Hi, I’m Kelly and welcome to the Raising Love podcast. Raising love within yourself like only you can.

Brought to you by the Positively You program and LOVE body.

I am so excited to finally be doing this podcast. It has been coming for a while and has gone through quite an evolution and now it’s the right time to share it.

So, what will I be sharing every week with you on this podcast and what is Raising Love all about?

I guess the best way to tell you about Raising Love is to first tell you a little bit about myself and what has led me to this work. This is my LOVE story.

I guess it all begins, as it usually does, when I was a young girl and who I then became because of the horrible voice in my head, the mostly unloving voices of my parents, the uninterested voices of those I met along the way and the superficial, judgemental voices that came from the TV every day, the movies I watched and the magazines I read.

All of these combined to create a woman who hated herself and her body.

When I came into this world, I was born with all I needed inside of me. Love, peace and joy. These belonged to me and they were a part of me.

However, life happened and these beautiful, magical feelings got lost.

Because, yes, I had shitty parents who had no idea how to show their love in the right way. Not because they were awful people as such but because they didn’t know how to love. Themselves or others.

It took me until only recently to realise they did they best they could. Could they have done better? Absolutely!

And, because of their shitty parenting I was full of hate, anger, frustration and loathing. My self confidence slowly floated away until there was none left, leaving a young girl with no one to turn to to help me get it back.

As the years passed, I went from being a young girl with anger in my mind to a teenager with anger in my heart to a woman with anger throughout my whole body. And that anger just sat in me like a volcano full of red, hot, burning lava ready to explode at any moment.

Some days, still, the anger is so consuming and because I always believed it was bad to feel anger, that anger stays within my body with no proper, healthy release. This is true of all my feelings really. Even happiness and joy. My good, beautiful, magical feelings ended up being buried so deep behind the anger that I eventually forgot they even existed.

The woman I changed into, hated herself so much that she couldn’t see past the hatred and the anger. I thought this was all I was. All I would ever be. So I ate.

I got angry, I hated myself, I ate. Then I hated myself even more because I ate which caused even more anger. So, I ate some more.

And repeat. Every moment of every day of my life.

I ate my feelings instead of feeling them and hid my body, and myself, in plain sight. I eventually became obese and dealt with this weight issue on my own. I used food and my weight to slip away from myself whilst also removing myself from any joy in the world.

Right now I’m 44 and I have dealt with emotional eating for probably close to 35 years. That is a huge chunk of my life spent hating myself and my body so much that I chose to punish myself with food.

I wasn’t taught how to love myself and my body by anyone I knew so it grew bigger and bigger whilst I tried my hardest to become smaller and smaller in this world I was not able to understand.

I spent most of my life blaming my parents for how they treated me. This was my excuse to remain angry and to keep hiding the real me. I really wanted someone to show me how to BE in this world instead of trying to constantly escape it. I felt alone and lost with no way to navigate my existence.

I wasn’t raised with love. I wasn’t raised with guidance. I wasn’t raised with support.

Looking back I can see my mother tried. My father, not so much.

But to understand their lack of parental skills you have to look at their parents and their life. Knowing the little I do about how they were raised I have to feel lucky that they weren’t worse.

But now, unfortunately, I have a very emotionally distant relationship with my mother. My father is still not in the picture.

But I am trying.

I keep in mind how horrific her childhood was and that she has her own issues she is still dealing with today. Even at 75. Her story continues to be one of sadness, anger and blame. I look at how she has led her life and know that I cannot allow that for myself. Or for my daughter. I want more for the both of us and I work so hard to be the mother I longed to have. I am definitely a work in progress. My daughter is amazing and I am so blessed to have her which is why I continue to fight for myself to be a good example and role model for her.

Over the last 12 months or so I have become very spiritual. I have always felt there was more to us and our universe. And as I was reading and doing some research I came across a beautiful woman, Louise Hay, and she wrote that our souls choose our parents so that we can get the lessons we need and live the life we are meant to live so we can use those lessons to help others.

I definitely would have preferred a different up bringing, with loving parents who taught me about life in a loving way instead of an angry way; and even though I still have lots of work to do on myself I have to admit that if I didn’t have that I wouldn’t be where I am now. I could be in a better place but this is where I am meant to be and I feel so blessed for the life I have created. It is a great place. It is my better place.

Though that doesn’t always help when I feel so fucking messed up in my head I can’t think straight.

So, what else has fucked me up? And what has helped me to raise love within myself?

Well, that’s what this podcast is all about. It’s my way of healing, it’s my way of dealing and it’s my way of getting stuff out of me that has been festering inside of me for so long. I have been led to this podcast and it will probably evolve some more over time as I get more and more comfortable, as I begin to heal and as I connect with all of you and learn about your LOVE stories.

