Healing Image Hi With Eva May – “Healing Image HI” And The Story Behind It

Hello, I'm Eva May, and I'd like to welcome you to this, the second broadcast in my series, which is called Healing Image High for the Women's Radio Station. Healing Image High is something that I never thought would be a project like this. I now have a website, healingimagehigh.com, and it was only ever meant to be a a project or some help for myself. I'm a survivor of historic childhood sexual abuse, and that has impacted on my mental health and my physical health for— since I was about 19, which is when I was first diagnosed with clinical depression. So that's about 35 years now of my life But 6 years ago, I decided that I wanted some help with my image, which was something that none of the people I'd ever seen or the facilities that I'd ever been to had helped. It wasn't even discussed. But I decided that I'd had enough of looking at my friends, looking at my kids, looking at people in the street who I don't even know, or anywhere I happen to be. That they looked so amazing. They had things on their skin that I wanted. They had done their hair in a way that I wanted, and they were wearing clothes and carrying things off and accessorizing like I wanted. So Healing Image High is my story about how that happened for me. First of all, I want to just discuss what's happening right now because of the COVID pandemic with people working from home. I am at home and I am broadcasting from home, so it's not a normal situation for a new presenter to suddenly have to record from home. Most of my guests that I've got during this series are people that I have met and I know. So that makes the conversation a little easier, knowing those people. But ideally, it would be great to have them sitting with me so that when I'm having conversations with them, that it would make it a little easier to do a really good authentic broadcast. Today's is just me by myself, so I have two pieces of paper stuck on this door telling my family that I am on air and that I do not want to be disturbed for anything, unlike last time when I got asked if we had anything for mouth ulcers in the medical cabinet in the bathroom. And then I had a second interruption where they wanted to let me know that they were going out. I was delighted they were going out, but I really didn't need to be informed of it, so I had to start all over again. So I was always known for many years, and it wasn't meant to be unkind, it was true, as wet hair and no makeup. And that was true, and that is as an adult, a grown woman, a mother, a wife. My children are all grown adults now. I had friends, everybody looked amazing, But me, I would be sitting waiting to go out, I had something that was probably quite nice that I was wearing but I hadn't really made any relationship with what I was wearing. Obviously I had to wear something, I quite like, I know what I like when I see it so I buy it, but I had never really felt comfortable with it being part of me, it would be I hope this looks nice, I hope this is what people see, and the wet hair, no makeup went on for years, and it was true, but I didn't understand or get the concept of what getting ready meant, and I decided for my mental well-being that it would be the thing that I needed to try and get some help with. So this is my story about that. The other thing I want to say is that 5 months ago, in June 2021, I had quite a major operation on my face. I needed a bilateral jaw joint replacement, so that is what I'm speaking to you with now. So I went through this surgery that Through little minor surgeries, I've managed to avoid for about 7 years, but the time had come where my bone jaw had given up. It had sort of crumbled away. It was totally arthritic. I got no cartilage left anymore. Speech was difficult, eating was difficult. I was in a lot of pain. I wasn't able to use my electric toothbrush anymore because the pain was so bad. So in June this year, I underwent an 8-hour surgery. My— both my jaw joints are now medical-grade titanium, which in itself was a lot for me. If you have surgery, it's so important that you don't get any infections, and for me, having this done where they've actually taken out bone that can't be replaced and they're fitting bespoke pieces. Any infection would have meant that I would have lost the metal and there wasn't a plan B. So 5 months on, my new jaw and I are getting along quite well together. It does affect my speech, it does affect how I articulate words, so I hope that, um, you can understand me well enough. For this time. It has things that I never realized that I do, and it was pointed out to me actually 2 days ago when I was speaking to somebody and we were discussing the word receptive. Now she thought I'd said deceptive, which clearly has a completely different meaning, and I'm so glad she came back at me with it because I then was able to explain that actually my jaw it does give me a little bit of a problem still with speech. So please, I hope that you can understand that my, um, my jaw is actually meant to take between 12 and 18 months to really sort of fully settle in. I also have scarring, which I'm fine about. It's absolutely fine. And I've got a couple in particular that are underneath my jawline where they actually have to bolt the pieces together, so that's like the anchor. It's a really rare operation. Only 10 people in the UK, surgeons, can actually carry this out, and I think I must have got one of the best because he's been— it's