Ambassador Autobiography: Digging Deep, Feeling the Feels and Overcoming Trauma

As a boudoir studio, Jezebel VonZephyr has the honor of helping women and hearing their incredible stories. We meet each woman where she’s at in her journey and give her unconditional love and support with the hope that she’ll take a step or two further on her personal journey of growth and self-acceptance. Helping women to step into their light and shine is one of the things we love doing the most! 

As a part of our mission to empower and inspire, each spring we invite a select group of women to become Jezebel Brand Ambassadors and share their stories of growth, self-love and acceptance. Each of them has grown throughout their time with Jezebel VonZephyr and every one of them has a unique and powerful story to tell. 

Today we feature the story of another Brand Ambassador: Hortencia! She’s done a lot of reflecting and inner work on herself since coming to the JVZ studio. She’s eager to share her story and hopes that it resonates with you! 

My Story is Important

Telling our story isn’t always easy, but I have learned that telling our story is important. Our stories can open the door to relationships you never thought possible, and it can build connections that you wouldn’t have considered.

We tend to think our stories may not resonate with others, but the truth of the matter is – they do!

Our stories may not be the same as everyone else, but I can guarantee it is similar in other ways. Those similarities are the beginning building blocks of connections outside our realm of comfort and assumption. 

Telling our stories also requires vulnerability and that can be scary!

Telling my story requires me to put myself out there to those who don’t know me and the unknown of how it will be accepted and received is nerve wracking.

I’ve also had the tendency to think that my story “isn’t that bad”, but we’re not out here having a competition – our stories are our own and unique to our experiences.  

Themes Throughout My Life

I’m going to tell you My Story in nonlinear bits by sharing some of the things I have been told that have stuck with me…

• “You are bigger, but you are even.”
• “Why are you so hairy, are you growing a beard?”
• “Yeah, I remember you. Always hungry” (referring to my size)”
• “You’re with someone now, you should try to lose weight.”

I have never been a small girl, I have always been solid, full, and more of an athletic build. I have powerful thighs, broad shoulders, curves, and a round butt. Growing up I heard more than once that I was bigger but even, as if to say, you are big but not bumpy and lumpy. 

I didn’t really think much of my size until I reached middle school and thought about it more when I reached high school. Middle school and high school are years full of a lot of emotion, a lot of change and a lot of people who are either this or that based on how they look, what they have, what they do, etc. etc. 

I wasn’t the girl who was asked to the dances or went on dates. One, because I had super strict parents but two, because I didn’t look like the other girls – thin and pretty. 

Once I left the school world and went to college and had more freedom, I remember feeling free because I wasn’t going to a place every day where the comparison of what I wasn’t, wasn’t in my face any longer. I felt good, I took the time to dress nice, do my make-up, had a good sense of fashion and style and I was having fun living life. 

Changes, Both Regular and Unique

Since I hit puberty my cycles weren’t regular, sometimes they were and sometimes they weren’t, but it was chalked up to puberty and the change of hormones and a girl’s body trying to figure itself out. 

One of the things that was noticeable was my hair growth, especially on my face. It bothered me but I am Latina and thought it was just part of my genetic make-up, so it was what it was. 

The comment of “why are you so hairy” is what changed my view of not being bothered by my excessive hair, to finding ways to get rid of it because I didn’t want to look like a guy. 

Things started to change in my early 20s when my weight increased, my cycles were irregular to nonexistent.

Then came the day where I was finally and officially diagnosed with PCOS and Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism – two things that when combined make things quite challenging. 

Seeing Myself Through Another’s Old Lens

Back in the good ‘ole days of AOL and dial-up internet connection where chats were all the rage and connecting and reconnecting with people was no longer limited to face-to-face interaction, I found myself talking to old classmates and new friends. One day in the chat room I somehow connected with someone I knew in middle school. 

In the back and forth of trying to place each other this person says, “Oh, yeah, I remember–always hungry.” 

I scrunched up  my face in confusion and asked what they meant, and it was in reference to my body size. It of course didn’t make me feel good and I thought, “well that’s a shitty way to be remembered.”

Today I can say that the way one person remembers me doesn’t mean that’s how everyone remembers me, but when the incident happened, that was definitely not my thought process. 

The reason why someone is attracted to us isn’t always because of our body.

