June 28, 2022. Paris.
You know how some people knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives since they were a little child. I’ve always known I wanted to be an architect, I’ve been building buildings with Lego since I was 3. Or I’ve been sewing clothes since I was 8. Or I was already playing the piano in my mother’s womb. I’ve always found these people fascinating. How can they know that this is exactly what they want to do without trying anything else? It reminds me of how religious people talk about faith. They believe in their religious God with their whole heart and soul, and there is nothing more to say about it. It also reminds me of people saying that when you meet the love of your life, you just know. There is no doubts whatsoever, no questions asked, no need to try something else.
You just know.
I’ve always found these people fascinating because I am nothing like that. I don’t even remember what I wanted to do when I was a child. I must have wanted to be a veterinarian at some point, because it was cool and popular among my kindergarten friends, even though I’ve never felt very comfortable being too close to animals. I remember that I loved making things with my hands though. I wanted to draw but I was really bad at it. I remember going to a drawing class but I’m not sure if it really happened or if I dreamt it. I spent my childhood free time at ballet classes, and I didn’t like it so much. I always felt stuck in my tights and leotard, like I couldn’t move. But I wasn’t supposed to move. I was supposed to hold everything together. My danse teacher Brigitte kept yelling at me class after class: “Camille, hold your arms”. I didn’t care much about holding my arms, I just wanted to get out. I was a serious student at school, super serious and smart. I was usually finishing tests before everybody else in the class and always had the best grades. I was very good at everything with numbers and not very interested in anything else. I didn’t understand why it was so important to learn how many people were living in China or how to decline latin nouns. I didn’t like French classes. I didn’t like the books I was supposed to read, I always found them boring and couldn’t understand how we were supposed to know what the writer thought about when he wrote the book. It didn’t make sense to me. I remember writing down one time during my French class that if some day I write a book, I don’t want people to interpret my writing, guessing what is happening in my head, because they can’t know for sure. I didn’t like any of my French teachers and it was very mutual. I managed to have a super good grade at my bachelor degree and my last French teacher couldn’t believe it, she was literally in shock. She was not happy for me, she really wasn’t, she was just shocked.
Isn’t it ironic that I ended loving doing the things I hated as a child? Teaching people to hold their body together and writing. Is there a message for me here? I cannot say.
When I was a teenager, I started loving fashion. I loved to dress and create weird but cool combinations of clothes. I even designed a few dresses but still I really wasn’t a good drawer. At that time of my life, people usually knew me as being super eccentric and creative with my outfits. In my 20’s, I spent all my money on clothes. My wardrobe was my (super huge) treasure, I had built it piece by piece for years. When I started getting into yoga though, I faced an annoying inner conflict. How can I be spiritual while having so many material stuffs? I got rid of everything. I sold most of it, and kept the bare minimum. I spent the following years in yoga pants and tee-shirts and Birkenstock, not wearing make-up, not wearing nail polish, not straightening my hair. While I felt aligned with the yoga philosophy, I also felt ugly. For maybe two years, I literally went to dates in my yoga pants. Of course, I was teaching so much that I was always before or after a yoga class but this was a lame excuse, truth is I was so comfy and I had nothing else left to wear. I mostly met guys who were ok with girls showing up at a date in yoga pants, so usually guys wearing barefoot shoes and not showering every day, which let’s be honest is far from being sexy.
When I got back to Paris two years ago, I stopped teaching yoga every day and couldn’t justify going out in my yoga pants as much as I wanted to. I found some of my old clothes waiting for me at my mother’s house and remembered how much I loved to dress. And started wondering: if I love to dress, does that make me a bad yogi?
In the meantime, I kept writing. I started to write when I was in India in 2013. I wrote about what I was going through during my very first backpack-solo-trip and it was actually super funny. If you read French and want to see for yourself, it’s still on my website. I wrote about spirituality and self-discovery in a very detached and fun way. After that, I wrote for a few years about my life mostly, about fashion and love. And it still was funny and light. I got recruited by a French magazine because of my fun writing. I remember one time when the big CEO of the media group I was working for said in a big meeting that every piece of writing that needed to be fun had to be written by me. When I started teaching yoga, I started believing that I wasn’t allowed to be funny anymore. Spirituality was a serious matter. Getting to know yourself asked for discipline and discipline was not fun. I stopped being fun and I slowly forgot I had even been fun. Life became quite boring.
Can you imagine me going on a date in my yoga pants and only talking about deep spiritual matters? No fun.