just been a totally great support I've had right from the word go, and the surgery went incredibly well, and I recovered fairly quickly. Apart from just having tiredness with speaking, and I still have a little bit of trouble with eating. But I don't think I would have recovered as well if I hadn't thought about my image and hence my Healing Image High project. Any scarring to my face before would have been absolutely devastating for me, whereas now I can see that this has been a positive thing and these scars are healing well. And I can now use makeup, use my hair, and actually cover them up a little bit, and I'm quite mindful of that. So that's been an absolute amazing thing for me. So I asked 6 years ago for some help with my image. I wanted some help with my makeup, I wanted some help with my hair, I'd actually lost quite a bit of hair. I have an underactive thyroid and that was one of the side effects before that was picked up, and that hair's not grown back. I also would like— wanted to have some help with, with my image. So I would get ready to go out, I was known, and it's not my friends and family being rude, but it was a true observation of wet hair and no makeup. I didn't have the concept of what it was to get ready. I didn't know. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror. I've spent a long time now working on this. I've had some therapists that have helped me, and I've also done some work on it myself. So this is my Healing Image High story, which I hope might help some of you take the risk or ask for some help if you want, and I hope you have a slightly easier path than I did. When I got ready to go out, or any time when I was going out, obviously I need to wear clothes. Well, I like clothes, I've always liked clothes, so I would buy clothes that I thought looked nice, but I didn't actually really look at them on me. There was a problem with me looking at me. So I could stand in front of the mirror but not really see me. I would see the clothes and that would be it, and if they were nice, I was fine. And I would sit and wait until it was time to go out, or rather wait until everybody else had got themselves ready. So I was missing the ready part. So I decided that I was going to tackle this myself. I was 50 at the time, that felt like it was a good age to go and ask this as like a gift for myself. So I telephoned a department store, a fairly small department store in London, but my favourite department store nonetheless, is the one where I got my wedding dress from 33 years ago. I also bought my wedding ring from there, and it's a store I love. It's, it's lovely to look at. It has really unusual things, and the building is unusual. It has small departments, which I find I can manage. I thought this was going to be a good move, so I telephoned them and asked if I could have some help with makeup from somebody from their makeup floor. Well, I was told that this could be possible, but I needed to put everything in an email. I sent off my email. I don't know who got it because it wasn't given to a named person. The email address was something that was just linked to the store in general, and I got a response saying that I could have an appointment with a makeup artist on a Saturday, and they were really pleased to tell me that there was going to be a visiting makeup artist as well who was going to oversee some new products that have been introduced to the range. So I paid my sort of booking securing fee, and I turned up for my appointment. I actually was pretty anxious before I went in for this. And I got there quite early, so I managed to find somewhere to go and have a coffee. I had something to read with me, and then I managed to sort of get myself calm, cool, and collected, and then turned up for my appointment. Now, in my— in the email response that I got, I was informed that it was not possible to have makeup done away from the shop floor, so I would be sat on a chair, but away from the footfall of a busy Saturday in a department store in London. So I was happy with that. I knew what was going to happen, and that's what I went along expecting. Well, that didn't actually happen. I was put right on the footfall pathway during that busy Saturday on quite a high stool. There was nothing in front of me, it was just a stool by itself, and I was introduced to my makeup artist, and she She was absolutely lovely. I also explained to her that I got some brushes that have been given to me as a gift from this brand, and I'd had them for probably nearly 2 years and hadn't used any of them. And according to my kids, these are a good set, and my kids know about things. So I asked her as well if she could help me with these brushes. So she looked at them, they were in a beautiful case, she opened them up and said to me, "Well, it's written on the handle." And that's true, it was in gold writing down each one, it said blusher for eyes, it did say these things, but I must have had about 3 for eyes and I wasn't really quite sure, I mean I don't have 3 eyes, I've only got 2. I didn't really know what any of these were for, and it's clear I wasn't going to get any help. And she also reminded me that we had a time limit, so we set to with the makeup. So I sat there and there was some products that she pulled and she put onto my face. I couldn't see, there was no mirror, and the visiting expert just kept coming along every now and then and having a look. He didn't talk to me once, but he did talk to my makeup artist. So she just