According to the Australian Dental Association, tooth decay is one of the most common childhood diseases. It affects 50% of children under the age of six, causing pain, discolouration, and even tooth loss. But it’s never too early to start teaching your children proper oral care.
When it comes to teaching your kids proper dental care, most dentists agree: the sooner, the better. And studies now show that the development of healthy teeth increases social confidence, academic success, and overall health later in life. This is why it is necessary to help your child establish healthy oral habits while they are still young.
In fact, oral hygiene begins before your baby has even started to teethe. Gently wipe around the gum line and beneath the lips with a soft, damp cloth at least twice a day to remove excess food. Make sure to use a clean cloth each time to avoid introducing new bacteria. This helps to prevent damage to emerging milk teeth while getting your little one accustomed to having their mouth cleaned.
The development of healthy teeth increases social confidence, academic success, and overall health later in life.
It is especially important to clean their mouth after feeding. In bottle-feeding, milk is released into the front of the mouth and pools around the teeth. If a baby falls asleep with a bottle, the teat continues to leak milk which fills the gumline with liquid. In breastfeeding, however, milk is released directly into the back of the throat which causes the baby to swallow.
Moreover, there is new research to suggest that breastfeeding protects against tooth decay, while formula plays a role in its development. The antibodies and proteins in breastmilk have been found to reduce the growth of bacteria, including Streptococcus mutans, the bacterium responsible for tooth decay. Formula, on the other hand, has been shown to dissolve tooth enamel and significantly reduce pH levels which causes bacteria and caries to develop.
Breastfeeding protects against tooth decay, while formula plays a role in its development.
A breastfed baby is also less likely to suffer from tooth discolouration caused by excess fluoride. Ironically, this is because formula is usually made using boiled tap water which contains added minerals to protect the public from tooth decay.
As well as the continuing benefits to the health of mother and child, breastfeeding promotes optimal jaw and tooth development. A breastfed child is less likely to suffer from crooked teeth, and the longer the child is breastfed the greater the reduction in risk. This is because the motion of the mouth and muscles while sucking can influence tooth alignment even after milk teeth have been replaced by permanent teeth.
The same issues can arise from prolonged thumb and dummy sucking. These motions can eventually produce an anterior open bite – where the top and bottom front teeth do not meet when biting down. Vigorous sucking with baby teeth can have long-term adverse effects. Children with open bites have a higher chance of developing a lisp, more difficulty eating certain foods, and are at greater risk of fracturing back teeth. Parents should help their children to curb these habits before age five. The American Dental Association points out that if the behaviour stops before permanent teeth come in, the bite can self-correct.
Breastfeeding promotes optimal jaw and tooth development.
Even if your child kicks the habit early, a misaligned bite can simply be genetic. Orthodontics Australia recommend that children between the ages of 7-10 years visit a specialist orthodontist for an assessment – no referral from a dentist is needed. It is better to get braces while your child is still young, between the ages of ten and fourteen, when the head and mouth are still developing. At this stage, the teeth and jaw bones are much more adaptive to change which reduces treatment time, possible risk of complications, and in more extreme cases, the need for surgery.
If you start to notice anything out of the ordinary, make sure to book a dentist appointment for a thorough check-up straight away. But in general, it is time for a dental visit when your baby’s first tooth becomes visible, or they reach twelve months old – whichever comes first.
By acting early, you will set your child up not only for better oral health, but better overall health in adulthood. The benefits will last a lifetime.
Demand for crystals has never been higher. But many can be traced back to dangerous origins in some of the world’s poorest countries. With little evidence to prove the industry will change any time soon, some wellness trends appear to be causing more harm than good.
