I spent about 20 years of my life drinking, partying, trying to be one of the lads and having a complete lack of self-worth. I got really ill as a teenager from over-drinking alcohol, but just carried on as it was what I felt gave me confidence and was what all young people did, I didn’t know another way of being. It came to the point where I got so sick, I wasn’t digesting food properly and I had constant diarrhoea.
I decided to seek help, I was advised by a nutritionist to stop eating gluten and dairy and to cut down on my alcohol consumption. Over the next couple of years I started to feel better and decided to stop drinking alcohol altogether as I noticed how sick it made me. The problem was that this alienated my friends, all of a sudden I didn’t have a social life and my friends thought I was weird for not drinking. So even though my body was feeling better, my lack of self-worth was still there and especially now I felt like the odd one out.
I attended a Universal Medicine course and through listening to Serge Benhayon present and talking with other students there, I realised I wasn’t alone, I had finally met people who were also looking after themselves and who had chosen not to drink alcohol; I was introduced to another way of being.
Serge presented to us to feel for ourselves what our bodies were saying, which foods worked for us and which made us feel bloated or heavy.
So I began making changes. I refined my diet by feeling what foods and drinks worked for me and three years on I no longer have digestive issues or diarrhoea.
After hearing from Universal Medicine about spleen time and how it began at 9pm, I started to go to bed earlier and noticed that this made me feel much better and that I then had more energy in the day. Serge talked about the tenderness we all have in our bodies and I really felt this in my body when he was talking about it. I also had some Esoteric Breast Massages with female Universal Medicine practitioners and so have been feeling more of this tenderness, as well as a delicateness and beauty in my own body – this feels amazing, I feel like I’m losing the hardness in my body and instead feeling an elegance and grace I never knew I had.
I realise that I’m not one of the lads, I’m actually a gorgeous woman, I have started to dress differently, much more feminine, which feels lovely.
I take the time to self-massage and am much more gentle with my body, from not carrying heavy bags to driving much more gently and carefully. Through this self-care and having the support of healing sessions with Serge Benhayon and other Universal Medicine practitioners, my confidence and self-worth have been increasing hugely, I feel much more of the real me and am letting go of the trying to be something or someone else.
I have found another way of being, a more loving, more gentle, more enjoyable, true, honest way of being, of self-care, nurturing and love. My relationships have improved because I feel really well and have a lot more energy, so I’m able to love and support my family and friends more, and I have noticed that people around me have been inspired by me. And I now have enough self-worth to not worry if someone thinks I’m odd for caring for and nurturing myself.
By Rebecca Wingrave
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
“I have found another way of being, a more loving, more gentle, more enjoyable, true, honest way of being, of self-care, nurturing and love.” This says it all about the inspiration of the presentations by Serge Benhayon.
Being self caring and tender with ourselves brings big changes as you found Rebecca. ‘my confidence and self-worth have been increasing hugely, I feel much more of the real me and am letting go of the trying to be something or someone else.’
Lovely to hear of the self care that you have introduced to your life and the changes this has brought, ‘I have found another way of being, a more loving, more gentle, more enjoyable, true, honest way of being, of self-care, nurturing and love.’
It’s funny how self-care and making loving choices inspires some people and others get triggered and judge you. This current culture in society needs to change as so many can be pulled in a direction by their peers that is considered ‘normal’ that is actually very harming.
How crazy it is that it can be so uncool and unpopular to take care of ourselves. When and how did that happen?
“And I now have enough self-worth to not worry if someone thinks I’m odd for caring for and nurturing myself.” Woohoo! What a wonderful claiming and confirmation of your self-worth Rebecca. I very much feel this for myself too.
I used to be the party girl and lad, often out drinking others at a party. I then stopped drinking and others felt very uncomfortable with this. I was then considered boring when I was making choices to support myself. I actually enjoyed having the space to come back to me and am now much more solid in my choices so I don’t often get as much reaction or take it on as much.
There is a great deal of pressure to join in with our peers, especially when it comes to alcohol, but food too. As soon as choices are made to not drink, or to eliminate foods that are comforting or numbing, it causes a stir in those around us. Proving only that we all know what we’re doing with these substances… we just don’t like to acknowledge the fact.
How would we not live in a way that deeply confirms us and makes us feel beautiful from the inside out.
The more love you have for yourself the less it is another’s abuse will effect you.
