One Year Since Camp Eden
Without Prejudice
It's been one year since Camp Eden and what a transformation in my life since then. I now write full time, I am 24 kilos lighter and have just heard today I have been accepted at a Publishers. I have written 499 stories of my life, laying it bare for all the world to read. I've laughed aloud and I've cried. But the one thing that has kept me going is belief.
My two brothers, George and Dave believed in me. One picked me up in Melbourne and dragged my sad butt on a plane to the sun and fresh air in Queensland. The younger brother then sent me to Camp Eden , a health resort, and from there I had to face myself, my fears, my failures, just me on a journey of my own. Into the scariest place in the world, my own mind.
I was forced to confront myself, no phone reception, no email, no outside world to intrude on me and my thoughts. I was scared to death to begin with. I had no identity apart from being a Mum, a former wife, Fiance, girlfriend, lover. I had been told all my l,ife I was no good.. I believed it as it's so much easier to believe the negative rather than the positive. I came home and I had changed and the world hadn't.
I was then to go through months and months of hard work and suffering. I cried, I begged for help from a life source I hadn't believed in. But one thing kept me going, my belief that I had something to say. I had a "Voice" that needed to be heard. So I wrote and I wrote. In the small hours, in the hottest days, the coldest mornings, shivering and sweating but I just kept on writing. Every day.
My Sister In Law started the ball rolling, she kept my stories and printed them out, one by one. When I realised my ex husbands sister was doing that I had to keep going and I had to raise my standards. I realised I was no longer just writing for me but for others. Other women or men that had been in situations like me. Loyal, faithful, caring people that needed a "Voice", too.
There were the sad and the depressed, the trapped and the wary. People who had been beaten down by life but still had a spark of hope inside of them, that said,
"Keep Going"
and just as my darling daughter, Lauren , had said,
"Mum, you are going to be fine, you are going to be better than fine"
And her last word ever to me.
"Write"
So by writing out the hurt and the fury and the frustration I healed myself, my life and saw others around me start to raise themselves up as well. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Some people objected at my honesty. I couldn't write like that, under censorship. I had to let go all of my ego, all of my shyness, all of my angst, laziness, arrogance and just write.
The hardest was telling Laurens' story. I cried and cried and wanted to stop. I cried down on the keyboard so much it was a wonder the keys still functioned. I wanted to stop but I couldn't. I thought of the 23 years that I had refused to write. It had always been my outlet for creation but I couldn't do it. Until I went to Camp Eden and then everything made sense. Writing was what I did and had done since I was a little girl.
It was my passion, my muse, my expression. my song. my sex, my food, my hunger, my release. So I began again to write and once I did I couldn't stop. Just as I could read voraciously, I could write voraciously. And the words came easily at times and "flowed" or trickled one by one at times on to the blank page. Somedays I sat in the same old chair in the same old place and nothing would come. Just nothing. I didn't despair I just did something else.
The words would always return and I was no longer scared to put them on the page. I wrote the truth as I saw it, as I see it. Its my opinion of events and no one elses. I was finally able to put thoughts and feelings out there and God Love Them, people liked them..
One alone hated them and tried to stop me. My foster daughters controlling boyfriend, a creepy man. But even after I had him screaming in to my face for over an hour while she watched, drunk, it wasn't going to stop me.
I wiped her and him and just got on with the job. I had to. I came back to Qld in April of this year and am still here writing. I intend to be published and I intend to be able to help others and myself by doing so. And for everyone out there that has felt a times as bad as I have there is hope, you just have to believe.
Love Janette
It's been one year since Camp Eden and what a transformation in my life since then. I now write full time, I am 24 kilos lighter and have just heard today I have been accepted at a Publishers. I have written 499 stories of my life, laying it bare for all the world to read. I've laughed aloud and I've cried. But the one thing that has kept me going is belief.
My two brothers, George and Dave believed in me. One picked me up in Melbourne and dragged my sad butt on a plane to the sun and fresh air in Queensland. The younger brother then sent me to Camp Eden , a health resort, and from there I had to face myself, my fears, my failures, just me on a journey of my own. Into the scariest place in the world, my own mind.
I was forced to confront myself, no phone reception, no email, no outside world to intrude on me and my thoughts. I was scared to death to begin with. I had no identity apart from being a Mum, a former wife, Fiance, girlfriend, lover. I had been told all my l,ife I was no good.. I believed it as it's so much easier to believe the negative rather than the positive. I came home and I had changed and the world hadn't.
I was then to go through months and months of hard work and suffering. I cried, I begged for help from a life source I hadn't believed in. But one thing kept me going, my belief that I had something to say. I had a "Voice" that needed to be heard. So I wrote and I wrote. In the small hours, in the hottest days, the coldest mornings, shivering and sweating but I just kept on writing. Every day.
My Sister In Law started the ball rolling, she kept my stories and printed them out, one by one. When I realised my ex husbands sister was doing that I had to keep going and I had to raise my standards. I realised I was no longer just writing for me but for others. Other women or men that had been in situations like me. Loyal, faithful, caring people that needed a "Voice", too.
There were the sad and the depressed, the trapped and the wary. People who had been beaten down by life but still had a spark of hope inside of them, that said,
"Keep Going"
and just as my darling daughter, Lauren , had said,
"Mum, you are going to be fine, you are going to be better than fine"
And her last word ever to me.
"Write"
So by writing out the hurt and the fury and the frustration I healed myself, my life and saw others around me start to raise themselves up as well. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Some people objected at my honesty. I couldn't write like that, under censorship. I had to let go all of my ego, all of my shyness, all of my angst, laziness, arrogance and just write.
The hardest was telling Laurens' story. I cried and cried and wanted to stop. I cried down on the keyboard so much it was a wonder the keys still functioned. I wanted to stop but I couldn't. I thought of the 23 years that I had refused to write. It had always been my outlet for creation but I couldn't do it. Until I went to Camp Eden and then everything made sense. Writing was what I did and had done since I was a little girl.
It was my passion, my muse, my expression. my song. my sex, my food, my hunger, my release. So I began again to write and once I did I couldn't stop. Just as I could read voraciously, I could write voraciously. And the words came easily at times and "flowed" or trickled one by one at times on to the blank page. Somedays I sat in the same old chair in the same old place and nothing would come. Just nothing. I didn't despair I just did something else.
The words would always return and I was no longer scared to put them on the page. I wrote the truth as I saw it, as I see it. Its my opinion of events and no one elses. I was finally able to put thoughts and feelings out there and God Love Them, people liked them..
One alone hated them and tried to stop me. My foster daughters controlling boyfriend, a creepy man. But even after I had him screaming in to my face for over an hour while she watched, drunk, it wasn't going to stop me.
I wiped her and him and just got on with the job. I had to. I came back to Qld in April of this year and am still here writing. I intend to be published and I intend to be able to help others and myself by doing so. And for everyone out there that has felt a times as bad as I have there is hope, you just have to believe.
Love Janette