pulled some more products and applied them mostly to my eyes. There was an awful lot going on in my eyes area, and I had explained to her that I needed a light, simple day makeup that would take care of my skin, give me a really nice natural coverage, and that would be something that I could do myself at home by myself, but there were no notes, I couldn't see what was going on, and still this stuff kept going on and on. My eyes, my eyes, my eyes. At the end of it, I was given a little pile of all the products— these were new— just for me to buy that she'd used on my face, and I'd only briefly been given a hand mirror at the end to say, yeah, thanks, 'it looks great' when actually inside I wanted to be anywhere else but sitting in that chair. I bought all the products, I haven't got a clue really what to do with any of them, and I came home. On my way home I looked in a mirror and I didn't like what I saw, that I was quite horrified, and it actually hurt in the pit of my stomach because I had so much makeup on me that I looked as if I could have been starring in a West End show. It wasn't the look at all what I wanted. I went home really disappointed. My family were quite angry, and they could see that how I looked wasn't me at all. It was going to be something that someone with fairly expert skills would be able to replicate, not somebody, somebody like me. And I had told them in the email and on the telephone that I was a survivor of historic sexual abuse, that I did suffer from complex PTSD, and that I really needed some help because it was only fairly recently that I'd been comfortable to touch my skin and actually to look at myself in the mirror. So I just felt very, very misunderstood. I don't think any of this was intentional, but from conversations that I've had since then and during my Healing Image High project, I've learned that it's not really uncommon. So I could have given up. I felt like giving up. But I'm not really a quitter. I think I keep trying and trying, so I took a risk to find another way to try and access makeup for myself. I have, um, two cousins who are sisters who are slightly older than I am. They are professional people. I used to absolutely love visiting them when I was younger with my parents. We'd go to their flat, they had a lovely flat in London that they shared. I thought they must be living such a great life, it— the two of them together, they got on so well. One was in fashion, she arranged fashion shows and events all over the world, she had her own business, and the other one was a professional dancer. She was often in shows, she was on television, and they had this amazing lifestyle that I thought, wow. I was really proud of them, I loved going, but I didn't really speak very much to them. I was fairly quiet and just listened and just looked. And really now I regret that. There was a big missed opportunity, but I've made up for lost time now. And I took the risk to telephone my cousin June, who was the one that was in fashion, and explained to her what happened to me, um, both in the department store with my makeup help request and also with the fact of what happened to me as a kid. She was pretty quiet on the other end of the phone for some of it, because that's quite a massive thing for someone suddenly to hear on a phone call when they're really— it's probably not even in their mind they're ever going to have that conversation. But she was amazing. She listened to me, she heard me, and then she said, 'I'm going to talk to some people that I know and I'm going to try and help.' So shortly after that, I had a telephone from June, my cousin, saying that she was going to put me in touch with one of her friends who she thought I would be in good hands with. And that friend is someone that a lot of people know, um, called Karen Franklin, MBE, and she used to present the late '80s and '90s, The Clothes Show, um, for the BBC, and she also was a presenter at The Clothes Show live events too. Now, I've never watched The Clothes Show, and I have never been to The Clothes Show live event. I'd heard about it. A lot of my friends took their children They took grandparents, they were so excited when they got tickets, and I heard of all these great days out, lovely fashion shows that they had watched with them, there was catwalk shows were put on for them, and they'd come home with like a nice bag of goodies, things that they bought, and it was something that was so successful, I think it ran for 12 years, and I know Karen says, "Oh well, it was back in the day, there weren't many TV stations, so it was really popular because people didn't have so many options as to what to watch like we can now." But it really was a huge success for all those years, and I'd love to— I wish I'd been involved in it. I wish I'd got myself into that, and it would have been a great thing for me to do with my children. But I never ever did it. So I was going to meet Karen in London, and I had to Google her because I wasn't quite sure what she looked like. I knew what she looked like when she did the clothes show because I'd seen images, and she's a very striking woman, she's beautiful, and she met me. So the two of us were just together, I was wearing quite a bright green coloured dress, I do like bright colors. I've liked bright colors since I was a child. And she said to me, 'It's nice to see you in a color, but also you really do need a new bra.' So that was the ice broken. Then we hit it off. We got on like a house on fire. We— she