In The Immortal Words of Captain Blackadder.....

 ..."I'd rather spend an evening on top of a stepladder in No-Man's Land smoking endless cigarettes through a luminous balaclava."

This morning I wanted to check if my Tesco delivery had any substitutions, so I went into my 'spammy' email account, and lo and behold, awaiting me was this:

Hi Glitterfluff [actually my full name was here, as I used this account for testing MTE emails etc],

Would you like to put your hand up?

Melanie Tonia Evans inc (MTE) is now hiring a new team member for 20 hours of work a week to join our dynamic global business to help share my message and healing with a greater audience.

We are beyond enthused about our current upgrades—a new website, fresh social space, new courses, and the creation and launch of Quanta Freedom Healing™ Training and other upcoming retreats. As such, MTE now requires an experienced, capable digital copywriter to join the team.

We prefer to hire internally, as you are familiar with my voice, message and healing processes.

The skills, capabilities and essence that we seek:

Excellent writing and editing skills with highly accurate spelling and grammar.

Able to communicate professionally, spiritually and compassionately, with an understanding of MTE’s audience.

Proven expertise with digital marketing writing, working with sales pages and funnels with existing and live event products, with proven results.

Expertise and knowledge with copywriting for different social media platform posts and ads.

Ability to create and write email copy and high-open subject lines.

Capacity to create inspired repurposed content.

Can align and work to SEO requirements.

Able to be self-motivated and solve problems.

Close attention to detail and highly organised.

Accountable and honest.

Level-headed, can handle pressure and is a solid team member who is reliable, adaptable and supportive of other team members.

Able to work harmoniously with others.

Strong work ethic - work solidly, efficiently and effectively.

Able to operate systems such as Google Calendar, Zendesk, Canva, Word Docs, Zoom, and Skype. Experience with Active Campaign and WordPress is a bonus.

Ideas, interests, or expertise in video planning, creation, and editing are an added advantage.

You are passionate about soul-healing, making a difference and helping to save lives and souls. 

You are inspired and energised about MTE’s mission and expansion.

Because of the nature of internet marketing - this is not a 9-5, 5 days a week job, and you will be required at time to be available for weekends when needed for launches or other projects.

This is an ongoing position with many other possibilities and expansions for you in the future, including a distinct possibility of becoming full-time.

Please apply to support@melanietoniaevans.com with your resume and attach writing examples and references.

Inspired by Chumplady's Universal Bullshit Translator,  allow me to use my Fake Guru Bulllshit Translater (FGBT)

Melanie Tonia Evans inc (MTE) is now hiring a new team member for 20 hours of work a week 

"What do you mean, slavery is outlawed? I'm ENTITLED to get work for free! Don't they know who I am?? My CHANNEL says payment is optional, so that's all there is to it. But ok, let's cut 'slave' and insert 'team member'. Yes, I know there's just me, you and a dozen teddies I boss about in my bedroom, but the members don't know that. 

And yikes! Are there really less than than 200 hours in a week? Oh, go on, knock off a zero then if you must" 

a new website, fresh social space, new courses, and the creation and launch of Quanta Freedom Healing™ Training and other upcoming retreats. 

"You will be one of the first members of the cult I'm setting up in Cape Trib - Lucky YOU"

We prefer to hire internally, as you are familiar with my voice, message and healing processes.

"Anyone who isn't vulnerable following abuse, and who doesn't already admire me and believe I am a vital necessity to their healing would see straight through my unethical business practices and leave even more quickly than Glitterfluff did, so I'd much prefer a Thriver, who is in awe of me, and who will put up with really bad treatment before they finally get over their cognitive dissonance and see who I really am."

The skills, capabilities and essence that we seek:

"We'd like Glitterfluff and HMerlo back, please, but not with their new bolshy 'boundaries' and other shifty working practices, like wanting to be paid, have time off (bloody hell, I gave them whole HOURS of time where they didn't need to work!!) and have a contract. So if you are exactly like them, but even meeker, I'll snap you up"

Level-headed, can handle pressure and is a solid team member who is reliable, adaptable and supportive of other team members.

"Please understand, by 'supportive of other team members' I mean 'supportive of ME, ME, ME'. Otherwise, I'd like you to be corruptible, so I can bribe you to badmouth your other team members if they dare leave and tell even a tiny part of the truth of what went on. 

And by 'supportive of ME' I mean you need to be on call when I split up with my boyfriend, badmouth him, and then hoover him back. I need an audience for this, and I can't possibly tell my followers the truth, as otherwise they'd see what a hypocrite I am - so you will be my audience, cos I have no friends."

Because of the nature of internet marketing - this is not a 9-5, 5 days a week job, and you will be required at time to be available for weekends when needed for launches or other projects.

"Because of the nature of creating a cult (which requires you be deprived of rest so as not to question me), as well as my endless need for validation and adoration, my breakdowns will always happen at the weekend, or at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Plus, my CHANNEL always decides to launch things at that time. Even if I haven't written them yet. But you can write copy, so just crack on with writing me a course, yeah?"

including a distinct possibility of becoming full-time.

"Oh, you will definitely be full-time. And more. You just won't get paid for it. And did I mention you'll be paid less than Australian minimum wage? Even if you are training someone who is on that minimum wage? 

Now don't get angry at ME if you find that out, because it's YOUR trauma that meant you didn't ask for higher pay and negotiate a contract - and anyway, I didn't know, and so it wasn't my fault! After all, I'll endlessly promise pay rises and holidays (once MTE isn't falling off a cliff)! Aren't promises enough? 

Please also bear in mind that at all times my stock of gold bars must continue to grow, no matter what MTE is in danger of falling off a cliff. So please don't complain about anything, but simply remember that The Channel Has Spoken and so you must obey without question. 

And if you think any of that is unreasonable, you really need to go and shift, you 3D normie loser"

Tempting, huh?

Playing Cult Spot-The-Difference

 

I was prompted to blog today because I watched “Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe” (on Amazon Prime), a documentary series based on this article by Alice Hines in Vanity Fair

It was so shocking how much it parallelled what I experienced whilst working for Melanie Tonia Evans, and where I believe she was heading.

My Facebook post covers most of it:

Last night I binge-watched ‘Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe’. Wow. Sadly I recognised so much of what I’d experienced in my last job.