Adele performs with them, Miranda Kerr sleeps with them, Victoria Beckham won’t leave her house without them. It appears that crystals have officially entered the mainstream. When Gwyneth Paltrow introduced her infamous Yoni Eggs – rose quartz and jade eggs designed to be inserted into the vagina and activated by “a Kegel-like physical practise” – the scientific community went nuts. She initially claimed that the eggs could be used to boost feminine energy by balancing hormones and regulating menstrual cycles, eventually leading to a (USD) $145,000 false advertisement lawsuit. Her website, Goop, now suggests using the eggs to feel better connected with your body.
Goop is a wellness and lifestyle brand and company founded by actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 2008. In the past decade, Goop has grown into a multinational powerhouse valued at more than US$250 million.
International NGO Global Witness found that the Taliban earns up to $20m a year from Afghanistan’s lapis lazuli mines.
But believers say that crystals do have the power to make real change. When used correctly, crystals are said to conduct positive energy which redress imbalances in the body, mind, and spirit. Non-believers, on the other hand, argue that any changes felt are simply down to the placebo effect – an immensely powerful tool in itself. At worst, they say, crystals will do nothing at all. But crystals aren’t exactly harmless. Like diamonds, the crystal mining industry is rife with conflict and exploitation.
Kachin State in northern Myanmar produces 70% of the world’s jade. It is a $31 billion industry there – nearly half of the nation’s GDP – and is now controlled by a corrupt military junta known as Tatmadaw. In fact, the industry fuelled the Tatmadaw’s rise to power in February 2021, when the group deposed the National League for Democracy (NLD) in a violent coup d’état.
Workers searching for jade in a mining site in Hpakant.
The military coup has made reform in the industry near impossible. As one of the main beneficiaries of jade wealth, the Tatmadaw have little incentive to continue implementing the legal framework put in place by the NLD. This has had devastating environmental and social consequences.
Keel Dietz, the Myanmar policy advisor for Global Witness, says that “the military, in their desperate efforts to maintain control, will look to the country’s natural resource wealth to sustain their rule, to buy weapons, and enrich themselves.”
He goes on to say that “The primary concern is really the destruction of the local environment and displacement of local people. Mining happens right in the middle of villages, and they move the entire village out. Sometimes so they can blast huge areas with dynamite so they can harvest the jade.”
Aerial view of a mining site in Hpakant. Taken by Zaw Moe Htet for The Guardian.
The mines are made especially narrow and deep to maximise space, making them prone to landslides which occur almost daily. In July 2020, a major landslide in the Hpakant region of Kachin State killed at least 200 miners in the nation’s deadliest recorded mining accident. The actual death toll will never be known, as most of the bodies will be left under heaps of rubble – only to be discovered years later, in search of yet more jade.
“At first it was so scary for me,” says one worker. “But it’s becoming natural … We started [to accept] that we could die in any situation.”
Most miners are unregistered labourers living in make-shift shelters, who come from all over Myanmar in the hope of finding a fortune. Their testimonies reveal a destructive environment in the community around the mines, with endemic heroin addiction, high rates of HIV, and the abuse of young women and girls.
“There are no jobs in Hpakant for women except for working as a maid or in a massage parlour,” says a 26-year-old woman living in the community. “The parlours are fronts for brothels, and many, many women are sexually abused.”
Buyers check the quality of large jade stones at the annual gem stone exposition in Naypyidaw, 2016
And it isn’t just Myanmar that is facing this issue. Mineral extraction is linked to severe human-rights violations and environmental harm across the developing world.
In Afghanistan, Global Witness has found that the Taliban and other armed groups earn up to $20 million a year from ancient lapis mines. They produce almost all the world’s blue lapis lazuli – supposedly one of the best stones for activating the mind. It accounts for the second largest source of income for the Taliban, and if left unchecked will drive further corruption, conflict, and extremism across the country.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where children are forced to work in the cobalt and copper mines, other stones such as citrine and smoky quartz are found as by-products. These precious stones, thought to bring positivity, are then bought by Western retailers and sold at a huge mark-up to the consumer.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, seven-year-old children work in the cobalt and copper mines, where crystals are found as a by-product.