listened to me. I didn't know much about her career other than the clothes show, but She told me how she finds listening to people who have problems with their image, their stories, whether they be refugees or people like me, she actually finds it a privilege that she can listen and actually work on helping people. So Karen said from that meeting it clearly wasn't just going to be a simple, straightforward, quick makeover, that I really, really needed some quite specialist and quite sensitive help with this. So she got me, arranged for me to have a makeup tutorial done at home with Ariane Poole. Now Ariane Poole is the person who was on my previous broadcast to this, which is my first broadcast in the Healing Image High series for the women's radio station, because makeup was my first port of call and I thought it was important that we started there. And also Ariane, she has her own range of cosmetics, they're Ariane Poole, and she wants to offer listeners to the Women's Radio Station a 20% discount on anything in her range. You can also email Ariane at arianepoole.com. She also has a great Instagram account, and every Wednesday she does live tutorials They're nearly every Wednesday because sometimes she's a kind of a tiny bit busy with something else, so she might miss the odd Wednesday. But they are great, and I would totally recommend people— if you want to try and follow somebody who might be able to help you, then Ariane is an absolutely brilliant— she's an international makeup artist. She actually sent me a bio for the broadcast with a bit more information about her background which is information that I didn't know about her before. She has worked with the most amazing photographers, um, film stars, actresses, models. I, I couldn't believe it. Um, and then it's like she helped me, but she actually finds that her work now, um, working whether it's with somebody who's extremely well known or someone like me, then she finds all of it rewarding, and she listens to you 100%. The other thing I, I really like about, um, Ariane's makeup range is like, she's, she's nearly 65, and that, that was a bit of a shock too because she looks amazing, is that her products are— you're actually able to read what is written on the actual product. So I don't know if it's because she's a bit like me— I'm 56 and I actually find font size pretty tricky to try and work out for whatever product I've got, what I need to do and how I can use it, because I actually can't read some of this teeny tiny writing that goes on things. So her stuff is, is absolutely great. I've tried it, um, and it's reasonably priced. So if anybody does want to have a 20% discount, just go to Arianne Poole, put WRS20, and that will be available and is open-ended. Also, anyone who would quite like a video tutorial, well, by Zoom with Arianne, if you email the radio station, we're going to draw just randomly one person, or if they've got a friend or sister or daughter or mother who would like to join in, then she's going to give you a Zoom consultation. I was saying earlier about how I had to phone the store I wanted help with my makeup in and then follow it up with an email, which is so often the way now. So it used to be a phone call was all you could do, or you could write a letter, but now everybody wants it backed up with an email. So what I— technology is really great on one hand, but on the other hand, I think it's difficult sometimes to really get what you want to ask across. And you don't really know how or who has received your email and if they've received it in the right way that you sent it and meant to be heard within it. So Arianne was saying, like with me, she came to my house, I got out all my makeup, including the stuff that I'd purchased during my makeup tutorial attempt, and we put it all over my table. Well, if it's more than 2 years old and it's like a wet stuff, you need to throw it out because of bacteria. Some of the dry stuff or things you've not opened, they should be fine, but most of my stuff— and I had a lot of it— because I bought into the fact that these products were good, but I actually had no idea how to use them. She said, that goes to the bin, you've got no hope in knowing what goes to that, give those to your daughters, no, that's no good, oh yes, we can use this. So we whittled it down so that I had some stuff that I had the hope of using and learning how to use. She did also comment that and it's true, I couldn't look at her to start with even. I was really focusing on looking on the products. Looking at people, looking at myself has always been difficult. I think, this is in my own personal view, that as you grow, you're the same body, but your body can grow, your hair grows, things change, you get new skin, your bones grow, everything gets bigger. But the thing that doesn't change are your eyes. So if I look at photographs of myself as a younger, as a child and growing up, all the time I'm seeing the same eyes. If I look in the mirror and really, really look at myself, I'm having to use my eyes, and those are the same eyes that saw the most horrendous things when I was being abused, that also blocked my body from seeing horrendous things because there was a point where I kind of went to a place behind my eyes to take myself away as far as I could from the situations that I was in. So no matter how old you get and how much your skin and your bones and everything grow, your eyes are still the same eyes., and those eyes to me had a lot of sadness in