Would-be guru, driven by a desire for wealth and adoration – check; exploitation of never-ending ‘trauma’ in their ‘community’ – check; expensive programs that lead to ever-more expensive programs – check; monthly memberships – check; pivoting whenever necessary to throw together the next money-spinner – check; a ‘channel’ that must not be questioned – check; extraterrestrial starseeds – check; going ‘5D’ – check; the promise of abundance – check; victim blaming when the abundance doesn’t appear – check; “you just need to keep doing the inner work” – check; accumulation of personal wealth (gold bars, anyone?) – check; feeling entitled to free labour – check. There’s even a check next to the white bookcase and pink orchids!

What goes on to happen is what I predicted lay in the future for us – the pyramid scheme/MLM structure and the IRL cult. So for anyone still involved, I urge you to watch this. The first episode and a half especially will be uncomfortable viewing, and whilst the severity of what happens in the final half of the series may enable you to convince yourself that this is not what you are dealing with (since it is a road the potential cult leader in question would never take), I hope that it nevertheless will linger in the memory and validate the doubts when they come.

As I went on to comment, I have no problem with what people choose to believe – there are multiple paths to God. But according to Melanie Tonia Evans some of the starseeds are apparently from Sirius B – even though it is a star, not a planet, and one of the stars least likely to have any planet, let alone a habitable one, since it is a binary, with shifting gravitational pulls. But this is what happens when you don’t need to read books, because you have a ‘channel’.

And the whole ‘5D’ thing seems to have become some sort of league table, where the more ‘D’s you are, the more spiritually advanced you are. When you get people claiming to be ’15D’ or whatever, and you can see they are quite unpleasant, well then it kind of motivates me to remain 3D pondlife with the rest of the ‘normies’ as they like to call us!

Closure

 

Well I've not written here for a couple of weeks because I've emotionally moved on from needing to write about Melanie Tonia Evans. I realised that writing everything about how she is a fake and a bit of a con artist and would-be cult leader was actually keeping me attached to her. It began to feel wrong, especially as the people who would have been vulnerable to any backlash from her as a result of me speaking out both left in quick succession the day after I last posted.

So instead, I made a one-off Facebook post. It is not possible to say who I am speaking about in it, as I do not list my employment with her.

Aligned and evolved people run their businesses ethically and are mindful of the well-being of their staff. They put their mission first and allow the money to take care of itself. They do not withhold pay and drive their employees into the ground with their endless drama and demands. Or put money and appearances first at the expense of their infrastructure.

They lead by example and live what they preach. They keep their promises to their staff of decent pay and holidays, and they give them an employment contract – rather than it always being ‘jam tomorrow’. They keep their promises to their customers of free upgrades for life - and don’t retcon them to ‘only for gold members’.

Authenticity doesn't need airbrushing and filters – and no, that never was the choice of ‘the Team’ (the very opposite in fact).

I hear variously that I was sacked, or that I left because other people could not relieve my workload. Neither of those is true. When you catch someone in a lie, be careful not to believe them in the future.

Nor did I leave out of being work-shy, which has also been implied. I left because I wanted a family-life and a social life, and I was not allowed to have either whilst working there. The fake-emergencies always happened at the weekend - by design. It's a well-known cult tactic, to not allow people time to rest and reflect.

I left because I cannot align with someone who claims to teach people how to be abundant yet is stuck in scarcity consciousness and the worship of money. Who preaches about evolved relationships yet is incapable of maintaining them herself; sometimes, when people keep leaving you, it's not because you are so evolved, it's because you treat them badly. Who talks about soul-truths but is a liar. Whose words of love and support are skin-deep and never backed up by genuine feeling or actions, and who is unable to self-reflect and own their part.

When a person with status has a complete inability to take advice or suggestions from others, or to work as part of a team, then they lose perspective and become blinded by their own mythos. Just like Madonna and Michael Jackson, the False Self becomes inflated by power and the only people acceptable to them are those who puff them up and dare not challenge that inflated false self. Especially if it is named ‘the channel’.

The fruits of this channel might cause another person to question it, since its results are little to do with love.

Her true beliefs are obvious in the things she promises to others. Financial abundance, 'evolutionary love' relationships, external youthfulness and beauty - all the things she describes as being a 'thriving life' - these are the things she values.

There's a reason Jesus did not promise these things – he did not value them. The way, the truth and the life is not about any of those things. Yes, with true alignment to Source they can come, but the point of alignment is that you no longer need or desire them. A vow of poverty does not need to be a bad thing – and that is something she is unable to understand.

In alignment there is peace, and in peace there is no drama. But peace apparently doesn’t sell, and peace certainly does not provide a supply-feed. She doesn't see you as ‘thrivers’: she sees you as cash-cows and adoring fans – providers of the things she needs.

The message she put out was the truth, in the times when money wasn’t the sole driver, and the irony is that it was following her own guidance that led to me leaving. Guidance she does not follow herself.

The healing also certainly does work. Yet just stop to think for a second. Either her healing is as miraculous as she says and it works - in which case you don't need any other program. Or it doesn't work and so keeping on buying it in different and increasingly hastily-thrown-together packages isn't going to work either.

Additionally, if the 1:1 sessions bring the instant resolution she claims, then you would only need one of them. Astonishing then, how many people were told they needed another 2 sessions. Or more.

And yes, it's lovely if you have the money to treat yourself to more and different healing and live programs – I am not saying they are completely without benefit. But I see too many people putting themselves in financial difficulties chasing after the promised results.

My only regret in leaving is that I also leave behind the community of people who are in thrall to her. You are deserving of support and guidance from those who truly are walking the same pathway, and the last thing you need are the endless finance-driven messages of how you are not enough and need to evolve or be left behind.

You are enough exactly as you are. You do not have to 'go 5D'. Source already sees you as perfect, because you already ARE. Everything you need is within you - your spark of divinity is within and all it needs to free it is your own acceptance and love.

A person so reliant on the worship, adoration, validation and money of others is not going to be of genuine help in teaching you how to do that.

A large part of me wanted to stay silent on this, because I do not want anything to do with her, even the energetic attachment of writing this. But a lie of omission is still a lie.

I neither expect nor need anyone to believe me. I encourage you instead to listen to and trust your own soul.

And that is it done. Completely done. The last clinging MTE tentacle removed, and my conscience is clear - I have warned those with ears to hear.

