I then turned a dark page into the world of, I know, I know, network marketing aka MLM. Please don’t hate me. It was a moment of weakness. I saw people I trusted picking money off trees and you know I just swallowed my pride and really trusted it was above board. I told people I was a professional network marketer. (OH the SHAME!)

So I didn’t want some kind of hobby, I wanted the big bucks, fast. Whatever my mentors told me to do, I would double efforts. It turned out I was extremely good at inspiring people to join my team and my “business” grew fast, along with my status in the company and all the external trappings of success, ie. luxury cars that make you cry when you scratch the alloys.

But all this came at an ALMIGHTY cost. I worked. Every. Single. Second. Children? What children? I don’t think I made eye contact with my husband for months at a time. Takeaways were ordered but I never had time to eat them. I had no time for emails so would send voice messages to my team when

But I had to PRETEND I had the perfect life. “Come and join me, you can have what I have!” Yeah, which is literally a life from hell. I was trapped. I was dependent on the income, my ego lapped up the adoration but every day that I stayed in the “business” I lost more integrity. People asked me how I managed to reach the heights of success at such speed, I lied. I told people I worked part-time and did it for my family. I told people that anyone could get to where I was. It was all one big, fat, juicy LIE.

Ironic then that honesty is a value that I thought was so important to me. I was in a crisis of identity. I could talk to NO ONE about it. My husband was raging that he had lost his wife to a cult, I couldn’t talk to my team because they needed my “belief” and my mentors wouldn’t allow me to question anything. I was having an actual breakdown.

But HALLELUJAH The Universe hears every call! And just like that, it all came crashing down. I made a tiny mistake and the head office deleted my “business” “But I thought it was my bu… No honey, you’re just a consultant for a huge corporation.” So we lost all the income, we lost our house, we lost the car with the stressy alloys and we had to move our whole family into my mum’s apartment.

But when everyone else was like “OMFG! NOOOOOOOO!” I was like Andy in Shawshank Redemption after he had crawled out of that half mile tunnel of waste “YAAAAAAASSSS!!! Forget the house, the car, the money. I have my FREEDOM!!!!!”

That and an abundance of time to think. How had it all gone so wrong? Why had I compromised my values for someone else’s version of success? I had strayed far, far, FAR off my path and I can tell you it took quite some work that forgiveness. But what I had loved about the MLM industry was the personal development and mentoring other women. So I trained as strategic intervention coach with Tony Robbins and Cloe Madanes, a business coach, a meditation teacher and I’ll never stop learning.