My sexual early beginnings began not quite the way one would imagine, with princes and sparkly dresses wrapped in a fairy tale with love at the centre of my world; no my whole trajectory in the shaping of my early years was hot bedded, quite seedy and filled with notions that something heated up between my legs, in my belly and left me quite alarmingly hungry for love, for sex, for fantasy, for man, for touch and for intimacy. I was fascinated and full on with all things related  to the mans cock and how he perceived me, as I perceived him. I liked the attention. I liked the way they looked at me, and I liked the whole unfolding sequencing that would lead to some conclusions, usually a hot orgasm. I was young, I was good-looking, and I had a lot of guts. I liked to dress up, I liked to look good, I like to smell good and I liked to flirt. I had learnt much from French films in the late 70’s, my father and his outrageous language to the ladies, and girls around him, including family members, and I must have even learnt behaviours from my mother when she had been briefly around when I was very little. It occurred to me when I went through the men-o-pause,  it was my hormones that drove me to incredible lengths  propelling me in to a highly sexed version of my real self. I couldn’t put the man down no matter how I tried.

Me in England, 44

Me in Swindon, 19 years old.

Me in India, 41

I had a steady flow of looping highs as I became quite predatory in my pursuit of the game of man.

I had many lovers, many boyfriends and many one night stands. I was unstoppable and it was only till my last love of my life, that became the beginning of my change. At last my hormones that had nearly driven me over the top, unstoppable, unbelievable, began to wane in the natural flow of a woman’s life and I started to be able to slow down and get to KNOW THYSELF. I have no regrets about my hormonal, crazy, foggy, lit up lighting nights of shagging, and loving with all my heart, all my lovers, all my boyfriends and all those strangers I would pick up, quite easily, just because my progesterone and oestrogen were explosive and came with my body, my spirit, my emotions, my self. I was naturally wilful and naturally gregarious, wanting always wanting to be loved, to be held, to be cherished, but when the man fell, I left him, to start up the cycle of love-making all over again. In a nut I was a love and sex addict, something that is common with many many many of us, and I was no different with my people pleasing and seeking approval from everywhere, down to dysfunctional childhood upbringing, and low self-esteem. The Men-O-Pause, was the beginning of my freedom. I started to become aware that there was another way that wasnt dominated by the rush rush, tish tosh of the sweeping wanting, desiring, heating hot hormonal nights and all that drama and distraction that consumed me, leaving a wake of tatters, broken hearts, rock bottoms.  My hormones were out of control.

Then I had a disastrous relationship with a drug addict in 2014, this would be my arma matra, my final wake up from a long long his and herstory. I went down into his world, his energetic vibes, and got caught in the headlights, so to speak, which burnt, singed, and smashed me open. Then the work on myself really began. I got  clean and serene and worked the steps, it was like the windows opened up and the birds sounded different, the whole world changed and I began to chase down my demons, ghosts and entities, one by one. I had already began to work steadily from saving the planet (wtf?!) to saving myself when my father died in 2009 and retrained as a therapist and began to dive into the bottomless ebb and flow of how the body works. I really went deep into the endocrine system of hormones using herbs as the most obvious and wonderful natural way to get a sense on intracellular cellular feelings, and how they are all individual electrolytes, quarks, subatomic particles, energy, synapses,  miracles that work in relationship to the whole cosmic soup of doing, being, actualities and materialising.

I read Leslie Kenton’s fabulous book, Passage To Power, which gave me all the ammo NOT to use HRT/and any other antibodies/antigens type prescription courses through this. I never would anyway, my whole life trajectory began on the back of my mother being on antidepressants when I was in the womb, and so I knew innately what that sort of life it could lead to. My mother, Jacqueline Paget – Manners, was another guinea pig, as her parents, my grandparents were. My father always said, that when my mum started on these drugs prescribed in the mid 60’s, it was the biggest disaster to have befallen her. She got hooked, and gullible continued using prescription drugs as the way to what, health? Her energy, her pure pure girlish energy dipped upon that journey and led her to becoming moody, stroppy, tired, sleeping at wrong times, and highly down. She became hooked and depressed. The cocktails of that day in the 1960’s were Temazepam and well, I wish I could read you off the list, but it ain’t happening, because I knew that I would not be one of the humans to get caught in the strong-arm of the NHS and that system of health using pharmaceuticals. I am grateful that my mother gave me the gift to defend my own sovereignty by realising very early on, that the only way I was going to keep sane, was determining how my chance meetings would lead me into a world of sex, drugs, rock n roll, and then counter-culture.