I heard that another ex-employee - who had been treated pretty badly by her, but is still thoroughly enmeshed - had sent her a screenshot of my post (which is public) and asked her if she was ok. Way to gleefully upset a person so you can then ingratiate yourself but being the one to comfort her! This is the calibre of people around her right now. It prompted her to post a picture on Facebook with #NoFilter. She's blocked, both her personal account and her page, but plenty of people contacted me to let me know!

Which again caused people to see through her. I am apparently 'not her reality' - yet there she is directing her life around something I said. And as if there was no filter!

But that is that. I am going to cut ties with those who are still in contact with her, as I really don't want to hear anything. She's in the past and I don't care whether she soars or plunges into the depths.

However things look on the outside, she's in hell, because she has to live with her real self - like we all do.

The Tip of an Iceberg of Secrets and Lies

Now, I don't remember the dates that these things happened, as I wasn't paying attention really at the time, but I remember knowing things were beginning to go wrong by the time Queen Elizabeth II died on 8th September. Melanie was a lot more in our team chats, and by this time she and Zac had fired a long-standing member of the team, who actually had been causing a lot of problems due to her prickly nature. But that member of staff was very close to Zac, and I think the decision did not sit easy with him.

He was also upsetting other members of the team in one way or another that I am not completely clear on. I know part of it was to do with him wanting to cut people's hours. But this is all very odd, as he never asked me, and I outright wanted to cut my hours, and was offering to do so all the time! He also wasn't open to new ideas, or to giving staff leeway to use their own initiative. Alledgedly. I don't know - I never had any problems with him, so this is all second-hand. 

The other thing that happened was that the Thrive Membership Program that was due to run in September was cancelled at short notice. Luckily, as it turned out.

Then on 14th September, Melanie and Iva had a meeting with Zac, where he was given some sort of ultimatum, and instead he decided to leave. On the 15th September, we had a team meeting where we were told of what had happened, and where people were discussing how they could pick up the slack.

I remember this well, because everyone was talking about all the skills and abilities they had, and the roles they could take on, and I felt really adrift and at sea, because I had no particular skills and abilities. I remember saying that - and adding "but I am a fast learner, a hard worker, and enthusiastic and loyal". Words that haunt me.

We heard Mel's story of what had happened and according to her, he was slowly driving MTE into the ground. He was trying to cut hours to better fund his own lifestyle, including Teslas for him and Ivy, and was stopping Melanie herself from following her intuition. He refused to let her take over the reins and so she sacked him.

Ivy was originally possibly going to stay on (although of course it was a tricky position for her to be in, as Zac's girlfriend), but then Heather (IIRC) found some recurring payments to an external source. These turned out to be to a graphic designer.

Mel's explanation of this is that Ivy had contacted this graphic designer pretending to be Mel, and had used her to do the designs that she then pretended were coming from her. She added in photographs and general chit chat to this lady about her (Mel's) holidays and life etc - so the woman truly believed it was Mel she was talking to.

We were then shown a letter from Ivy, where she confessed to this graphic designer that she had been pretending to be Mel all along, and had used her to make herself look good.

Of course, we were all in shock and horrified that Ivy would do such a thing. Not only was it a betrayal of Mel as an employer, but it was also a huge betrayal of Mel as her future mother-in-law, and Mel repeatedly wailed about how she had loved her like a daughter. 

Unsurprisingly, Ivy left at this point.

It has only been as things have unfolded that we began to doubt this story.

The first thing that didn't add up was that there were varous points in the coming months where Zac and Ivy were threatening Melanie with court. Each time, we would point out that she should threaten them right back with making the contents of Ivy's letter public, and with prosecuting her for impersonating Melanie.

Every time she would say, 'oh, I'm keeping that in my back pocket.' It stayed in that back pocket, however bad the threts from Zac became.

The other thing to bear in mind is that Melanie has all of us act as her at various times. Almost every announcement made on the Forum (unless it is a sales pitch) is made by a member of the team (usually Violet initially, latterly usually me). The emails that go out from Melanie are written by a member of staff - again, this was me by the time Zac left. If you have been contacted by 'Melanie' asking you to become a member of the moderator team, or to give a testimony, it will usually have been Iva. This did become less prevalent after Zac left, as Melanie took over contacting people herself. for testimonies, and I became the person who would reach out to prospective moderators.

There even used to be a 'Melanie's voice' training, to enable people to sound like her.

So I do wonder if Ivy was actually acting under Melanie's instructions, at least initially, and if she was told to write that letter as a condition of her leaving? This is purely conjecture on my part, but this was also the start of Melanie's later narrative that Ivy had been the power behind the throne and had been leading Zac into taking money out of the company.

After all, given the way she treated her own son, blaming the woman she 'loved like a daughter' (when she decided she wanted him back in her life) is certainly not out of character.

On 30th September Zac posted in the MTE Team Skype chat that he was leaving, and thanked everyone for all they had done, said how sad he was to go etc. Only Lily had the inclination or the bollocks to 'heart' his post. Then Melanie came on and laid into him, basically shutting him down and accusing him of all sorts. She has since removed those posts, so I can't say for sure what they said, but Zac saw he was flogging a dead horse and that was the last we saw of him.

As a result of all this, Zac is now No Contact with his mother. But this is not something she will ever mention in public, even though her blog endlessly trumpets how she healed herself, her son and their relationship following their first estrangement in his late teens.

None of us understood that with his departure we lost the final brake on Mel's humungous ego-charge into abuse, money-grabbing and fakery. The signs were there right from this point onwards, but most of us didn't see them - couldn't see them due to our own enmeshment.  

When Dreams Come True

 

I loved being a volunteer moderator for Melanie Tonia Evans's Forum and it really was the very best thing for my own growth. I have already spoken about how I would only use the Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP) modules weekly because of them being so long. But being a moderator and dealing with prickly members meant I had to use them a lot more. 

And to be clear - NARP really does work. There's nothing that I've found that works better than the Quanta Freedom Healings (QFH) that are part of the program. According to Melanie, she channelled QFH whilst lying broken on the ground in a toilet. Or maybe in Koh Samui to overcome agorophobia. It's one of those things where there have been different stories at different times, so the truth is lost somewhere. The first mention of it on her website, according to the Wayback Machine, was in February 2011, when Melanie describes it as being a result of her breakdown/breakthrough experience.