Congolese workers search for rough diamonds in a Kangambala mine in Lunged, in the south west region of Kasai in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo taken by Lynsey Addario for Time Magazine, 2015.
But it’s hard to find a retailer who can specify the origins of individual stones, let alone find ones that are ethically sourced. Besides, there are no laws that require them to do so.
As the crystal market continues to grow, so does the need for change. In 2000, campaigning from organisations such as Global Witness fuelled a resolution from the United Nations to regulate the diamond trade. The establishment of the Kimberley Process in 2002 virtually eliminated blood diamonds and associated conflicts. It’s possible that the government could bring in similar regulations for crystals.
For now, the future of the industry depends on consumer behaviour. When demand starts to change, so too will supply.
Here’s what you can do to help:
Compare prices across shops and avoid the lowest-priced crystals.
Ask sellers about the origins of their products. If they can’t give you a straight answer, look elsewhere.
Talk to your friends and family about crystal mining issues to spread awareness.
Write letters to government officials advocating for stricter labour and mining laws.
In 2016, 20-year-old Lucy Dawson was sectioned for an apparent mental breakdown. Even though she had all the classic symptoms of encephalitis, she was misdiagnosed and left in a psychiatric ward until it was almost too late.
But medical negligence in women’s health is nothing new. Read Lucy’s story and the history behind it.
For centuries, doctors diagnosed women with “hysteria” – a condition characterised by emotional excess. In Western medicine hysteria was considered both a common and chronic disorder among women. Some of its symptoms included sexual desire, irritability, depression, and anxiety. In extreme cases, women diagnosed with “hysteria” were forced into insane asylum’s or underwent horrific and irreversible surgical procedures such as lobotomy or hysterectomy without consent.
The notion that women are somehow pre-disposed to negative behavioural conditions goes back to Ancient Greece, when the womb was thought to wander around the body and cause trouble wherever it went. This theory was rejected with the advancement of modern medicine, but the connotations persisted in Western popular thought for centuries. Today, researchers of medical history point to evidence that hysteria was simply a way to pathologize “everything that men found mysterious or unmanageable in women”.
They were mutilated or molested – clitorises cut off when sexual pleasure was deemed to be the cause, or ‘medically stimulated’ into orgasm when sexual pleasure was deemed to be the cure.
Supposed ‘cures’ usually involved punishment intended to turn a difficult woman into a docile one. They were mutilated or molested – clitorises cut off when sexual pleasure was deemed to be the cause, or ‘medically stimulated’ into orgasm when sexual pleasure was deemed to be the cure. Hysterectomies and oophorectomies were unnecessarily performed – often without the patient’s consent – with the intent to sterilise reproductivity and neutralise hormonal fluctuations. Not to mention the dreaded ‘resting cure’ which inspired a short story so psychologically tormented that it convinced the pioneer physician to abandon it as a form of treatment altogether.
While hysteria is no longer recognised as a medical disorder, women are far more likely than men to be told their symptoms are psychosomatic or the result of a mental illness. The implications of this can be devastating.
Lucy’s Story
Lucy Dawson photographed in 2021 by Christopher Thomond for The Guardian
In 2016, 20-year-old Lucy Dawson was sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983 for an apparent mental breakdown. Even though she presented with all the classic symptoms of encephalitis, including confusion, personality change, hallucinations, and headaches, she was misdiagnosed and left in a psychiatric ward for three-and-a-half months.
During her time there, Lucy was given electroconvulsive therapy in a last-ditch effort to reset her brain, causing a seizure which made her fall out of bed onto an exposed radiator pipe.
Lucy recalls, “It was the end of November, so the pipe was as hot as it was ever going to be, and I lay on it half dead and having just had ECT, until an old lady screamed for help.”
Anti-psychotic medication had turned her from manic to catatonic, so she was unable to move or call for help on her own. When nurses finally discovered her, it was too late. She suffered third degree burns and was inexplicably paralysed in her left leg. Staff members falsely attributed this injury to one of many violent ‘breakdowns’ when friends and family started to ask questions.