them, and I believe that's one of the reasons why looking at myself for me was so difficult. So by the end of our, um, little makeup tutorial, Ariane had done half of my face herself, and then she encouraged me to do the other half. We started off by getting me to feel what products actually felt like in my skin, and that started off by putting them on my hand. And very quickly I got really into like, yeah, this feels— I like this, this is really nice. What does this do? Oh yeah, okay, what did you do on the first half? Because I'm now doing the second half. And really quickly I was picking up the mirror and having a look. And then after that, once I was comfortable with it, we actually fixed the mirror so it was standing up, and I made notes. Ariane provided me with a blank face shape drawing that she then colored using the makeup products, actually, and then labeling as to what I could do and how I could do it. So I left, and I felt really happy, and She also told me, um, like what I could do, one look I could do for evening or for a special occasion with my eyes. And that, to be honest, is all I need for my eyes. I am not a person that's ever going to be fantastic with mascara. I don't have that many eyelashes because, uh, I went to have them tinted and that really proved the point that I really don't. They're very thin and very fine, so me and mascara can only go a certain way, and that's fine, but I know that. I also now am able to go to shops to get my eyebrows done because I'm pretty hopeless at doing that one on my own, and I think that needs an expert. So what I would like to try and encourage anybody that would really like some help is to go and ask and say, actually, no, that wasn't quite the help I was looking at today. I just want some help with my foundation, or could you please explain to me what a primer is and how I can apply this, or is this the right product for me, or is there something better? Because there's definitely an element of selling that goes on when you need to go and speak to somebody, but I don't think there's anything wrong in saying, uh, great, thank you, and walking away and thinking about it and not making like a rash decision or a panic decision like I did to try and get out of the store extremely quickly. So healing image hai started off with Karen arranging for me to have Ariane Paul help me with my makeup, and that was fantastic. At the moment, she's not able to come to people's homes because of COVID so she's doing Zoom consultations or tutorials, and it was really interesting hearing her say how she can be doing somebody in the UK, she could be someone in the US, or someone in Australia, all by Zoom, which now this technology allows. But she said the other thing that she found was that she wasn't there to do half somebody's face or to show them how much product to actually use or to do it for them, that they have to do it themselves. And it's actually something that people can keep. The video is recorded so they can go back and look at it again. But she said women, or whoever she was helping, found it really, really empowering that they had actually done all this themselves. And if you listen to her, she tells you, like, with such joy of how many people she's helped, how she's helped, the reaction of people that she's helped that they've had from their families. Like, one lady who previously had an experience like mine went home and her children fell about laughing because she was literally troweled in makeup. And this time after having a go and support with Ariane, they were like, you look amazing, you look fantastic, you look beautiful. So I'd also say to anyone who is supporting somebody, or you know you have a family member who does struggle, then do say to them, that color looks really good on you, you, you look really nice, that's really good, how did you do that? And maybe share things because sometimes we assume things about people and rather spend the time of having a conversation with them and actually knowing how they are. So I got makeup ticked. The next thing we were going to do was hair. Now my hair started falling out about 20-odd years ago. It just came out. I mean, hair comes out anyway, but this came out more and it's never really grown back, so I'm left with with rather thin, fine hair, and my hair doesn't grow. Lockdown has proved that. My friends, my family members have all needed haircuts, and I haven't. My hair is extremely slow growing, and there's not a lot of it. So I had, um, this lovely hairdresser called Denise McAdam, who I've seen on TV. She's a celebrity hairdresser, She also does really interesting shows where there are competitions for up-and-coming hairstylists. She's taught a lot of people, she's worked with a lot of well-known people as well, and here she was in my house doing my hair. She was honest, she was quite shocked actually about how little hair that I did have and how really to cut me a style, but I needed to understand what was the best thing to put on my hair, what products to put on my hair, how much product to put on my hair— too much can weigh it down— just lots of tips and tricks. And what these people have given me, which I don't think that they or I realized at the time, are things to think of every single day, several times a day. In the morning, I wake up now And I don't think, is this a good day or is this a bad day? Because my depression was so bad that getting out of bed would be hard. Getting out of the house was hard for 4 years. So what I do