Welcome to the Elevate Your Life and Soul podcast, in this episode I give you a rundown on what's to come in this podcast, share a bit of my story and experience with vitiligo, sobriety and self-love. It is a reminder to know your value, and know your worth.
In this episode I share with you a little about my experience as a life coach, and how my journey through being adopted, experiencing vitiligo and getting sober have shaped how I serve. I give a rundown on what's to come in the podcast including stories, interviews, and mentoring.
I share my story of being adopted as a baby and what that meant for me growing up, how I dealt with my fear of rejection and abandonment to realise I am enough.
I shared how I have experienced vitiligo and how I transmuted the fear of losing control around it into a superpower. I also share why I got sober and how that was my biggest act of self-love.
Get the full show notes here.
EPISODE 1 Know Your VALUE - Know Your WORTH - Elevate Your Life and Soul - Mala Kennedy
INTRO
Welcome to Elevate Your Life and Soul. I'm your host Mala Kennedy, life coach, mama and spiritual soul seeker. Each week this podcast will bring you interviews, stories and mentoring. So you can truly know your value, know your worth and elevate all areas of your life. Let's rise together.
EPISODE CONTENT
Welcome to Episode One. Thank you so much for being here. I'm, I'm so excited. It's 2020. It's a new year, and I feel this is the perfect time to start a podcast. I have been meaning to do this for a long time. And you know, sometimes we can get caught up in the doubt and the the worry about the things and not really go forward. So I'm finally here and I'm really committed to sharing my heart with you and I'm so grateful that you've hit the download button, subscribed and given my podcast a little chance.
So, I really look forward to connecting with you. I thought in today's episode, I would share a little bit of who I am, what's on my heart and why I'm here, and a little bit about this podcast and what it means to me. And so I really want to be able to serve and share inspiration and mentoring and some great interviews. I've got some really amazing guests lined up to interview that I can't wait to share with you so you can hear what they have to share with you their medicine, their gifts.
I'm a life coach. I studied Ontological Coaching which looks at your way of being and it focuses on language, emotions and body and I've also trained in EFT and I can't wait to share more about little insights into ontology and spirituality as well as all areas of personal growth that I've learned about and feel really resonate.
I first discovered coaching in about 2014 I think it was, and well that's when I started my coaching study. And it was the most amazing experience I really learned to establish boundaries for myself, and start to believe in myself and now I get to help other people do the same thing. I I really love working with overwhelmed mama's who feel stuck and not sure of what they want. Often they don't really know that they can want something in life because everything is about their kids. And my passion is helping mothers to discover that they get to do anything they want. So if you're a mum, just know that having a purpose and passions beyond your kids is so important. And you really deserve that because it inspires your kids to dream a little too, and chase their dreams. And I think as role models, that's such a gift that we get to impart on our children. And so I love working in that space and helping mums believe in themselves and understand that deep self care, because you know self care can be such a buzzword but there's so much to it. It's such a beautiful, beautiful thing that can really transform our lives if you take it seriously and it's not always easy. Sometimes it can be really tough and have a real reflection and mirror of things that we may not want to look at about ourselves, but when we do there's so much growth and so much reward on the other side, and I've experienced that firsthand. I really would like to share a little bit of my story here with you because, you know, all our stories really matter...and I feel in sharing my story, hopefully it will serve you in some way. And also it's great to get to know who's on the other end of the microphone.
So, yeah, I was adopted from Sri Lanka when I was just a baby. Two weeks old. I left Sri Lanka and I moved to Sydney with my adoptive parents. So I grew up as a brown girl, and now woman, with a Caucasian family. And from a very early age I, I never really felt I belonged. And I experienced deep feelings of abandonment and fear of rejection which I really let carry through my life. And I'm not sharing this from a victim standpoint or to compel you to feel like poor me. It's nothing like that at all. In fact, I feel like my experiences and how I perceived the world... I've really learned from that. And I've really learnt to show up in a way where I'm not a victim, and I know that I am the creator of my life. And we all have experiences and traumas and pain points that we get to work through and we get to face off with an experience so that we can be stronger and more resilient and live a joyful, happy, free life. And yes, so for many years, it took me a long time to really discover who I was and what I was passionate about. And I went through studying lots of different things. In a past life I studied radio, actually, which I really enjoyed. And I've done screenwriting, and politics and journalism. I did all these things and I really enjoyed them. But what was on my heart has always been coaching, personal growth, spirituality. But yeah, I took quite a few detours to get here and to deal with how I was feeling, feeling abandoned and rejected and like I didn't quite belong because I felt like I was caught between two worlds of being... looking Sri Lankan and feeling Australian.