The more gentle and loving our relationship is with ourselves the more gentle and loving our relationships are with others and collectively, the more we all flourish.
It is good to note how much impact a few little changes can have on our lives and build our self-worth, our confidence and overall well-being.
With being one of the lads we are all selling us short. We deserve being deeply nurtured and cared for and the more we allow this into our life the more we bring this into the world, and bring this to every woman and man, showing that there is another way and that it is ok to be loving and cherishing with each other.
It is amazing how since choosing to be more caring and nurturing of myself how much more steady I am in my body and how less emotional I am…. With this, as you said, you are able to love and support those around you more who benefit deeply from a steadiness that can hold them through whatever they encounter. A priceless gift to be able to offer another.
That is great Rebecca, not feeling odd because you are looking after yourself. Silly that one should feel that way but it is a bit rare to really look after yourself, weirdly so. Maybe this is one of the biggest plagues of our time, side by side with all the conditions humanity faces both inside and outside of our bodily realm. And maybe many of the conditions we do face is just because we do not look after ourselves as we should.
Rebecca that sounds very confident to me: “I realise that I’m not one of the lads, I’m actually a gorgeous woman . . . ” With that confidence you can enlighten the rest of the world.
It is beautiful to have and live from true confidence in the body, a foundation we can build ourselves through deeply looking after ourselves.
Rebecca I loved reading about the grace and elegance that you feel within yourself, from caring and nurturing yourself, very inspiring for us all.
Once we begin on the path of self healing we will hit a cross road:
1) stop healing because you start to stand out
2) it becomes too difficult to continue because it exposes too much
3) continue because we feel it is everything we felt was missing in our life.
The choice is always ours, but more importantly than making a choice is to be well aware of why each choice is made.
If the latter is the case, at least we can be honest to why we have chosen what we have chosen and have a clear reference point for future choices.
Thus we go round and around until we get it right.
Love how you pinpoint the utter absurdity we’re living in where we’re considered odd to be making food and drink choices that are about caring, nurturing and supporting ourselves. Without the self-worth that comes from the consistency of such choices over time, we can end up swayed by mob rule, back to socially acceptable forms of numbing or distraction, reward or recognition that are entirely unsupportive of our health and vitality.
I like the simplicity of your story, Rebecca, no fireworks and big fuss, just lovely appreciation of your choices.
More than the look of other people it was me who found it strange to look after myself. The concept was alien for me never having been shown how to do this. Everything was done the hard way to prove how strong I was, that I mattered, yet having no confidence whatsoever. The road to recovery was a slow one. Starting with the pace of my walk. People could hardly keep up with me in the past, there was always something to be done urgently. Nowadays I cannot keep up with them if they walk faster than me. My body has found a new softer rhythm and it simply refuses to force its mechanism, it does not compromise anymore.
Feeling the hardness and then the elegance and grace really is a life changing experience. lts a work in progress and is also building my patience with me.
Benkt, I agree when we choose to have a deeper connection with ourselves we definitely get to know and feel how our body is, and how best we are able to support it.
To come back to yourself from: “I got really ill as a teenager from over-drinking alcohol, but just carried on as it was what I felt gave me confidence and was what all young people did, I didn’t know another way of being.” is a big change and look where it brought you? To being a sensitive, healthy woman, who has loving relationships and inspires others. Great example.
I too have felt singled out or the lone soldier in my quest for a more self loving life style. Thankfully I have the love and support of Universal Medicine, the practioners and the beautiful people who attend Unimed events and the friendships I have made. This support enables me to live in a world where every day it is reflected to me that I am doing the complete opposite to the majority but now I know that I’m not alone.
I agree Dragana, I wish I could have been a true rebel and gone the other way and said to what is not love.
So beautiful that you finally chose YOU over everything else.
My confidence and self-worth have been increasing too as a result of the support offered by Universal Medicine and I no longer feel awkward for not fitting into the excepted normal way of not looking after ourselves, which includes the way we sleep, eat and drink. I know very strongly how much the way I live makes me feel completely amazing, and to hide it prevents another from feeling this.
Thank you for sharing Rebecca, It is indeed great to care more and more for myself, and gaining confidence by being more in my body, it slowly makes me aware of how amazing I am and that I don’t need to be embarrassed when caring for myself, this article inspires me to go deeper and truly feel I am not odd and that it is amazing how I care for myself, thank you.