is, um, Denise's tip where you literally stick your fingertips into your scalp and wake your hair up by rubbing your scalp for 10 seconds. And while I'm doing that, I'm thinking, I'm waking my hair, I'm waking my hair up. And you'll sort of stimulating your hair, the blood flow and things like that, but it's also my new routine and it's a really positive one. I do look like a complete bed head after I've done it, but it's a great start to getting up then and then starting on the rest of my day. So Denise then, she helped me with um, a cut, how to manage my cut. She also taught me how to put like a scrunchie of hair in the back of my hair if I ever want to make the back of it look a little bit fuller, and how to clip it in so I'm not going to worry and to feel quite confident. And I do do that, and it is a nice thing to do. People have nail extensions, people have hair extensions. I've even been down that route too, which was great for a while. It got me out it made me feel a lot better about myself or about how I felt people were seeing me. But now I'm in a place where I'm pretty happy with my hair. How I— it's my hair, I have to manage it, and there are things that I can do that show that I've really tried to take care of myself and my appearance, and that's what I want, that's my choice. So now we're in December I've been given a beauty advent calendar. Well, 6 years ago I would have been really extremely disappointed with this, but I am actually really excited with it. It's more exciting than getting a chocolate. So today it was something to do with your hair. It was a leave-in treatment. So I am going to use every single product that is in this beauty calendar right up to the 24th of December and experience using these things. Now it's quite a small— it's a sort of sample size, I would say, this hair treatment. And it does say that it's leave-in, but the back of it, because it's so small, I honestly could not read other than the fact that I need to apply it to damp hair. I don't know if I've put enough in, too much in, whether it was single use, I don't know. But anyway, I've used it and I tell you, it's amazing. It actually has really made a massive difference, and I only did this about 2 hours ago. I mean, this is radio, you can't see it, but I can certainly feel it. Smells great too. So I would really recommend that you're not ever too old or ever stage in your life too unwell mentally, or if you're feeling down, it's never ever too late to give something a go. And if this hadn't worked, I could have washed it out, but it's actually brilliant. I'm gonna order some properly and start using this. So after that, we went on to my clothes. Now I have quite a few clothes that I've collected over the time. Talking with Karen Franklin, she has clothes that she likes. She talks about as they sort of are like friends that serve a purpose. So if she's in a professional role like presenting or when she's working, she has a set of clothes that she feels do that for her. And if she's at home or if she's with her family and friends, she has another set of clothes that she feels that she goes to for that, and she has an absolutely brilliant sense of style. I, I love her look. When I first met her, the day she came in, she was wearing a really, really nice coat, and we met in a coffee shop in London, and on the collar of the coat there was a really nice piece of detail, and I said, I, I like that, that's really nice, and she said, I added that myself. I got something from a charity shop and I decided to adapt it and put this together on my collar, and it looked so, so nice. And when I introduce you all to Karen Franklin MBE, then she will talk to you about how she actually started using clothes and adapting things by using her mother's sewing machine from quite an early age, and it's quite interesting listening to how she got into fashion. And it's also very interesting listening to Arianne Poole. In the previous broadcast, she was saying how recently friends of hers reminded her that how she used to give them all makeup lessons in the bathroom areas at school during break time. So she clearly was definitely going to be having makeup in her life in some way. And she used to make her own blusher out of flower petals to try and get a stain. Um, so it's, it's just really interesting hearing stories like that and learning more about people. And that's something else I've learned through Healing Image High. Another person that I was introduced to was Jane Galpin, who is a fashion stylist. She's also done quite a few programs that people might have seen on the television, and you can read more about all these people on my website healingimage.ai. But I also needed to have a website. I didn't have a clue how to do a website, so, um, and we wanted to record this. Everybody involved in my project, well, everybody who was a professional who was involved in helping me, wanted me to carry this on as a project. They all saw it as an extremely positive thing, and working together with them, it certainly was, and it has changed my life I won't ever be able to thank these people properly. They know what they've done, they can see what they've done. But a website, I mean, like, where do you start with that? So somebody else great they put me in touch with is a great guy called Wayne Moran, who had been to university with Karen. He'd known my cousin for years and years and years, and he did websites. He's an extremely talented guy. He also does the most amazing paintings