The Naked Truth

You may have noticed I’ve changed my name, from Nicky to Nicola. There are a few changes coming in my world and I can’t wait to share them with you. But for now I want to tell you a story.

When I was younger I longed to be in the cool gang. I watched them seeming to glide around school. From my world view (as a teenager) they had it all figured out. The relationships, the clothes, life.

Well in that that cool gang was a girl called Nicky. She had cool hair, cool everything. And more than anything I wanted to be cool.

Really what I wanted was to belong. To feel like I belonged. Which translated back then to being cool. Those teenage years are so bumpy. Trying to find out who I was in this world.

And in that process I ended up finding out who I wasn’t. I can only say that now, years and years later. Everything I tried to be, ended up being everything I wasn’t.

Because the truth is, I wasn’t and I’m not cool. Whatever that means. I can appear a little bit weird to the outside world. I can go against what is perceived as normal. I get overexcited about life and can get a little giddy at a particularly beautiful day.

I like to swim in nature, dance, sing. I like to explore the weirdness of what it means to be human. I also like talking about grief and death.

And all these things don’t necessarily make me cool. But they make me, me.

So in my 16 year-old wisdom I changed my name from Nicola to Nicky, to fit in, in the hope that I would somehow feel like I belonged.

My 16 year-old self didn’t realise that it would take more than a change of name to belong.

She didn’t realise that what she needed was pure acceptance for all of who she was.

She didn’t realise, that actually, she didn’t need to fit in.

And so I’m here, exactly as I am. Really the name doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m showing up here in all my human-ness. In everything that makes me, me.

I hadn’t connected the dots until I found myself in the flow of writing to you. But my word for the year (and you don’t need to get caught up in words of the year!), is naked. It’s to remove all the masks, all the conditioning, all the shoulds. To remove the character of Nicky that I’d created in order to fit in. And to simply be as I am.

So here I am, sending love from my 16 year-old self to your teenage self. If you feel called to share any of your uniqueness (aka weirdness) with me, or if anything in this email has sparked something in you, drop me an email. It can be liberating.