Lucy Dawson Photographed in 2021 at Cleethorpes Beach
In January 2017, Lucy was finally seen by a neurologist and tested for brain injuries. It was only then that she was diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a type of autoimmune disease where the body attacks otherwise healthy receptors in the brain. Lucy explains, “They call it friendly fire because your immune system identifies antibodies and healthy cells in the brain as being bad and attacks them.” This time, doctors explained that her paralysis was just another symptom of her disease.
Anti-psychotic medication had turned her from manic to catatonic; when nurses discovered her it was too late.
But Lucy was still not satisfied. She decided to hire a lawyer after being discharged from hospital and saw several specialists for her leg – none of whom could offer a real explanation. One day, a locum noticed the position of the scar the burn had left and checked it against a diagram for the sciatic nerve. It suddenly became very clear: the radiator had burned right through it. The damage was irreversible.
Since then, the hospital has apologised and launched a “robust internal investigation” to improve their standard of care for future patients. But Lucy insists nothing could ever make up for the physical and emotional trauma she endured at their hands.
Lucy Dawson photographed in 2021 by Christopher Thomond for The Guardian
Lucy is now a British ambassador for disabled modelling and works to increase representation in the industry. She says that her success as a lingerie model “came out of nowhere. Because I’ve got quite a curvy figure, brands were interested and that became my niche.” She goes on to say that helping other disabled women to reclaim their sexuality “makes me feel what I do is worthwhile.”
In the five years that have passed, Lucy has encountered countless women with stories just like hers from all over the world. Australia is no exception.
One in three women has had their health concerns dismissed by their general practitioner according to the latest figures from the Australia Talks National Survey 2021. It found that women were twice as likely to feel dismissed as men.
For instance, endometriosis affects one in nine women in Australia, but it usually takes six-and-a-half years to get a diagnosis.
“We literally know less about every aspect of female biology compared to male biology” – Dr. Janine Austin Clayton, director of the US Office of Research on Women’s health.
Research shows that health care providers prescribe less pain medication to women than men after surgery. In general, women report more severe levels of pain, more frequent incidences of pain, and pain of longer duration than men, but are nonetheless treated for pain less aggressively.
“It’s a huge issue in medicine,” says Dr. Tia Powell, a bioethicist and a professor of epidemiology and psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Medical professionals may hold implicit biases that affect the way that women are treated, she said. “Medical schools and professional guidelines are starting to address this problem, but there is still much to be done.”
Karen Magraith, a GP and president-elect of the Australasian Menopause Society, said the gender gap extended beyond reproductive health issues.
“We have evidence heart disease in women is not recognised as early, not treated as effectively and women receive less evidence-based treatments than men do. I think that’s a good example of where women’s health is not as effectively treated as men’s health,” she said.
One of the main reasons for this is that women have been historically underrepresented in clinical trials for new drugs, treatments, and devices in Australia and across the world. And in the few instances where women have been included, the influence of sex and gender is often ignored. As a result, women are more likely to be withheld effective treatment and exposed to harmful side effects – including a higher incidence of adverse reactions when new (and insufficiently researched) drugs hit the market.
The result? “We literally know less about every aspect of female biology compared to male biology,” says Dr. Janine Austin Clayton, director of the US Office of Research on Women’s health.
It would seem that women are just too hard to study. For decades, women were excluded from clinical drug trials based on the unsubstantiated belief that fluctuations in hormones associated with the menstrual cycle would make results more difficult to analyse. When thalidomide was found to cause serious birth defects in the 1970s, women of childbearing age in the US were banned from participating in clinical research studies in order to ‘protect’ their reproductive capabilities. Even though this ban was lifted in 1993, and the inclusion of women was mandated in government-funded research, drug companies were not required to comply.
A 2008 report found that Australian Human Rights and Ethics Committees (HRECs) failed to enquire about the numbers of male and female participants in clinical trials. The same report showed that opinions were also divided on whether research cost and convenience justified excluding women from research.