I partied and I didn't respect myself and I just did that for a really long time for a good part of most of my 20s. And like some of my teens before that, and then I developed vitiligo I go when I was I'm not sure how old but it was about 2010 or 11. I discovered a white patch on my hand. And if you don't know what vitiligo is it's where you lose the melanin in your skin. It's what Michael Jackson had. And so I discovered this tiny little patch on my hand. And I didn't know what it was, I kind of thought it was... I had no idea really, but it was weird and I decided I should go to the doctor about it and find out what was going on with my skin. And that's when I discovered I was experiencing vitiligo and I freaked out. I was really scared, because the doctor told me that I could lose all the pigmentation in my skin. And, you know, I was really insecure about myself and I didn't love myself fully or accept who I was. I was really unaccepting of who I was. And in fact, growing up, I'd always wished I was quiet. And then suddenly it manifested. And it was a shock because I just didn't know what to expect. And I didn't know how I would be judged, if I would be judged or you know... I already felt really insecure and worried about who I was as a person. And then this happened and I had to come to terms with the fact that I couldn't control it. It was really out of my control what was going to happen with my skin and you know, of course, you can eat well, and diet and that sort of thing. But I'm not going to go into that here and that that's not like my point. But what I really discovered was that I had to either face it and try and accept what was happening. Or I was just going to live this experience, this painful experience. So I chose chose to face it and look at my skin and learn to embrace it and learn to accept it. I didn't love it straight away. I accepted it first and the journey to self acceptance was a slow one, and I still face off with it sometimes and, you know, I still don't know how much my vitiligo will spread or what's going to happen but I've learned to love it because through that experience, I learned to respect myself and I learned to treat myself with love and I became sober.
So I've been sober now for two and a half years. And I wasn't a really big drinker before when I first gave up alcohol and I was sober for a year prior to 2013 but this time when I gave it up in 2017, I was not drinking very much I just I found it was something I was really ready to let go and didn't really want in my life anymore. So I just released it. And I'll share more about my sobriety on another episode because it's a huge, huge part of my life and I'm real commitment to it and I'm really proud of it too, because it's, it's really opened up my heart and my soul and shown me how to love myself. And I believe that when you really want to let go of something you can and it's really exciting. And it's, it's a choice, everything is a choice - how we show up. And sometimes there can be challenges. But at the other side, there's always some beautiful rewards and lessons. I feel like everything is a lesson and in some ways, I don't believe in failure, I believe when we get knocked down or we fall down it is success in its own right because we learn something and we grow. And that's such a beautiful thing. So, yeah, that's a little bit about me, a little bit about my story.
I'm a mama, which is why I love working with with mums. I have a four year old and a three month old baby girl, a four year old son and a beautiful partner who I'm so blessed to have...and yeah, we live in a small country town, and I love to meditate, and I love to dive into spirituality and all things coaching. And I can't wait to share so much more of that with you. So yeah, I also will be running a beautiful self care program, which I'll link some of the details about in the show notes that will be running in February. And if that is something you're interested in then, please check it out. And I also have an amazing Facebook group called Women Rising Together, which I mentioned earlier, and it's on Facebook. You can find the link to that on my Instagram and I'll put it in the show notes. And it's a great place for women to rise together and share what's on their heart. And just be in their truth, it's safe, it's sacred. It's a place where you can be vulnerable and there's no judgment there. I really feel how important it is for us as women to rise together and join together and own our strength and own our vulnerability and our femininity and masculinity, both sides of the coin, and just just own that. And I'm here to remind you to know your value and know your worth, because you're so beautiful and you're so deserving. And you are enough. You really are enough.
So, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. And let's rise together. Have a beautiful day.
OUTRO
Thank you so much for listening to today's show. If you like it, subscribe, wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you love this episode please give it an honest review on iTunes and let me know what you love and what you want more of. Your feedback helps me truly elevate the show into something that really serves you, and allows me to keep pouring my heart and soul into it. This is for you. Let's rise together. And remember, know your value know your worth. I love you beautiful soul.