There is so much to my love story that I will share but I do also want to hear about your love stories. I want this to be conversation.

I am going to admit straight off the bat that this is something else I am learning to do over. I am learning to have a real conversation where I am truly interested in what the other person is saying rather than wallowing in my own shit inside my head while the other person speaks.

Because we all have love stories we want to share. That we want to get out of us to help us to deal and to heal.

We all have defining moments in our life that change us forever. They change who we are right down to our cellular level and they change how we think and behave. We will never be the same again.

I have had many. We all do. There are those big defining moments which rock your world and then there are smaller ones which are more like a mild tremor but still have a significant impact.

And it is all of these defining moments that led me to this very moment in time and to the creation of LOVE body.

In creating LOVE body I was reborn.

And, because of my defining moments I am now choosing to Raise Love.

Not only am I raising love, I feel as if I am raising myself all over again. I am giving myself the love and attention I deserve as I discover who I really am.

And, of course, I am also raising my daughter and raising as much love in her as I can.

But that’s not all.

I also want to raise love in you. I want you to raise love within yourself.

Whoever you are right in this very moment. Wherever you have come from. Wherever you are headed.

You deserve to raise love.

Raising love involves all women whose bodies and minds are filled with hate, anger, frustration, self-loathing, sadness, loneliness. And whose bodies have been punished over the years because of how you have felt about yourself for way too long.

You have lived and breathed such intense feelings.

You have felt as if you were never good enough.

You have punished yourself because of your weight.

You have punished yourself because all of those horrible feelings stuck inside of you.

You have punished yourself because you don’t have that so-called perfect body society has led you to believe is what you are all about.

You have punished yourself because you believe you are unworthy and unlovable.

You have punished yourself for not having the perfect life.

That punishment has come in many forms. Eating too much, eating too little, pushing your self at the gym beyond your limits, buying too many things you don’t even want or need, working in a job you know is not good for your soul and you wake up every morning allowing the same old horrible thoughts to swirl around your head keeping you stuck in a feeling of misery.

It’s no wonder we are so fucking messed up about ourselves and our bodies. We have been taught by the media, by men, by other women and by society that, as women, our bodies are for others to admire, to judge and to examine. That inside of us there is nothing. The only real part of us is the outer layer of our body. Our mind does not matter. Our feelings don’t matter. Therefore we don’t matter.

But we do. All of us. There is so much more to you than all of that.

It’s time to raise ourselves up with love and discover who we truly are inside. Without all of the punishment, hurt and unworthiness driving us into despair.

Because you are a women who is smart, funny, kind, loving, mindful, caring, inspiring, powerful, strong, bold and passionate. You have dreams, ideas and feelings which should not be dismissed. By anyone. Especially you.

And, this podcast is for all of you beautiful women who have said “ENOUGH”. Even if it was only a faint whisper deep inside of you. You know you hear it.

I want to share your LOVE stories. Whatever chapter they may be in at this moment in time. This isn’t about finally living that perfect life and THEN sharing your story. We are all in the midst of beauty and pain at the same time. We all experience these wonderful gifts to grow and learn. They are ours to cherish.

Your narrative and my narrative will involve things such as health, movement, nutrition, life, love, body image, emotional eating, overeating, your feelings and actually feeling them, mindset and attitude, forgiveness, gratitude, your dreams, your reality, your love story and so much more.

There is so much we are going to talk about on this podcast with each other. There is so much to life.

So, let’s acknowledge the woman inside of you who is fighting to free herself.

Let’s free her.

And, let’s Raise love together.

Inside you, inside me. Inside our girls. Inside all of us.

Thank you so much for listening, beautiful. This really is a dream come true for me.

I spent so much of my life being quiet, not speaking up, staying small that I forgot I have a voice worth listening to.

You may not always agree with what I say and that’s ok.

This is a conversation between us. Yes, I have lots to say but I also want to hear what you have to say.

So, leave me a comment, email me your thoughts, get in touch and let me know what conversations you’d like to have.

But before you go, I have a gift for you. I created 5 steps to loving your body AND creating your ideal weight naturally just for you, Beautiful.

To receive my gift, please pop on over to the home page of my website lovebody.com.au, leave your details and this awesome book will arrive in your inbox ASAP.

Inside you’ll find 5 steps to help you raise love in your whole body and your mind. You deserve to feel amazing and this simple, yet effective, guide will do just that. With nutrition, movement, your LOVE story, the when effect and forgiveness all supporting you as you begin to raise love within yourself again.

If you loved this episode, please share it with your friends and family.

Please remember, it’s time to start cultivating, nurturing and raising love within yourself.
Because, you are a smart, amazing, beautiful woman with so much to offer this world.

Continue raising love. Speak soon.