QFH itself is a hodge-podge of techniques, one of which I was familiar with before finding QFH, as it is a common technique used in spiritual development circles. The rest - maybe it is channelled, maybe it is stolen borrowed from others. In her latest description of how QFH came about, Melanie does describe how:

"I was writing down protocols and healing steps. They were things that I knew in regard to Kinesiology and Theta Healing, but there were also things that I didn’t know, which were a deeper timeline aspect, more compartments of the subconscious to access. And there were also Source downloads that were much more impactful, richer, and bigger than I’d been used to."

This is the first time I saw her acknowledge that QFH wasn't all entirely her own invention, so I suspect that many others had recognised the similarities to other healing modalities.

But back to the moderating - I loved feeling helpful to the members, and I loved the community of both the members and especially the other moderators.

A while after I began moderating, Violet Spectre joined the team, and it was obvious from the start that whereas I was pretty invisible, Violet was the MTE darling. She was Melanie's chosen one, and people who have been to any of Melanie's live programs up until the last year will have heard her say herself that 'the channel' told her to have Violet join MTE, that she is her soul sister etc.

But I was fine with being invisible and had a huge enthusiasm for the program and for the Forum. When Melanie visited the UK in February 2019, I went to London for her day long event, even though I had a party to attend that evening so could only stay until mid afternoon. But I really didn't want to miss her.

It was amazing, and truly the energy there shifted something in me - the last little bit of fear I would feel when travelling. At the time I thought this was all to do with Melanie, but now I wonder. But it was the greatest day, and I got to hug many of my fellow mods and thrivers.

In 2019, NARP version 3 came out - and wow! The modules were much shorter (30 minutes each) and I loved them! Ok, so now it included dialoguing with the trauma, which is a craniosacral technique I had mentioned to Melanie in the mods chat a couple of times - but the QFH techniques had always had similarities to craniosacral therapy, as a form of bodywork, so this 'new chanelling' was surely a coincidence? (She's jettisoned that whole aspect now anyway, because people were getting caught up in focussing on their trauma, so it's by-the-by where she got it from).

This was the point where I began using the modules almost daily, and my life really did take off exponentially - a TV appearance, a new house by the sea, a whole new way of life.... Things were growing great - a typo that is actually true, so I've left it!

Then Covid hit.

It took all the joy out of my job (as a physio), and I decided I couldn't continue like this, as my job had become so emotionally draining.

At around this time, I had a Skype chat with Zac (Melanie's son, and the person who was running MTE at the time - not sure what his job title was) and Iva (his deputy) and was then taken on as a paid moderator. This really suited me, and a little later, I saw there was a job going in MTE Support.

I emailed my CV, and Iva basically got in touch to say I had the job. I could not have been happier! This was like a dream - working for Melanie Tonia Evans full time! Such a privilege to be part of her mission to help people to heal from abuse.

After a very lengthy training at MTE and an equally lengthy handover period where I was working as a physio, I began properly working for MTE full time in autumn 2021.

That first year it was great. the workload was manageable (8 or so hours a day - more than 10 hours was definitely frowned upon, even when we were busy), and I was even gradually able to take on bits and bobs to help other people.

I did find it tough only having one day a week off (my day was Friday), but the weekends were generally quieter anyway, although there was usually a blog to post on Sunday nights, which was at 11pm for me. The work was extremely flexible, and we covered for eachother if we had weekends away. For example. I'd often go to meet friends for a weekend, and work first thing in the morning each day, then take the rest of the day off. 

By the time things went wrong, I was working in Support, editing Melanie's articles and YouTube transcripts, and posting them in conjunction with other staff members (Ivy and Heather), which also involved sending out the notification emails and the Forum updates. I had also just begun to do the affiliate emails (notifying members of affiliate events) and affiiate payments.

The people I usually worked with were Iva, who was in charge of me in Support, and Loreto, who was in charge of the affiliates and the blog posts and emails. K and Violet also worked in Support and we worked together to set up and run the live programs, under Zac's supervision

K is the only one I will not name, as for a long time she was the only fly in the MTE ointment. We regularly had 'Support Meetings' which were basically when K would moan about things I had or hadn't done - she just did not like me, it was pretty clear.

As an example, one of her moans was that I 'sent messages when I allocated tickets' - I'd literally been trained to do this, to politely say 'for you and why I have allocated it to you xoxo and emojis'. Which of course needed a meeting and couldn't possibly have been solved by her messaging me on Skype to say 'please don't send me messages when you allocate tickets, thanks'. But no, an hour meeting it was.

I think the underlying problem was that she thought I was depriving her of work hours, when actually I wanted fewer hours - ever since I'd joined, I'd been clear I wanted around 30 hours a week, rather than the 40-50 I was working. 

So this was my mini-cross to bear, and to be fair to K, there were times when she was fine with me, and even almost friendly. But the underlying tension meant that when she became the first domino to fall, I was really glad to be free of her bad juju around me. I didn't stop to think of the ethics of the way it panned out.

But that is all in the future. For now, in Summer 2022, my work at MTE is secure, stable and manageable, and I am blissfully unaware of the drama that is about to unfold. So far as I was concerned, I was living the dream, and had rarely been happier. 

In The Beginning....

 

So to begin with my experiences with Melanie Tonia Evans - my most recent abuse experience, from the beginning...

I first began reading her blog in around maybe 2010? I was reading lots of blogs at the time, trying to make sense of what what happening with me and Steve, and how to put it right. IIRC, at the time, Natalie Lue's Baggage Reclaim blog was my favourite, and is still one of the best relationship sites on the internet.

Whereas Melanie's blog becomes more prominent in my memory in 2012, during a horrible year of court visists to prosecute Steve and hospitals, as Dad became more and more ill and then died. By 2013 I was very on board with her approach, but could not afford her Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP). However, I would do craniosacral therapy on myself and follow her guidance.

In 2014 I had got the money together and bought the program. The healing modules in those days were all at least 2 hours long, and frankly I didn't have that much time available for myself, so I used them about once a week. Of course, I didn't read the instructions, and began with module 9.

It worked great! I would feel so much better each time I used the modules, and NARP became part of the way 2014 was the year of my real recovery and true freedom.

I found that although I came to the program to heal from Steve, I spent far more time shifting my childhood trauma. It had often been suggested to me that my childhood contained the reason for my ongoing depression and anxiety, and also made me vulnerable to predators, but I'd always discounted it - my childhood was completely normal!