But organisations like the George Institute are calling for policy reform in order to standardise the way sex and gender is collected in clinical trials in Australia. Their demands include gender specific reporting in academic journals and a more equitable balance of female and male patients in clinical trials.
In response to such demands, a spokesperson for the Department of Health pointed to the $535 million package set aside for female health as part of the 2021-2022 national budget. It serves to improve cervical and breast cancer screening programmes, provide Medicare subsidies for testing of IVF embryos for genetic faults, increase support for the mental wellbeing of new and expectant parents, and boost women’s health initiatives including the Periods, Pain and Endometriosis Program (PEPP-Talk) developed by the Pelvic Pain Foundation of Australia.
However, this package amounts to less than $46 for every woman over the age of 15. More can be done to help.
What You Can Do
Standard consultations at the GP last just 15 minutes. Here’s how to make sure your health concerns are heard.
Come Prepared
Plan what you intend to talk about before you arrive for your appointment. Write down any concerns and questions so you don’t forget. Be specific.
Tell Your Story
According to Leana Wen, MD, author of When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests, “doctors end up asking about symptoms rather than the story. But studies have shown that over 80% of diagnoses can be made just by listening… By that, they mean listening to the story, the open-ended story of what happened, rather than asking a list of yes-no questions”
Be sure to mention:
When the symptoms started
Whether any life event/action coincided with the onset of symptoms
Whether the symptoms have appeared before
Describe how it feels
Whether the pain has increased/decreased
How often you feel the pain
Take Someone with You
If you are dealing with a particularly complex issue, have a condition that makes it difficult to discuss alone, or are particularly vulnerable, it might be appropriate to bring a patient advocate or a loved one along to an appointment.
Request a Female Doctor
Studies show that female doctors tend to listen more and their patients — both male and female — tend to do better.
Be Direct
If you still feel like you’re being dismissed, tell your doctor how you feel. Express concern that you are not being properly heard. A good physician should be able to listen and take your problems seriously.
Sun exposure is the number one cause of skin ageing. So how does it happen and what can you do to reverse the damage?
Up to 90% of visible ageing is attributed to sun exposure. This means that the expensive eye cream you treated yourself to last month is useless if you’ve not layered a good amount of SPF underneath. A quarter of a teaspoon is recommended for the face, and another quarter for the neck. Yes, even in the winter.
SPF is the number one anti-wrinkle, anti-dark spot, anti-sagging product available. And research has shown that it’s never too late to start protecting your skin. Even people with significant sun damage who started using a broad-spectrum sunscreen later in life saw a noticeable reduction in every visible sign of ageing.
UVA radiation can penetrate through clouds and glass, so it should be worn even when it’s raining and while inside.
Here’s where it gets a little more scientific.
There are two types of ultraviolet (UV) radiation that reach the surface of the earth from the sun. UVB rays are mostly responsible for producing sunburn, while UVA rays are mostly responsible for premature ageing. It is important to make sure your sunscreen offers broad spectrum protection from both.
Since UVA rays are longer than UVB, they penetrate deeper into the dermis where they damage the collagen fibres. This causes photo-ageing characterised by wrinkling, roughness, dryness, loss of firmness, and pigmentary changes.
Wearing sunscreen everyday can do more than prevent skin cancer. Studies show that it is the most powerful tool against anti-ageing. According to a large study undertaken by Australian researchers, regular use of sunscreen has been shown to prevent photo-damage by 24%. In theory, this would mean that if you wore sunscreen every day, then by the age of 50 you would look 38.
Truck driver William McElligott’s face is a graphic example of long-term sun damage. The left-hand side of the truck driver’s face was exposed to the sun through the window, the other shaded in the cab.
SPF 30 is more than twice as effective as SPF 15. Anything over SPF 50 will not provide any extra protection.