This all shaped my life to find that when I got to London in 1984 as a live in nanny in Holland Park, I knew nothing about vegetarianism, and I certainly wasn’t going to take drugs. By the end of 84, I had turned veggie, was smoking pot, and experimenting.  My luck really began to change when I had the good fortune to meet Jason at Kings Cross tube who had a rat in a cage going to Archway. He was hot. I was going to Camden Town market. I spent a lovely afternoon listening to The Velvet Underground at his.  He told me he had a girlfriend and that they had an ‘open’ relationship. I fell for that line, and we became lovers. At that time I was living in a shared flat in Linden Gardens in Nottinghill Gate. I had a party there and Jason brought Rima and some other cool friends to the party. I fell instantly in love with Rima. She was a cool chick, and so kind in her energy. I was immediately attracted to her whole vibe. Fortunately I was a mover and shaker in the aesthetics and impressed her with my whole look and feel.

We became best friends and in so, she also introduced me to her family, her father, Craig Sams and her uncle Gregory, who were running

Craig Sams co founder of Whole Earth & Green & Blacks, with me, and Gregory Sams, cofounder of Whole Earth & Vegiburger/vegibanger. Both Brothers started Harmony Foods in the sixties and opened the first macrobiotic cafe in Paddington, and then Portobello.

Whole Earth Foods, and Harmony/Real Eat.

I was so lucky to integrate and be asked to join family dinners and discuss what organic food v non organic meant. I also realised that these people were royal nobility. I fell in love with organic foodstuffs, macrobiotics, brown rice, seaweed, and organic baked beans! Yum! I started to recalibrate my up bringing whilst suddenly realising that the whole world in the shops was non organic, that food being made in the fields were being sprayed with mass intense cocktails of chemicals, and that after two years of being a veggie, there wasn’t much in the way of choice in the big shops.

I realised we were all being poisoned by Big Agricultural Business. I also began seeking out my own organic food haunts in health food shops, and anywhere really so long as it was drenched in chemicals, and saturated in additives from plough to plate, I knew my life would be in some honest, authentic alignment with Mother Nature her self. My father always stated that the role of a farmer, was to be a husband to Mother Nature, to tend, care, and take care of her, so she in turn would provide seasonally, her bounty.

I became further convinced when I began to look with horror at the reasons as to why the rain forests were coming down, and what was being replaced from those magnificent and glorious old growth forests rich in biodiversity and when it became clear it was soya, beef and sugar, I was very alarmed, upset and so became even more engrossed in redirecting my messages from the main stream to the alternative and indigenous form of living on this incredibly wonderful blue planet.

This story unfolded like my imagination, fertile, uncovering parts of myself, and here’s the rub, I don’t use main stream bleating fear based tactics to get healthy, I now have the wisdom and insight as a practitioner of firstly myself, and then those outside of me, to always impart honest truths that work on a higher resonance to that of those who sadly are being led to the slaughter abattoir terrorised in flight, fight and freeze fear hormones as they eat the slashed and burned flesh of those animals, those sentient creatures, and then they get sick from the antibiotics, growth hormones, colourants, additives, E numbers, msg’s and on it goes, and go glibly to the main stream doctors to take their pharmaceuticals,  get trapped by fear, into the whole god damned unnatural cycles of eating bad foods, and medicating on bad drugs, that’s whole premise is only concerned with making money out of you, me, jimmy, jack and john, whilst the planet suffers under the crony capitalists and the extremely unhealthy view on how we consume, and prosper on a resource land grab madness and mayhem.

We have to wake up from that programming, break down, break free and jump into the world of biodiversity and self-care. It takes guts, it takes courage, but its the most honest, authentic and fantastic thing you can do to get your own unique vibration and self awareness that leads you to health and happiness whilst making sure that you look after the planet for future generations and do not rely on statins, prescriptions, antidepressants, antibiotics, anti inflammatory. (All for another blog, another day).

It nearly killed me, but the shadow workings really exposed my deep patterning, and then the miracle of men-o-pause really kicked in. It was stunning. The flashes, the flushes, the feelings, all bubbled up from the darkest turrets and corners, and deep beds that lay in my body, bone, blood, sinews, ligaments, organs…I became liberated and self orienting as I suddenly looked at the man in a new light. He wasn’t just a body, to consume, he was a human, a friend, something real and tangible and this gave me hope, faith, and a sense of peace. I grew up. And the tides of crone, with white, feathery streaks falling in my hair, natural, all natural, and it felt emancipating and so so beautiful. I looked around my scattered past, my crazy days, my youthful and middling ages, and now, now, I can see I can do and be anything I put my mind to.

Everything is down to energy. The food you eat. The Way you think. The paths you journey upon. Its all down to little old you and me. I am free, I am free thank you.