It turns out I didn't recall most of it. I loved Christmas and holidays, and those are the parts of my childhood I mostly remember. But there were other memories I would mentally skip over. I don't even want to write about them now. Suffice it to say that my sisters remember even more, and have confirmed that my memories did happen.

I also remember sitting in a safeguarding training about how to recognise possible child abuse. I had to try very hard not to cry, because our childhood qualified as both neglectful and abusive. Or to be more precise - my mother did.

I know why she was the way she was. She had a horrible and traumatic childhood: her mother died when she was very young; she grew up during World War 2, in an area that was frequently bombed; and her father left them with his parents and moved in with another woman, going on to have a whole new family and rarely seeing her and her sister.

And she kept that part of it a secret until I discovered it in the 1990s, because that 'whole other family' only lived 10 minutes away from us.

So it was mostly about my mother that I spoke on the NARP Community Forum, which is the support forum for NARP.

When you read reviews of Melanie's work, you'll see lots of bollocks written about the Forum. It's actually a really great way for people to get support without being mired in victimhood, because it focusses on how to get out of the victim story, and into your body, where the trauma is. There's actually a public blog post about ECHO - the Empowered Code for Healthy Outreach that is used on the Forum, which fully describes why it works so well.

But every so often there would be a member who just wasn't interested in healing, and was only there to vent. Actually, this was common in the early days of people's membership, and the Forum moderators always took that into account. But if it was an ongoing pattern, then yes, a moderator would intervene, unapprove a post, and message the member.

They really were (and are) lenient - for example, until I became a moderator in 2015 or 16, I'd never read the Code of Conduct or ECHO. But I was never unapproved. Even if you were unapproved, all you had to do was edit the post in line with ECHO (and the mods would help as needed), and then your post would be reinstated.

So the people who were removed from the Forum really were hardcore objectionable. People who refused to abide by the CofC or ECHO, people who couldn't take constructive criticism, people too enmired in their pain to recognise help unless it came in a compliant and validating package.

The Forum really was (and is) great guidance and it achieved a huge number of successes. Melanie was striking by her absence though - the whole thing was down to her moderators, and it felt like a massive honour to be asked to be a part of the moderator team.

I gladly accepted, and this was my first step into the whole MTE vortex. 

Every Ending is a New Beginning

 

Today is my one-week anniversary of leaving employment as a support worker for Melanie Tonia Evans, and it’s been as freeing as getting out of any abusive relationship.

I wasn’t due to leave fully for another couple of weeks, as I’d been training my replacement since my resignation in August. The full reasons I resigned will become clear in time, but the final straw was yet more unethical behaviour.

Melanie always made a big deal about how if you purchase her Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP), the you get it for your lifetime, and that includes all updates. So the last big update was in 2019, when the programs transferred to Teachable, although there have been several minor updates done since then.

Last week, a new NARP update – Speedy Shifts – was released (a story in itself and one of the ones I will be telling). but only to NARP Gold members. If NARP Silver members wanted the upgrade, they would have to pay $100 US to upgrade to Gold membership.

As a member of staff, I was only told this AFTER the upgrade had been all over social media, even though I would be the one dealing with all the dissapointed Silver members in Support during training.

My first reaction was ‘well that’s another bunch of tickets I won’t be taking’, as this is what I’d previously done when shady stuff was going on. So far as I was concerned, I was going above and beyond to still be there at all, considering I had no contract keeping me there, and no way was I going to be tainted by the dodgy business practices Melanie was using.

But then I realised it had gone too far, and I no longer wanted to lift a finger for such an unestical company. So I left.

In the intervening hours, I was allowed to upgrade anyone who asked, for free – by my immediate boss.

When someone is a liar, you cannot trust anything they say. That means their promises are worthless, even if they have been making that promise for years, and even if they once kept their promise.

And when a liar claims to be exceptionally spiritually evolved, acting authentically and in alignment with God, well, I think you can see where I’m going with this!

I had no job to go to, either when I resigned, or when I decided I was completely done. That doesn’t matter – because I am in alignment with what is good for my soul and what is truly of God.

I believe that if we follow our calling from a heart-centred place and with a desire to serve humanity in the best way we can, then abundance will follow. I thought Melanie believed that too – it’s what she preaches after all. But no. And weirdly, when I expressed this opinion in a meeting, I was told I was suffering from ‘scarcity consciousness’. Which is bizarre, as what I was expressing was the exact opposite – to focus on the mission and let the money sort itself out. but Melanie is big on projection.

I came to realise that abundance wasn’t the aim for her: she is all about acquisition. And this is where the problems have all stemmed from, and what I believe will be the ultimate downfall of the company unless she truly goes within to heal.

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon” and I’ve made my choice, just as Melanie has made hers.

A Lucid Dream about my Dad

Me with my Dad, November 2011

I began this blog on the death of my Dad in 2012. I can't believe we are coming up to 5 years since he died. 

Last night I dreamed that I went to Dad's house to pick him up for Sunday lunch. I went upstairs to find him, and he was lying in bed with the newspaper over his face, he had fallen asleep reading it. I was worried for a second that he might have died, but when I picked up the paper it woke him up, he was fine. 

He was moaning about having to get ready to go out, and as I was making his bed I was saying, 'Dad, I don't know why you're making such a big deal, you're so much better than you were in the nursing home....' As I said it, I suddenly realised he had been in the nursing home because he was dying, and he had died, and so this must be a dream. I turned around and sat on the bed, and Dad said, 'what's up?' because I was crying. 

'I've realised this is a dream, and I don't want to wake up, I want to stay here with you.' I got up and hugged him and he put up with it (he didn't really do hugs). Sort of patted me on the back and said, 'you soft sod, you know you've got to go to work.' 

I tried to hold onto him, but I woke up. 

I've not let myself think about it all day, but now I'm home from work I keep thinking about it, because I want to remember how it felt, and how lovely it was - it was so real. But it means I can't stop crying. I feel like I've lost him all over again.

Forgiven But Never Forgotten

I admin a group on Facebook for people who have been abused by sociopaths, and the subject of forgiveness came up recently, as it frequently does. This time the discussion was initiated when someone posted this Elephant Journal article to the group. One of the members asked, 'do we have to forgive them?' Interesting question.

I've blogged about forgiveness, or rather my lack of it, in the past - about how for me Steve would always be The Unforgiven. Yet I find that this is no longer true.

