Ambassador Autobiography: Rewriting Messages From My Past

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 an Ambassador who’s survived a lot in her life so far. We’ll turn this post over to Penny to hear about her life and how she’s learning to believe more positive messages about herself! (Please note that there is talk of stalking, relationship abuse, and cancer in this story, so practice self-care if these are triggers for you, lovely reader.) 

Messages Early in My Life

For as long as I can remember I have been surrounded by comments about fatness and remarks about dieting. They were sometimes directed at me and at other times they were made towards immediate family. The hard thing was that other family members made the comments.

I was in good shape when I was young. But as soon as I started gaining weight, the comments and suggestions to diet began to be directed at me. It was hard to have that happen. I remember my mom getting mad and telling the family to stop and then comments would stop…in front of her.  

Those comments and messages stayed with me for a long time. They’re still in my head, to some extent.  Even when I was thinner, I thought I was “fat” because of those comments and society’s standards. 

I never thought I was good enough, I never thought I was acceptable. In a manner of speaking, I was taught that being bigger meant I was ugly.  I have carried this with me for a LARGE part of my life.

Love, Loss & the Messages I Got

I was never really told I was beautiful or pretty except by my parents. Because of this I was skeptical of those that would tell me I was. This really impacted me, particularly as a teenager. 

High school was a major period in my life. While I mostly have great memories there are a few things that happened that impacted me for a long time.

I was stalked as a freshman. He had his friends deliver letters to me and he tried to follow me home a lot. He wrote that I was beautiful and sexy and all sorts of things. I was terrified and unsure of what to do–if anything. Luckily I got help from one of my teachers. But the experience changed how I thought about myself.

After that ordeal I got my first official boyfriend. He was a total sweetheart…but he smothered me. He seemed like a good boyfriend at first. He would call me beautiful, pretty, gorgeous and all kinds of sweet things but those things were a huge trigger for me.

I really could not handle what he was telling me and felt incredibly smothered, partially because of my experience with being stalked. He was always around and I felt like I couldn’t be myself. Or act like myself. I didn’t feel comfortable at all in that relationship. I finally broke it off with him once I realized that.

My other big high school relationship had me believing he could do no wrong in my eyes. I was wrong. The abuse started once we left high school. It was all mental abuse with constant comments about how I looked and how I should dress for him. It wore me down.

I didn’t feel good enough. I stayed single for a long time after that.

Then I met my ex-husband. While things were OK at first, the relationship quickly became mentally and emotionally abusive. The victim mentality came back–I thought I deserved it.

I believed that everything was my fault.

I finally found the strength to leave after years of hardships and abuse.

All of those experiences stuck with me.

I got a lot of terrible messages from some terrible people and it’s been hard trying to overcome them.

Even now, I sometimes get triggered. It’s a huge challenge to get past this stuff.  I have been trying to reflect on these experiences to help me and guide me to my truth and help me find meaning in my previous relationships.

The C-Word

I’m not going to lie: my 30s sucked. I got married (then divorced), lost both my parents and my grandma, and then my beloved cat. It was a lot to endure.

But then I found out in the last year of my 30s that I had cancer. 

This was a devastating blow. 

2018 was one big blur. That January, I had a full hysterectomy. I was recovering from that when I lost my dear cat–my beloved support animal. I was beyond devastated.

Treatment for cancer was rough. I started chemo not long after my 40th birthday. I went into anaphylactic shock with the first medicine, then landed in the hospital after trying a new medicine due to a high fever. 

I also started to lose my hair.

Everything happened so fast.

And I felt like I didn’t have much support in this battle.

Finding Future Belles

With my body changing I felt uglier than ever. I embraced the bald but I never felt good in my body.  It was changing and I had no control over it.

I was doing what I had to do to keep myself safe and to get better but I was far from ok.

This is when I was introduced to Future Bells, the JVZ Facebook group. Finding Jezebel VonZephyr and seeing that JVZ is literally for every body type–and that everyone is beautiful–has really helped my self-esteem.

Being a part of their Facebook group helped me to start thinking differently about beauty standards–and myself. 

Having conversations with Sara also helped me feel better about myself. And seeing pictures of women that looked like me really helped.  Seeing all the gorgeous women in various stages of life…all I could think was “WOW. Just WOW.”

Once I really started believing that I could be worthy and beautiful, I made the leap.

Working on Myself

I knew I needed to cleanse myself. My first shoot with Jezebel truly helped me. 

I felt timid, shy, and scared at my first session.  Luckily I found many things in common with Sara and Tiffany through deep conversations and lots of laughs, so I felt calmer and more at ease as the session went on.

I was able to let loose which really helped to start easing some of the pain of my past. My first session was a great experience. 

But my second shoot? It helped SO MUCH MORE.

By the time I did that second session I was much more confident in who I was becoming.  I started to realize who I truly am.

The lead-up to my Soul2Soul session was cathartic. The Soul Work homework helped me to see and fix some flaws in my way of thinking.  I was not as scared before my session–I was excited! 

I was more “out” there and showed more of me–all parts of me. The Soul2Soul helped me become more comfortable with myself and my body.

While I’m not fully comfortable with wearing revealing things outside of my house but I am getting there. My sessions helped. 

I would have never discovered some new-found confidence if Jezebel did not come into my life when it did.

New Messages as I Move Forward

Because of my time and sessions with Jezebel VonZephyr I have learned that what I was taught and told when I was younger (and throughout my life) is simply not true. 

I am beautiful, I am sexy, I am perfect in my imperfect body. 

Through Jezebel VonZephyr I was shown different ways to look at myself.  I’ve been taught how to throw out the industry standards and the “norms” and really see myself for MYSELF.  

It takes a while to retrain the brain, but I am working through it. Thankfully Jezebel has lent me its lens to help me see things differently and start to process my past. 

The empowerment that happened because of Jezebel gave me a high unlike anything else. 

I now see myself as beautiful, enough, perfectly imperfect.

I am learning to rewrite the messages I’ve been told throughout my life. No words can express the gratitude I have for these sessions and Jezebel.

Does Penny’s story of resilience and rewriting inner messages resonate? If you’re ready to reject the messages of others and write a new chapter, we’re ready to help you with your own session and experience.

What are you waiting for? You are worthy of powerful experiences and deserve to believe positive messages about yourself. We are all on a journey of rewriting the stories that have been told to us over years and decades. It’s a scary and hard process, but it is also worth the energy and effort. What are you waiting for? Start rewriting your story today.