Six months ago I decided I wanted to become a therapist. It was a you-just-know moment for me. I realised that I wanted to give more than what I was giving during a yoga class, that I wanted to help people heal more in depth. I met this therapist that was practicing Humanist Hypnosis and yes, I just knew. This is what I wanted to do. And this is what I did. I spent the past six months training in hypnosis, learning how the brain works, how the self works, what consciousness is really about, how to guide people through themselves. I knew I would be good at it and I was, I am. I am good at being present with people, listening, feeling them, understanding what they need. When I’m working — because it’s not always true in my personal life —, I’m usually good at making people feel seen and loved. This is not what is interesting about my training though, not really. What is interesting is what I learned about myself along the way. And guess what, I started being funny again.
Since it was all very unconscious and deeply buried inside of me, it happened slowly. I started realising — with horror really — all the limitations I had been putting upon myself. In order to be a legitimate yoga teacher, I had given away some parts of myself I really loved. And it didn’t feel right anymore.
There was a moment when it all clicked though and it was the day when we worked on values and beliefs. The teacher asked the group a few questions to help us define what our values were. To define what your values are, you can for example name three things you’d like people to say about you. And to define what your anti-values are, you can name three things you really hate about other people.
Stop. Stop right here. Don’t cheat. And write down your own values.
I wrote down for my first value: authenticity. And for my anti-value: pretence. I felt super proud of myself, like super aligned and true. This is exactly when the teacher said — I’m sure you see it coming, even though I really didn’t —: “What your wrote as values are the things you don’t have yet in yourself, the things you’re working on now in your life. While what you wrote as anti-values is already inside of you, maybe active, maybe dormant.”
This is another kind of fun, isn’t it?
I realised at that moment that I had no idea of who I was.
I’ve been writing about being myself for as far as I can remember. I’m pretty sure that in every newsletter I wrote in the past year, you can find at some point me writing about how important it is to be yourself. And it actually makes sense. I wrote about what was important for me, what I was working on, what I hadn’t hacked yet. Because when you really integrate your values, when you really live by them, then you don’t even think about them. They’re so present in who you are and in everything you do, that you just don’t see them.
I’m pretty sure that if a few months ago you would have told me that I had no idea of who I was, I would have freaked out. First, I would have not believed you, that’s for sure. Hated you also probably. And then, I would have freaked out. I have been working so hard on myself, I truly believed I knew who I was. But truth is, I knew who I had to be. Which is a completely different matter.
I spent my whole life trying to make sense. It happened when I became a yoga teacher, as I let go of parts of me to make myself be seen as legitimate. But it happened everywhere along the way. I never tried to fit in, it wasn’t where my fight was. I didn’t want to be like everybody else, quite the opposite actually. I wanted, I needed to make sense. I had to show the world that I had it all figured out, that I could explain everything, who I was, what I wanted to do, what I was doing, I knew it all. I had this belief, deeply rooted in my subconscious, that if I didn’t make sense, I couldn’t justify why I existed. I needed to be able to explain what I was doing, where I was going, why I was worthy of being here.
It took me some time to untangle all that. I went back to psychotherapy and asked for help. Help me see what I can’t see. Help me understand why I don’t believe that I have the right to exist. And slowly, I healed my deepest wound.
I don’t believe I have to make sense anymore. I don’t believe that my life needs to make sense anymore. I can change my life as many times as I want and nobody needs to understand my choices, not even me. I can be a fun yoga teacher that loves to dress. I can be anything I want and I’ll still be worthy of being alive, of being seen, of being loved.
I sometimes wish my life could have been more simple. I wish I could have healed my wounds younger, enjoyed my youth, fallen in love at 20, had fun, done drugs, dressed up, sung my heart out on stage. I wish I could have freed myself from my own limitations earlier. I wish I could have known for a fact as a 7 year-old child what I was supposed to do with my life. I wish I could have felt safe in my core to exist all along the way. Safe to be who I was. Safe not to make sense. Safe to be imperfect.
And I believe this is the bottom of it. If I don’t have to make sense anymore, I don’t have to be perfect anymore. And I’ve never felt anything more freeing than that. I don’t have to be perfect anymore. I’ve been navigating through my life, trying things and testing and wondering what my mission was, what I was supposed to do. And many times, I thought I knew. But truth is, I still have no clue.
I have no clue. And I’m totally ok with that.
I’m not sure I want to keep teaching yoga. I’m not sure I want to be a therapist. I’m not sure I want to keep writing about self-exploration and spirituality. It feels like I needed to learn all that to free myself, and now that I am free I can do anything I want. Everything is open. It is a magical process, it really is. Also a deeply unsettling one. I learn new things about myself every day. Memories come back to me, one by one. And I bring all my pieces together. I allow myself to be all that I am. Messy and beautiful and imperfect. I’m slowly learning to own my story, the exact same story that wounded me so deeply that I believed I wasn’t worthy of existing. It is my story. And even though I’m terrified to share it with people, even though I have this fear that I may be too broken to be loved, I still remember that my story doesn’t define me. I am so much more that what the world made me to be. And you know how I know that? I just know.
Did you miss me?
Love,
Camille