to shift and dissolve.

And you can use the breath to help you.

So sometimes if it really use stock, just slowing that breathing down into a nice, steady rhythm deep into the belly.

Whilst you're just allowing yourself to feel that feeling and get out of the head, don't think so much about it.

Just feel it with add any judgment that's that's the first big step to healing, and it'll take you a long way.

My message to people that might be actually currently going through something like some sort of trauma or domestic violence.

I know that you're worthy.

No.

Even if you don't feel it right now, even if you don't think it even if you don't believe it, believe may.

You are.

So where the everyone is important, everyone has value.

And so if you're listening to these words, please, please take them to heart and take some sort of action.

Reach out to somebody, anybody and just stopped Teoh Start to give yourself permission to believe that there isn't out because what if one thing I've learned in my journey and this is not just my time in India I've felt so stuck, so lost and that there was no out.

There was no improvement of my situation, that they always waas that there is always a lot at the end of the tunnel.

There isn't out, but you have to be willing to look for You have to be willing to open up your eyes and say, Yes, I'm open to sing that were that out is and it might be really, really small in the beginning.

But if But if you could just hold on to that light that hope and never let go.

Then what you focus on, we're broke and we'll spend more that you can focus on even even the power of visualization and and electrical dreaming.

Just dream off a life where you have the environment that you'd like to have people around you in the relationships would like to have the the fun and the joy that you like to feel and just do your best to ignore what is going on.

The take action to make steps out of the situation.

But do your best to ignore it.

So I don't feed it with any sort of thoughts or added drama.

Just focus on like the solution.

Focus on getting getting one step forward and don't look back.

That's that's what I did when I was in India and I was coming home.

I just said to myself, Don't look back, Have a look back If I was Teoh, leave you with one truth that I believe that way should or cold all the fire to make our own lives in the world.

A better place, especially now with what's happening in our world, is no that you are sovereign that you are your own authority, that you have a connection side of you to your own supreme power, highest power.

And that no one outside of you has a connection with that for used.

That's stronger than the one that you have with you.

So So you are your authority.

You are your own later.

You are your own master and you are very very unit were also beautifully, perfectly unit on that in our uniqueness.

That's where we will fit together perfectly in one big whole universe.

So I wrote my memoir a Dangerous pursuit of happiness so that I could go into a with the details and ride it from a perspective of healing and hot scented nous so that the story wasn't written in this heavy doctor doom and gloom, This pool crazy sad story.

I wanted to run this story so that I could get all the the events and the day child out, but with clarity and with perspective, all love and compassion for myself and for all the other people involved and and think about it and feel it from a place of compassion and love rather than a place of judgment or shame.