Whilst there is no obligation to forgive someone, I have found that as I've moved out of victimhood and into healing and a thriving life, I have forgiven him without particularly trying.

I think part of the problem is that the mantra of 'forgive and forget' causes a lot of misunderstandings about what forgiveness is and what it requires. As I wrote in that previous blog, I truly believed that forgiveness meant wiping the slate clean. That was something I learned from my Mother, ironically a woman constitutionally incapable of saying the word, 'sorry,' and meaning it. I no longer believe that.

Steve's abuse stays fully listed on the slate, and I would no more speak to him in the street than I would poke my own eyes out. He has shown who he is and I have no wish for anyone like that to be in my life.

In reality, forgiveness is pretty well defined in Wikipedia:

Forgiveness is the intentional and voluntary process by which a victim undergoes a change in feelings and attitude regarding an offence, lets go of negative emotions such as vengefulness, with an increased ability to wish the offender well. Forgiveness is different from condoning (failing to see the action as wrong and in need of forgiveness), excusing (not holding the offender as responsible for the action), forgetting (removing awareness of the offense from consciousness), pardoning (granted for an acknowledged offense by a representative of society, such as a judge), and reconciliation (restoration of a relationship).

In certain contexts, forgiveness is a legal term for absolving or giving up all claims on account of debt, loan, obligation, or other claims.

So forgiveness is to stop feeling anger, to stop blaming, to stop requiring repayment. I like that definition.

I bear Steve no ill will. I bear him complete indifference. Occasionally I'll hear of bad things happening to him, and I admit I'll have a little inward smile, because he surely deserves all he has coming to him. But I don't wish bad things to happen to him.

I do disagree with the Elephant Journal article when it gets to the point of talking about how to remain close to an unapologetic person. Why would you want to? A lack of apology is a denial of your reality. Why care for someone who cares so little for you as to do that? It goes back to the Circles of Trust described so well by Natalie Lue - trust can be earned, and trust can be broken, and a non-apology means some broken trust - and an easing away of that person from your circle is a sensible boundary to have.

In the end, though, unless you have forgiven, you haven't let go. Until you let go, the weight of holding on drags you down. Forgiveness actually comes organically from the letting go. One of the reasons people don't want to forgive is because they think that it is 'letting someone off the hook' for what they have done. It isn't, it's letting yourself off their hook finally and completely; it's allowing yourself to move past what they have done; it's breaking another tie that binds you to the abuse.

So in short, the answer to that question of 'do we have to forgive them?' is no, you don't have to forgive. But I believe that if you want to heal, then you have to be open to forgiveness happening, because when you heal, it will.

Breakdowns Can Lead to Breakthroughs

Me in October

I did it again - I never thought I would, I thought I knew the signs, but I did even so. I got addicted to exercise. 

The mad thing is, over summer I was deep in Melanie Tonia Evans' Quanta Freedom Healing and dealing with my eating problems, which involved peeling away no end of hidden layers of self-hatred. But even as I was up-levelling, I didn't notice how I was punishing my body.

It happened so subtly, but looking back, the start of it was my love of Insanity Max30. I adored the whole 'push yourself harder every time' thing - so much so that I began applying it to every workout I had. I had to get further through each time, or lift heavier each time. But there wasn't enough time to keep up my cardio fitness at peak, whilst also keeping my strength at peak too. So the workouts grew longer - half an hour cardio and half an hour weights in the week, then an hour cardio and an hour weights at the weekend. I stopped going out walking so regularly, because it felt like I was wasting time I could be 'pushing myself'. If a day passed when I didn't 'press play', I felt overwhelming guilt - even if I had a headache, or a cold or something. 

So all the parts of the Beachbody ethos that had once motivated me were now tools of my oppression. Meanwhile, my body was failing. 

I'd originally taken up exercise to ensure I was fit enough to work. The original aim was to not feel like an old lady when I woke in the mornings, and to be strong enough to continue working as a physio into my 80s and beyond. That aim was now lost, and there was no aim in sight. No achievement was going to be good enough. I now had an ever-moving 'better, stronger, faster' goal that was always two steps beyond what I was achieving. 

My performance - in fact my entire life - began to suffer. I began to have joint pain on getting out of bed again - every morning. I found I was exhausted by the end of the day. Sometimes I was dreading getting home because of the workouts ahead. I'd end them shaking and feeling faint. I had constant back and neck pain, even in bed, but I couldn't admit this, not least to myself. My body was screaming, but I had closed my ears. I was emotionally in such a good place that I was able to refuse to pay attention to my physical feelings.

Then on Halloween I got ill. And you know the mad thing? I had so lost touch with my body, that I didn't recognise I had a tummy bug, or food poisoning or something. I went into work with diarrhoea and feeling nauseous and feverish because I had decided that I was having - wait for it - a PANIC ATTACK.

I ended up with colleagues telling me to go home, and me just crying and saying I was being stupid and weak. Then I threw up. It was actually a relief, because even I couldn't deny that I was ill. I went home.

When I came out of the fuddle of fever, I looked back at what had happened, and realised I had been punishing my body - because I hated it for being fat. So I've QFHed on that (and on all the pains), and am coming to terms with that whole fat thing. Again, a whole new bunch of hidden self-hatred. But immediately I realised that I wanted to start listening to my body, so I ditched the workouts for a week and began doing yoga, specifically Yoga with Adriene on YouTube.

This is Adriene, and she's sorted me out - for now

I cannot believe how much I love yoga, and how much I love Adriene! She is so personable that she makes me feel happy even when I am contorted into positions that make it difficult for me to breathe. At which point she will usually say 'we'll stay here for three breaths', blithely disregarding how those three breaths are so shallow for me that they take about three seconds. 

After that week, I re-introduced my other workouts. But I don't look to see how far I got last time, or how much I lifted last time. I listen to how far I can go now, today. My weekday routine is now 20-40 minutes of cardio and/or weights, then 15-40 minutes of yoga, to make about an hour a day. At the weekend I go for a walk, or I don't exercise, or I do some more yoga, whatever I feel like doing. If I feel tired in the week, I just do the yoga. It's about listening to me and paying attention to me. 

The neck and back pain has gone. I am more supple already, and stronger on those chaturanga things than I was at the start, which has really surprised me given how many push-up variations I used to do. My energy is back - and it's nearly Christmas! Hooray! New Year, New Me - a me who listens to myself, my Inner Child and my own Body. 

