The last 6 decades of my life have been full of adventures – I have lived a wonderful life and made my two dreams come true – working in tv and radio and being surrounded by all my horses. A lot of it is because of something that happened 22 years ago – it has helped me be the person who I am today.
I will never forget the day – it was 27th June 1998, it was a Saturday, I was living here in Maisons-Laffitte in the north-western suburbs of Paris. I remember not feeling great that day. I had taken the Metro to get back home and I was feeling totally restless. Then at around 3pm, the phone rang.
Back then phones had a cord and that meant getting up, walking to the phone. I always refused to do that. If I was by the phone, I would pick up but if I had to get up and walk to it – I would just ignore it. That day, I don’t know why something told me to pick it up. I went all the way up the stairs and picked up the phone. To my great surprise, I heard my sister’s voice. I adore my sister, we get on so well, but we would never phone each other, especially not on a Saturday. Surprised to hear her voice, I asked her how she was doing. Her voice was flat.
Something wasn’t right.
“Dad has had an accident.”
There was a deafening silence.
My sister’s next words were “Dad is dead”.
I moved the phone away from my ear and thought to myself – “I don’t feel anything” – I couldn’t understand it. I had just had the worst news any daughter could get but I felt calm. I had felt sensations pass through my body as if I’m connected to my body. It’s hard to describe but these sensations came down from my head and passed through me – like a spear. It lasted for a few short seconds and then the sensations disappeared. I felt totally calm. I felt composed, serene, totally in the moment. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was going crazy. I had just heard that my dad was dead, and here I was completely calm. I felt sad but I felt acceptance. At the same time, my sister was still on the other end of the line. She was distraught – I felt sad with her but I was also totally with my dad – I could feel him there with me but I knew he was gone.
The moment should have been unbearable, but something had happened for me to be connected to myself and totally composed. It was surreal. Whatever it was, it helped me be there for my sister and my family. It got me through that one of the worst moments of my life.
Years passed by as I tried to work out what happened that day. Then about five years ago, I was cripped from extreme anxiety attacks and was searching for a way to be free of them. I’d tried everything – I’d seen a psychologist, I had tried so many forms of therapy, I had searched high and low – nothing worked. I was utterly fed up. Then one day, I came across someone online talking about our natural capacity to permanently resolve stressful emotions. When I heard him say ‘We just need to let our sensations pass through us’ – something clicked. I said to myself “This it is. That is exactly what you experienced when Anne-Sophie told you dad was dead. That was exactly what happened!’
I was totally captivated by this way of understanding emotions and I wanted to put it to good use – so I trained to become a professional and now I help people every day. It’s a sheer joy to share this spark with people, to sow the seed, to show that we have this natural resource inside of us all. It’s astounding that we haven’t known about it until now but now that we do, it’s time to keep spreading the word. That’s my pure joy.