So lovely to meet you…
A warm welcome to you all this Christmas!
Thank you for being here.
I thought a good way to start would be to introduce myself briefly because that’s how things would go if we met in real life, right?
So lovely to meet you…
I’m Christine, a French expat, health coach, interior designer, and linguist, although I initially trained in tourism and hospitality. I am also a Mum (an annoying one obviously!) and a crazy lab owner! And by this, I mean our black lab Misty is crazy, not the owner!
I relocated to the UK 25 years ago now, which, according to my lovely husband, means I am “almost British”!
I may not throw this in straight away if we were meeting in person, but I thought I would also add that I am 52. Yes, it has taken me that long, and that many goes at careers, at navigating life to get to a point where I finally feel confident to become me, to believe I have some great stuff to share with you all, the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, the easy and the stormy rides. through this blog!
As I’ve just said, I am new to this so please forgive the initial clumsiness and let me first and foremost thank my hubby, daughters, friends and Holly Becker, with her course “Blogging Today” (which I can highly recommend) for not giving up on me and for their relentless support and encouragement, so that I finally decided I should have a chat with you all in this lovely space.
Sauveterre-de-Bearn, the small medieval town I grew up in in south west France.
All about living a healthier, more beautiful life…
The Healthful Space was born from a deeply rooted desire to help people feel, live a healthier, happier, more beautiful life.
This blog is about building a community who want to learn more about themselves, their body, their mind, their powerful sensory world, their living and working environments. It is really about caring for all people, no matter your challenges, no matter whether you feel you fit in the neurotypical or the neurodiverse world.
Earth calling!
And this blog is also about caring for the planet. My hope is that it will provide you with a wide view on health, wellbeing, sensory living, sustainable interiors and lifestyle, great places on this earth and more. It is about empowering you to make the right, fully informed choices for you, your family, our world.
At the end of the day, we all get one shot at this life. So, it is truly about living our best life because if you are not going to give it your best shot, I am sorry to break it to you but nobody else will for you! As Mel Robbins, world expert in change and motivation once said in one of her truly inspiring podcasts, “nobody is coming!” It’s all down to you!
Everyday is a school day
I was born in the French Pyrenees and spent the first 25 years of my life there. During that time, I was lucky enough to also travel across Europe, spend some time in Southern Spain and north America before emigrating to the UK at the end of last century. Travel really sharpens your mind, helps you discover different ways of thinking, different ways of living. It teaches you to appreciate what you have, enables you to develop resilience and multiple connections to amazing people and cultures.
Working in corporate helps you develop team spirit, navigate the highs and lows of competitiveness and certainly teaches you a lot about yourself and your own resilience level. It is the same with working in education actually. Teaching is about learning, learning about people, philosophy, psychology, deeply rooted trauma and egos.
As for interior design, it opens your eyes to beauty, excellence, to this beautiful world resources (or increasing scarcity) and to the tons of waste that are generated project after project after project!
Interior design mood boarding: open your eyes to beauty, excellence and bring in our beautiful natural world out there!
The midlife awakening
And then, you reach a certain age. Please do not take this the wrong way: age is just a number. It is, really. A mere number. I am determined not to let it overshadow my life's journey. The amount of experience, knowledge, wisdom you acquire in the first 50 years of life is quite frankly amazing. It is just a shame that many of us do not even acknowledge this! Once you reach that “certain age”, incredibly transformative adventures still await if we only dare to believe and keep on trying.
But no matter what we think, those numbers changing year after year do make us increasingly aware of our health and wellbeing. Some of us may come to a point where we feel something is not quite right, something is missing, something could be better.
Some call it the midlife crisis. I prefer to call it the midlife awakening. Our body then seems to bring us closer to our state of physical health and alerts us to our state of mind. Sometimes, it takes for a few alarm bells to start ringing. We may begin to get more anxious, more depressed than usual and struggle to get on. We may get ill even: and we realise (or not?) that this is our body and mind way to let us know something is out of kelter. So, we start paying a little more attention to what we eat, who we spend our time with, what we do and how we do it. We try to find a better work-life balance and start planning for a better, possibly slower future.
Stop looking backward. Life is about moving forward.
Never mind the awakening! The revolution first!
When life throws a few spanners in the works though, it feels more like a revolution than an awakening! For me, it was the birth of our first daughter, with a long list of disabilities that drove us abruptly to “Question Time”! Not from a political, but certainly from a medical and even social point of view. A steep learning curve which brought us closer not just to holistic health but also to our sensory world and its processing mechanisms, to interiors and experiences supportive of wellbeing. For some, this is all you may have always experienced without even realising till later on in life that actually, things could be much better.
After 20 years immersed in the world of multi-sensory impairment—a journey marked by heightened dependence, reduced interaction, overwhelming isolation, interesting (and ongoing!) challenges with social, educational, and medical systems—I want to share with you all the good that has emerged from this hopeful and transformative experience. Because each of us has the power to lead healthier, happier, and more fulfilling lives.
A warm welcome to your Healthful Space!