How the RCM Stance on Abortion Could Be A Covert Attack Upon Women's Rights

A 31 week old foetus. 

The Royal College of Midwives' position statement on abortion calls for the decriminalisation of abortion at any stage.

On the face of it, to me it is a madness that defies comprehension. Abortion is already available pretty freely (and in practice, on demand) up to 12 weeks. It is available with further safeguards up to 24 weeks. It is available for medical reasons up to full term.

What IS illegal is self-induced abortion, and abortion by someone other than a registered medical practitioner. The only prosecution I can find anywhere of self-induced abortion outside of Northern Ireland is of a woman who used medication bought online to induce her own abortion in the third trimester, so after 28 weeks.

So what will legalising abortion up to full term, and by anyone, achieve? I think to answer this, we also need to look at attitudes to abortion.

As I was growing up in the 70s and early 80s, if a teenager got pregnant, the assumption was that she would abort the baby. It was one of those things that went unspoken but was known. Having a baby in your teens was frowned upon, and so it very rarely happened. Then this happened:

In 1985, 16 year old Michelle Fowler became pregnant on Eastenders. Against all the odds and expectations, she refused an abortion and went on to have her baby. I don't think it is any exaggeration to say that this was the point where everything changed - the point at which having an abortion as a pregnant teen began to become the frowned-upon option. The time when this attitude began to spread to all abortions, so that 'you've had an abortion' became some sort of shameful abuse you could throw at the 'enemy' on Jeremy Kyle, whereas going through with the pregnancy and struggling to cope with the baby was something that the audience would cheer.

In my own experience, women of the generations that followed my own have become less approving of abortion. The expectation now is that a teenager getting pregnant would be expected to have the baby rather than the abortion - an expectation reflected in soap operas nowadays too - no-one would be shocked at Michelle's decision today. It's almost as though a woman has to have a 'good reason' to not have a baby. Attitudes are hardened in a way the law isn't.

My personal view, if it matters, is that I think we need to get rid if the pussy-footing around and make abortion on demand legal up to 12 weeks. Otherwise I think the law has it pretty much right, although there is a case to be made for lowering the 24-week general limit to 22 weeks, given technological advances. To allow unrestricted abortion up to term is nothing short of legalised infanticide, however you dress it up.

To decriminalise late abortion and abortion outside of medical supervision - well, just who are we trying to help? The mentally ill? The under-age? Those with learning disabilities? The otherwise vulnerable? All of these groups would be treated sympathetically by the courts - IF they were prosecuted. The situation seems to be that if these cases are happening, they are not being brought to court. The potential back-street abortionists and online drug distributors? Surely every woman deserves protection from those? That only leaves the cruel and psychopathic - and of course, everyone likes to think that such people don't exist, but they do. The We Trust Women campaign blithely disregards their very existence. There are women I wouldn't trust with a cat's life, let alone a baby's. Infanticide is rare, but it doesn't mean it should be legal, and so surely the same applies to self-induced late-term abortion? 

So what would happen if this decriminalisation were to take place? Someone like me, who is pro-choice, could no longer enthusiastically take that stance. I would no longer feel able to speak up against the pro-lifers, because I could not justify a law that was allowing abortion of a child. It isn't a foetus if it is capable of surviving birth - it's a baby. It isn't abortion if it is at 38 weeks - it's murder. It's one thing if two doctors say there are good medical reasons for that murder to take place with the mother's agreement. But for a woman to be able to decide that without safeguard or consequence? 

I won't be the only one to feel this way. So what this campaign is doing is fighting for a change in the law that would ultimately harden attitudes AGAINST abortion. That isn't good for women, and the consequences could be frightening, because pro-lifers have a startling propensity to throw the baby out with the bathwater (sorry). What seems to be a stand for women's rights could turn out to be the first step back to the dark ages. 

I can't help thinking it would also be detrimental to the fight for women's rights over their own bodies in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The old 'look, you legalise abortion and it will be a slippery slope down a mountain of dead babies, like in England' argument will be all the more powerful. 

Things are never as simple as they seem. Call me paranoid, but it doesn't mean the establishment isn't out to get us.

Grieving is an Empty Room and an Empty Day

This is Oscar, and on Monday I had him put down. Oscar was 21, and as people who know me will know, he has been a complete arse of a cat for the last 8 years.

Put something on the floor, and he'd piss on it. Shoes, bags, clothes, whatever. He was confined downstairs for that very reason - nothing was safe. In the last few years even putting things on a table was no guarantee - he managed to balance on top of a Vicar of Dibley box set to wee over my sister's Christmas present one year. And of course, there was the famous incident that really needed a cat-shaming photo:

But I've had him since he was a kitten. As my sister likes to point out, 'he lasted longer than your marriage.' He was like a beloved relative that becomes infirm - you don't just abandon them because they piss (and poo, towards the end) everywhere. Even if that means you end up with a litter tray in your living room, right next to the door. Nice.

His passing wasn't a shock - I'd been worried he wouldn't make it to Christmas, and had prepared Son for that fact. But he carried on, despite his thinness. Then last weekend I realised he was really poorly - his breathing was laboured and his paws were swollen. I was half minded to call the vet to put him down then, but Son really didn't want me to, so I didn't. Instead, we had one last weekend, where all he wanted to do was sit with me. This was not the usual Oscar - normally given the choice between me and Son, Son will win every time, because I'm the baddie who shouts at Oscar when he wees on the cooker (for example).

He couldn't jump up onto the sofa so I was having to lift him up. He couldn't support himself on his back legs when he was pooing, so he would lie in the litter tray and get a pooey arse that I tried to clean, but never quite managed. 

On Sunday night, as I lay in bed, I heard him crying. So I spent the night with him. When I left the living room even to go to the loo, he would cry again. 

Monday morning Son said goodbye to him. I took the day off work and called the vet. An hour before the vet arrived, he got off the sofa and drank and ate - up to then I'd been bringing him his water and food, so I wondered if he was somehow recovering. But when the vet arrived, she said no, he was a dying cat. His heart stopped before she finished the injection. 

It was a lovely death really. I was stroking his head, the nurse was rubbing his chin, and he was purring. Then he was gone, bar a bit of twitching, which is apparently just the nervous system dying.