Such a beautiful sharing Rebecca and very inspiring – thank you!
Thank you Rebecca for a great blog, it is beautiful how you have opened up to another way of being, a more loving and self-caring way.
How you feel an elegance and grace you never knew you had touches me deeply, Rebecca.. I felt like I had a ghoul around me when I was still drinking alcohol and it took more than 10 years to get all the hardness out of my body. Now walking with elegance and grace is something I observe with myself and many others, who choose not to drink alcohol anymore.
Being open, giving seemingly healthy pieces of advice a go and feeling what your body has to say paves the way for a beautiful unfolding where you become the initiator and source of inspiration for deepening your own connection with yourself.
Odd for caring for yourself?….pfff! You just keep on doing what you’re doing, for every person that thinks you’re odd, there are 100 who are being inspired by you. You know what’s going on, you’ve got this!
By listening to our bodies and honoring what we feel, we are not able to drink alcohol, stay up until late or over-exercise. Our bodies speak to us loud and clear – without exception, these choices make us feel sick and exhausted. What has helped me build my self-worth (and is still a work in progress) is honoring what I feel in every moment. This started with choosing to listen to my body – to choose foods that supported my body and didn’t leave me racy, tired or heavy, and to go to bed when I felt tired (usually before 9am). It is normal to care and nurture ourselves!
Yay! for not worrying what other people think about you. It awesome to read how you transformed your life around. Thank you.
To go from the life you led to feeling tenderness and delicateness in your body and connecting to the elegance and grace within is just gorgeous, you can add me to the list of those blessed to be inspired by you.
Rebecca your experience with your friends on giving up alcohol paints a powerful but sad picture of the reality of so many of our relationships. What are they really based on? Not love it seems, but being partners in numbing ourselves to the hurt we feel. I love how you have gently made different choices for yourself by learning to tune in to the wisdom of the body.
Love it Rebecca. Great blog to read. I found too when I attended universal medicine presentations I was like, yes finally ! Haha I had people and support around me that felt the way I did on subjects and it was/is great to have that. From this, I realised the way I want to live is not that weird
That’s very true that there is a huge pressure on people to participate in the drinking culture, when something is so deeply ingrained in society as ‘normal’ it definitely takes a very strong sense of who you are to be able to choose a more self-respecting, caring way of life for yourself. But at least you know in walking against the tide in this you are no longer hurting yourself and the people around you.
So true Meg and a bold choice like that is a choice for all humanity not just for self. That’s cool!
I like that! ‘A bold choice like that is a choice for all humanity not just for self’ I agree, making decisions considering the bigger picture makes making bigger choices much easier.
That pressure to participate in drinking sometimes comes from people who previously were concerned about me becoming alcoholic- isn’t it strange?
That is amazing!! How crazy to once be concerned about you over drinking, but now be concerned that you are not drinking! That makes absolutely no sense.
It really comes back to responsibility for me. Whenever we consider something as the norm or acceptable which in truth we know is harming – (& in the case of alcohol use, there is enough research and evidence to prove this is a poison to the body and also the impact it has on relationships in terms of violence etc) – it allows us to avoid taking responsibility for our choices and how these affect not only ourselves, but others.
This is a great read Rebecca, just lovely to learn how you became responsible for your own well being. It interests me that when you removed gluten and dairy from your diet you began to feel the impact of alcohol on your body. It makes sense to me, I just hadn’t thought about that aspect before now, although I do remember always being told ‘you must have something to eat before you go out drinking’…thanks for sharing.
Jacky isn’t it madness that we were told you should eat something before you drink. We already knew the outcome of what alcohol was going to do to our bodies we were just slowing the impact down by eating first. I worked out that if I ate pasta I could drink all night and not feel drunk. If I didn’t want to feel drunk I shouldn’t have drank.
Wow what huge changes you have made, it seems to me that so many things we do are just to fit in with what’s ‘normal’ and not what is truly right for us. It’s amazing to read you have built your self care and self worth to a point where what others do and say does not change what you know to be true for you.
Far too much pressure is put onto the younger generation these days. Just be yourself.
It can feel/seem that companies do not care about you as a person and (may) only want your money. People need to take you for what you are, and not make a judgement on your choices to give up on certain foods, stop drinking, smoking and doing all the other harmful things that affect the body. When you look back you will probably think, did I do all that?