To reap these benefits, make sure that your sunscreen offers protection of SPF 30 as a minimum and wear it every single day. SPF 30 blocks 97% of UVA and UVB rays, while SPF 15 blocks 93%. While this may not seem like such a large difference, consider it this way: SPF 15 allows through 7% of UV radiation, while SPF 30 allows just 3%.
This means that SPF 30 is more than twice as effective as SPF 15. Anything over SPF 50, however, will not provide any extra protection.
Remember that UVA radiation is able to penetrate through clouds and glass, so it should be worn even when it’s raining and while inside. And working from home is no excuse. Incidental sun exposure accounts for 80% of lifetime sun exposure, meaning that the days you plan on spending time outside – going to the beach, or a long hike – accounts for just a fraction of total skin damage.
In a twin study on ageing in America, it was determined that Susan (right) looked 11.25 years older than her sister Jeanne (left). Susan has spent as much time as she could in the sun, averaging 10 hours outside more per week than Jeanne. Jeanne, however, has aimed for “as little sun exposure as possible” over the years.
Regular use of sunscreen has been shown to prevent photo-damage by 24%. Theoretically, this would mean that if you wore sunscreen every day, then by the age of 50 you would look 38.
That is why it is important to get into the habit of applying sunscreen as part of your morning routine. Activities like walking to your post box or hanging out the laundry accumulate damage over time, which all adds up to mean extra wrinkles that could have been avoided.
To increase your sunscreen’s efficacy, layer it over Vitamin C serum in the morning after cleansing. Vitamin C will provide a protective barrier against oxidative stress by slowing the ageing process.
Rising Womanfounder Sheleana Aiyana discusses how a spiritual awakening led her on a journey to self-acceptance and how her relationships have evolved along the way.
A conscious couple starts with a conscious individual. This is something that Sheleana Aiyana, founder and visionary of Rising Woman, found out the hard way. After a painful divorce in her early 20s, she was awakened to the traumas in her childhood which contributed to the total breakdown of her relationship. Since then, Sheleana has been committed to her own emotional development so that she can be better serve herself and others. Sheleana is now happily re-married and practises consciousness to make sure it stays that way.
Growing up in and out of foster homes, and without a father-figure present in her life, Sheleana admits that for too long she had no idea what a healthy relationship even looked like, let alone how to be a part of one. This led to a string of interactions with “unsafe partners” before finally letting go of the pain she had long suppressed.
As part of her spiritual transformation, Sheleana initially sought the guidance of a mentor to help resolve her abandonment issues. She was taught how to use inner child, shadow, and ancestral work to reconnect with the damaged parts of herself. Armed with the proper psychological tools, Sheleana was soon able to find peace and reclaim control over her life.
We are each responsible for our own happiness
After spending four years as an apprentice in transpersonal group-work containers and depth psychology, Sheleana now co-facilitates women’s groups and relationship workshops to help get others on the right track. She is trained in imago couples’ facilitation, tantra, couples work, somatic healing, and is even certified as a full-spectrum birth doula.
Her philosophy is that all relationships must start with the self before they can be extended out to include another. It is only after building a strong foundation of self-acceptance that we can bring someone else into our lives. By piecing together the broken parts of ourselves, we come to realise that we were whole all along, and did not need to be completed by anyone else.
This means that we are each responsible for our own happiness in a relationship – and it does not always have to be romantic. Platonic and professional relationships function in very much the same way. This is called being in a “conscious relationship”.
Sheleana explains, “Being conscious in a relationship is not a whole lot different than a conventional relationship other than the fact that we no longer see our partner as somebody who is designed to meet all of our needs.” They are there instead as a “partner in life and as an ally in healing … but also act as our spiritual teacher”.
By recognising a partner as an individual, and by supporting their individuality, it becomes possible to ease the burden of responsibility in a relationship. Sheleana suggests we are each responsible for our own emotional needs. Rather than depending solely on a partner to provide a particular feeling – be it happiness, or love, or a sense of worth – all of this you can (and should) provide for yourself.