of dogs, so extremely talented. Now, he's used to working with people when they want a website, they want a website like tomorrow. Well, my website took like years, so he was the most patient and understanding person. He also confided in me that he's had family members who suffered from mental health issues, and so for him seeing me as well change and evolve, evolve through this process and get to where I am today, he was so supportive and really 100% behind what I do. So together Wayne and I designed a logo which is in orange because orange has always been my favourite colour. My first real memory in my life is when my mum took me out shopping for fabric for my bedroom curtains, and like many things, I went straight to the one I wanted. I didn't want to look at anything else. I saw it, that was the one I want, and it was predominantly orange, and every other color in it is very bright too. So I've always been an orange, bright color preference person, so that's what we were going to have for my logo. We then wanted Healing Image High, which is a name that we didn't even have to think of. It just evolved. My contact with Karen had been an awful lot through email, and there was no subject heading So every now and then she'd put in a heading, I put in a heading, felt a bit rude not putting one in, and your computer reminds you that you've left your subject heading blank. So it started something like image, makeup image, healing image. Oh, we really liked healing image, so we stuck on healing image, and that became the subject line. And then the H for healing and the I for image says 'Hi,' and my logo has an eye in it where we've written 'Hi,' because for me it was my eyes that had somehow helped me when I was being abused, when I was having to go out into the world not being able to put into words what was happening to me. I was too young. I don't think I would have even had the vocabulary at that age. So my eyes was seen by the world, but they were hiding something pretty big, and that was ongoing at the time, that I couldn't get away from. So to me, having an eye in my logo is pro— and orange are the two most significant things about this logo, and I really hope that you understand that. I would like people to understand through my broadcast and through my website and talking to you on the women's radio station, how image can be so important to somebody who is suffering mentally. Not only mentally was I suffering, but I also had some, like, physical difficulties as well. My— I had this underactive thyroid, so my body wasn't working very well. I had an eating disorder. I weighed very, very little. I didn't have a lot of energy, so This has helped me to really, really build myself up in so, so many ways. From not being able to go out, I had a really big shake-up and a big old talking to myself about doing something, not just for me but for my family. My children, my friends, my wider family have all had to go through rather a lot of difficult times with me finding out what happens to me and also seeing me suffer. So I took myself off to this boot camp in Kent called GI Jane, which is the only boot camp in the UK that's women only. And I went for this residential camp for a whole week. There was no getting away from going outside, and I was— this was just not even remotely a comfort zone for me, but it was one of the best decisions of my whole life. And going outside, seeing nature, experiencing the elements, being with people I've never met before because I went on my own— even that in itself was an achievement, to be able to, to drive. I, I had to get myself over the the bridge that goes over instead of the Dartford Tunnel. I usually hyperventilate over that because I get vertigo, but I did it, I got there. And from that experience, a whole week of being outside with military trainers from 7 o'clock in the morning until 5 o'clock at night— we did obviously get breaks and fed But I learned to run, I loved it, and from there I decided to train. Well, I entered and then I trained for, not knowing whether or not it was possible, but I did complete the London Marathon in 2015. So to go from somebody who didn't go out and isn't really achieving I went from somebody who had knowledge— I got knowledge from these experts— and then I went from a person who actually gained knowledge about my physical ability and how I ran. I learned about my running, my style, and then I could manage to run and complete a marathon with 38,000 other people, and I raised some money for a charity that is very, very dear to my heart. And that was the most incredible feeling in the world. I actually ran a little further than I was meant to because I need glasses for distance, and when you've turned the last corner and you're heading for what you think is the finish line of the marathon, there is a slogan for this from the sponsors, and all I could read from it was "Extra Mile." So when I came through the finishing line, there are people there who, um, who sort of stop you, they greet you, they help you, direct you which way to go. I wouldn't stop running because all I'd seen was the word "Extra Mile," but it wasn't that I had an extra mile, it was that the slogan was "Go the Extra Mile." So luckily I did, um, I didn't do the complete mile. I stopped and completed the marathon, so that was absolutely like one of the best things I've ever done in my whole life. I look at my medal every day. Another thing I'd like to say right now, because I don't have too much time, is one of