We are more than just our bodies – we have personalities, great minds, big hearts, kindness, love, and so many other amazing things!

Encountering An Old School Way of Thinking

When we fall in like and then in love with someone, we accept them for who they are. We don’t accept them with a list of exceptions of what they should be or need to be, to be committed to each other. 

So when things were getting serious with my now husband, I was told that I should try to lose weight. I got angry and stood up for myself, but the comment still stuck with me. I made it clear that he liked me for who I was, and he liked how I looked and that my body isn’t some sort of deal breaker to our relationship. 

So, no, I didn’t need to lose weight to ensure he stayed with me.

When I was able to see past the anger and being extremely upset, I was able to recognize that the comment came from a very old school way of thinking, where women had to be, had to look, had to act, had to, had to, and more had to in order to “keep their man”.

But an old way of thinking doesn’t make it okay, and we have to stand up and make our voice heard in order to change the narrative. 

Things My Inner Mean Girl Tells Me

These are all comments I have told myself, comments that hit me hard, comments that catapulted a deeper journey of growth. A journey that I didn’t have a choice in taking but I did have a choice in continuing. Comments that taught me that I couldn’t deal with my trauma by telling myself to “suck it up” and “be strong.” 

• “My body failed me.” 
• “My body betrayed me.” 
• “My body couldn’t do what it’s supposed to do.” 

We all have trauma, and it doesn’t matter if it’s big or medium-sized or small, trauma is trauma, and it affects us individually in different ways. And how we handle the trauma or other happenings of life, is based on what we were and have been exposed to. 

You see, in my journey I have discovered that the mentality of “suck it up” and “be strong” comes from my upbringing. It’s an upbringing that had a unique set of circumstances that I did not experience but that my family did. 

When we go through something extremely difficult, I think we as humans compare everything else to it – “well, nothing is as bad as ____” and I think the reason we do this is for survival. If we made it through that one thing, we could make it through anything. 

Breaking Generational Curses By Doing the Hard Work

My continued self-discovery and growth has helped me realize that I was raised in a family that had deep trauma that was never dealt with because the only option was to keep pushing forward for the sake of survival. 

That unresolved trauma had a direct effect on how I was raised and instilled in me the mentality of “suck it up and keep going” approach to life. Being raised in that environment manifested itself in my life as emotions equating to weakness or being weak because I couldn’t just “suck it up.” 

Being tough was the equivalent of being put together. 

Pushing through the hard stuff was the equivalent of strength – strength that was worn like a badge of honor. But that toughness, strength, and “suck it up” attitude also made me outwardly cold when inside I knew it wasn’t me. 

Processing Trauma and Heartbreak

In 2017 I went through a life-altering traumatic event that led me to tell myself all those comments I shared above – and I wholeheartedly believed them. My body had failed and therefore, I had failed. But I not only failed myself, I failed my husband and my daughter, too. 

In January 2017 I went into pre-term labor and before our son could be delivered, his heart stopped beating. I can recall the events as if they were yesterday and while I was going through this experience, I remember telling my husband over and over that I was sorry. 

We were experiencing something terrible together and yet I was saying “I’m sorry.” 

This trauma is something I deal with and manage to this day.

What I learned through the journey of grief is that it couldn’t be resolved by simply sucking it up and moving on. 

It required me to be vulnerable with myself, I had to give myself permission to be weak in order to learn and recognize that it isn’t a deficit to who I am to have emotions and be able to work through them in an honest and raw way. 

Giving Myself Permission and Moving Forward

I no longer see the world and those around me the same way as I used to.

Giving myself permission and allowing myself to be vulnerable and break apart the pieces has truly helped me be more understanding of others as well as myself.

Did Hortencia’s story of survival, curse-breaking and self-love strike a chord with you? Her story is powerful and one that we hear variations of quite a bit. Every woman has a story–we want to help you tell yours!

Whether you’re still in survival mode, in the middle of your self-love journey, or somewhere in between, Jezebel VonZephyr is here to help you have a better, more accepting and powerful relationship with yourself. You can join us in our private Facebook community (please note that this group is a safe space created for women only) to hear more from Hortencia and the other Brand Ambassadors.

Or you can take the leap and book your own session to jumpstart your self-love journey. Whatever steps you decide to take, the women of Jezebel VonZephyr will be here to help you along the way!