But this doesn’t mean to say we shouldn’t expect a partner to provide these feelings for us. Rather, it is our responsibility to ensure our own needs are met before giving to another. This helps liberate couples from the unrealistic expectations held in society that they must ‘complete’ one another.
Sheleana uses an argument with her husband as an example of how to practice consciousness. When he “triggers something in me, that’s my opportunity to bring it in a vulnerable way and to invite him to do a healing process with me, or for me to take space to go and process that in myself.” Whereas in a conventional relationship, “If my husband triggers me then there’s something he did wrong and there’s something he needs to do in order to fix me so that I can feel better”.
A fundamental part of practicing relationship consciousness is to witness your own thoughts and behaviour and try to understand where it comes from. If your reactions are rooted in trauma, then it is important to recognise and reflect on them from another perspective so that they can be unlearnt. This is because unresolved trauma can lead to co-dependent relationships.
A co-dependent relationship is a type of dysfunctional relationship where one person doesn’t have self-sufficiency or autonomy. This often translates to one partner taking advantage of the other and is not good for either.
We’re not responsible for saving other people
The family systems we were exposed to as children taught us how to form and maintain bonds as adults. While some were able to develop healthy attachments to their caretakers, others might have learned co-dependency as a result of emotional or physical neglect. This can lead to attachment and abandonment issues in adult relationships.
Relationship consciousness actively works against co-dependency by dismantling the patterns of caretaking. Co-dependent people learn to put the wants and needs of others ahead of their own and sacrifice their own feelings in order to maintain these relationships. This is especially problematic in cases where the partner is abusive or suffering from an addiction. Independent people, however, know that it is not selfish to prioritise themselves before others.
Sheleana asserts, “We’re not responsible for saving other people.” Rather, “One of the most beautiful gifts we can give people when they are suffering … is to remind them of their own power” and capacity to heal on their own. To withhold this gift would be to withhold the catalyst for change.
It is possible to provide support to others while maintaining strong boundaries with ourselves. Sheleana says, “This isn’t to say that we don’t want to support people if they’re struggling” but that we need to “put our care and our own primary needs at the forefront as well, otherwise we’re just self-abandoning.” While it may seem selfless, it is actually a destructive coping mechanism to fixate on someone else’s problems and disregard your own.
According to Sheleana, “That’s a great way to distract from our own emotions. If I’m so focused on saving someone, I don’t have to think about my own my own trauma or my own feelings of unworthiness”.
By identifying our own boundaries and setting them firmly with others, we choose not to self-abandon. It is important that we stand up for ourselves. For example, “If we have plans and then we just cancel them because somebody that we are romantically interested in is inviting us out on a date and we just ditch all of our friends,” then we are self-abandoning by prioritising someone else.
It is important to determine what red flags to look out for in a relationship. Setting hard lines make it easier to identify and leave toxic behaviour which might have been normalised in the past. But Sheleana stresses the difference between an unhappy relationship and an abusive one. She says, “In our culture we tend to leave a relationship too early because we’re looking for perfection.” While abuse should never be tolerated, continued bickering and arguments might just be a result of poor communication. Sometimes a couple must learn how to emotionally re-connect with each other before walking away.
Speaking of how she entered her current relationship, Sheleana says, “We wrote lists, we revealed our traumas to each other, we shared life stories, we qualified what kind of relationship we wanted to build, what we needed, what we were afraid of, and the things that we still need to work on within ourselves. We sat in front of each other and asked, ‘Are you ready to do this work?’ and we both agreed.” This intensive process allowed them to locate and establish other’s boundaries; they started to become ‘conscious’.
Today, more than a decade has passed since Sheleana began spiritual seeking and she uses her relationship experience and knowledge to help guide others. Her uplifting book, Becoming the One, explores her own journey to self-acceptance and reveals how to transform pain into power.
Watch the full interview below or on our YouTube channel.