When they had taken him away, I just broke down. I had no idea I would feel that way - I was worse than when my Dad died. 

And now, I just feel so empty all the time. The next day, I really felt like 'what's the point' when I woke up - even though I have a Son, and a great life.I could cry at any moment. 

Every day is just one huge litany of reminders he is gone, from the minute I go into the living room (don't have to push the litter tray out of the way as I open the door) to last thing at night, when I don't have to feed him and drag the litter tray behind the door from the other side of it.

For the first time, I am alone at the weekend when Son goes to his Dad's. The weekends, that was when Oscar would sit with me. I would put the heating on for him, even though I didn't need it, because he was an old chap, and he felt the cold.

I woke up this morning to snow, and I began to rush down to tell Oscar - but of course, he isn't here. Although sometimes it feels like he is - I feel as though he is sitting next to me, or is waiting for his food. 

When Dad died, I found I had a lot of extra time on my hands, because visiting him had taken up so much of my time for a year. With Oscar gone, so has the entire routine of my day, for the last 21 years. No body fluids to clean up, no food to put down, no one to chat to, no one to argue with (we often had our disagreements)

When he was twitching, after being put to sleep, the vet said, 'don't worry, it's just his body remembers what to do and it's going through the motions. It happens a lot with old cats especially, their bodies have so much memory.' I feel like that - he was here for so long that even now I still expect to go through the motions of caring for him daily. The grief feels so raw because there are constant reminders that those actions are pointless now.

I feel like I'm being an idiot because he was 'just a cat'. But he really wasn't. He was my Baby Cat, a constant companion, the only 'person' I would talk to for days at a time, sometimes. He was always there. Without me realising it he had become an intrinsic part of my routine and my life - and my life feels as empty as his chair now he is gone.

RIP Oscar Cat. You git.

Insanity: Max30

Insanity Max30 - Month 1

I've loved Insanity since the first workout I did - the adrenalin rush, Shaun T's motivation, the feeling of achievement - there's no other workout programme that has come near to it. The only downside was that when following the programme I lost strength, especially in my upper body, and put on weight, and it has never shifted. TBH, I haven't made any great attempt at shifting it, I've been too focussed on performance, and to that end I had moved on to a programme of my own devising where I mixed up Insanity with P90X, TapouT and Jillian Michaels, with longer workouts at the weekends that were two or three hours of Davina, or power walking or yoga or a mixture. 

The one problem with my own schedule (and any that include the workouts I've mentioned) is that you need to give about an hour to them. This meant I was quite excited when Shaun T's Focus T25 came out. That excitement didn't last long. I didn't like the music, and more importantly the workouts, whilst not too difficult in themselves, were so fast-moving that for some reason they were really hard on my feet. I have arthritis in my feet and hands, and Focus T25 really flared that up, although I don't think it helped that I had just done the Moonwalk. The modifier was too easy, so I really only use the workouts when I don't have time for anything else - or I combine four or five workouts and modify them for weekend longer sessions. And I still don't like the music.

This time around I really tried not to get overly-excited at the prospect of Insanity Max30 - I mean, could Shaun T really get the same effect in 30 minutes? The answer is a resounding OH YES!

I'm just coming to the end of month 1 - and it has been fantastic. I must admit to being kind of smug going into it. I'm used to ripping through most of the Insanity workouts now - I still get puffed, but I can generally do them better than some of the participants on the DVD (I'm talking about Shanita, Akeel(sp?) and Josh at least). Max 30 is only half the time - so surely I could do at least half of that before maxing out?

The idea of the workouts is you go as hard as you can until you can't go any more. That is your max out time, and you note it down. The Cardio Challenge workout is your fit test also. I managed 7 minutes 40. The shame!

So in the last four weeks I have followed the programme and I have improved massively on all the workouts except the Cardio Challenge - I still hover around the the 8.30 mark. In contrast, I can make to 24.30 on the Tabata Strength workout, more than double my starting max on that one. I have definitely improved massively in my cardio ability though, and I'm not so aware of loss of muscle as I was with Insanity. It is CRAZILY difficult though.

However, don't be put off if you haven't exercised before, because there is a modifier to each exercise, and you can choose an option to have them on-screen (split screen) throughout. So this is a programme that can easily grow with you.

The bit I like the best is that it is such a rush to do. I feel euphoric at the end of each workout, and have had emotional releases at the end of every Sweat Interval workout, it is completely amazing. Also, the Abs workout, whilst only being 10 minutes long, is the most challenging to the abs I have ever experienced - I haven't managed without multiple rests at all, and often max at under two minutes!

The weak points - well, the warm up is short (and just as intense as Insanity), and thre is a distinct lack of stretching. Even the Pulse DVD uses mostly dynamic stretching, and I'm just not convinced that dynamic stretching can stretch large muscle groups in the same way that prolonged stretching when you are warm can. To that end, I do half an hour of yoga stretching after a workout at the weekend. I think the programme would have really benefitted from a pure stretch DVD - maybe a 30 minute stretch option in place of the Pulse DVD, and a ten minute stretch to use more regularly, along the same lines as the one after the warm-up in Insanity. But this is a minor quibble, and one I get around easily enough - another option I use is to hold the Pulse stretches for longer and ignore what's going on on the DVD.

Added bonus? I got on the scales today with complete trepidation, really feeling I needed to shock myself into action after a week of binge eating and other extreme cake consumption (it's been an emotionally trying time for various reasons). I've lost weight. I'd thought my jeans had stretched!

So on the whole, I cannot fault this programme - you HAVE to try it. I got mine at a bargain price of £60 off ebay - well worth the money. I know I'm going to do at least one more full round after this, there is so much variety (month 2 is another set of DVDs) that I haven't got used to the workouts at all yet. There's a bit in the Sweat Intervals where Shaun T says, 'how are you feeling?' and every time I just shake my head cos I am so exhausted, and he goes, 'no, seriously, answer me.' I never remember until he says it :-)

It's also making me wonder about how worthwhile it is to give an hour a day to fitness if half an hour can achieve a better result. I wonder if the same would be true for a weight-lifting programme, and I'm thinking I might have to try out P90X3 too. More results in less time - that would be a real win.

Got to get through month 2 first though. I really am a bit feared of what those workouts will be like - how can it get any harder?

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, I love, love, LOVE the music - similar to Insanity, and maybe even more motivating. Hooray!