the things that's helped me is not only my curtain fabric from which I chose when I was only 4, and all the other things that I have chosen, mostly brightly colored things for my own children, things from my own home furnishings, that I have kept pieces of those fabrics. And I've got 5 jars now full of little bits of fabric that I can keep, because you can't keep everything. So I have these glass jars that have got bits in, and they are my fabrics. They're my threads. They're the threads of all my good times, my good memories, and I like to think that I can twist them together, those threads in there, and they form my battle ropes, which I now have, whether it be help with makeup, help with hair, help with all the good memories, because whatever I went through as a child, which shouldn't have happened, and I know I'm not the only person that has had this happen to them because because I've taken part in the Truth Project recently where there were thousands of survivors like me, some of whom it was the first time that they had disclosed what had happened to them. So that is something that I'm going to talk about, and I'm going to have someone from the project join me on broadcast as well. But I don't want anyone to feel that they lost their childhood if you've gone through any sort of trauma or terrible issues during those years of your life, because going along, aside the trauma that I was experiencing, were really, really good things. And I have in my house 4 shelves that are inset in a wall, which probably meant for books, but they are my memory shelves. And I have things on there from when I was a kid, from bits of fabric, from places that I've been to. I've done some brilliant equine therapy work. There's some work that I've done from equine therapy there. I've done quite a lot of journaling. My journals are on there. So everything that is good, I've put on a shelf I mean, my family know not to touch it. It probably really needs dusting as well, but it's just so important for me to acknowledge and identify and display all those things that I call my threads. Put them all together, you got some strong battle ropes there to try and get yourself through. I'm also someone now who goes and exercises So unfortunately, due to menopause and the effect of the medication that I took for that, I put on 2 stone. And we're talking about not very long ago, probably in the summer this year, so really not very long ago. I've attacked the gym. I do use battle ropes quite frequently, and I tell you, when I grab hold of those things and I lift them up and slam them down, I give them everything I've got because to me they are everything that I am now and that I'm getting stronger and I'm getting fitter, I'm getting happier, and I've actually lost, lost some weight. So much so that I'm now buying new clothes, which I think my husband is rather hoping that, golly, why on earth did we support her to get into image? Because she's having to buy some new clothes and taking a real interest in herself, which they're all delighted with. And it's something they can share. A couple of weekends ago, I went to stay with my daughter who no longer lives at home, and we were getting ready in her bedroom, and the fun that I had— I missed out on this, but I'm not gonna let that stop me enjoying every single minute now— getting ready with her. I didn't take my makeup with me because it was just gonna be extra stuff to carry, and I only had light luggage, so I used hers and she was like, "No, Mum, Mum, you put— no, you don't— Mum, what you do is—" and it was just like, why didn't you tell me this, you know? You could have taught me this years ago. I helped you tie your shoes, I helped you learn how to use a knife and fork, and you could have helped me with this because my girls, they look brilliant, they look absolutely lovely when they do their makeup to go out, or whether it's light or whether more of a party style. So I've now got something that I can share with my kids. So I'm coming up to the end of the broadcast. I hope this has been helpful to you. Please look at my website healingimagehi.com. There are some brilliant notes on there from both Ariane Poole, Karen Franklin, Jane Galpin, and I'm going to be I'm so looking forward to speaking to other guests that I've got here. I have got guests coming onto this series from the Emotional Support Animal Society, from an equine therapy center, because I've benefited hugely from that. But mostly, I've benefited the most from being given the tools in the areas that I need. So instead of thinking about trauma I now have so much more to think about, so much more that I can incorporate into my day, my routine, which gives me a really positive structure. And I— if you have any questions for me, you can email me at evamay@healingimagehai.com or at the Women's Radio Station, because I would like to know from you if there's anything that I can do or let you know about that I have done that I can help. And if I haven't done it, then I will certainly look into it and share that with you. So don't forget, if you do want to be considered for a Zoom Makeover with Ariane Paul, please email the radio station with your contact details and we will be organizing that. And if you would like some help with her products, um, then look on her website. You can message Ariane. She will help you, and there's a discount code WRS20 for that. So I wish you all have a really good day, and I'm looking forward to our next broadcast. So thank you and goodbye.