Hey you,

 

I’m not sure where to start when it comes to telling my story, but I thought I’d just start somewhere.

 

So, hi! As you have probably already learned, my name is Marta. I was born in Mariupol, Ukraine, in 1985. It feels as if it happened so long ago that it’s like it happened to someone else. Do you ever feel this way too? In fact, in my 38 years of life, it feels like I’ve lived four different lifetimes, and here I am again, recreating my life for the fifth time.

 

So, where do I begin telling my story? I was born and raised as an average kid in Ukraine, raised by a single mother and my grandparents. My father was not in the picture from when I was about 11 years old. At 13, I got into the world of modeling and beauty pageants. I was doing pretty well, moving from one contest to another, getting noticed in the industry. At 18, I lost my mother to a mysterious illness. Then a couple of months later, I dropped out of the first year of university, signed a contract with a modeling agency in Hong Kong, and off I went, running as far as I could, trying to escape from the pain of loss that I was experiencing. That is when my modeling career started, and for the next 15 years of my life, it’s been both one of the greatest blessings and the biggest sources of suffering in my life.

 

For the past 7 years of my life, I’ve been undergoing a difficult, most profound process of death and rebirth. Nowadays, I like to call it Martamorphosis. At around 31, I found myself in an existential crisis. I was in a long-term committed relationship, I was making good money, living abroad, and working as a model. Sounds great, you’d think? Yet I was deeply miserable, enmeshed in codependency, profoundly disempowered, and completely lost in life. So I left the relationship I was in and set on a journey of self-discovery. To be fair, back then, I rather romanticized the idea of spiritual healing. And had I known how long and painful this process would be back then, I probably wouldn’t have jumped in headfirst.

 

Reflecting back, I can see that I’ve always had a spark of boldness in my character since I was a child. It’s just somehow, like most of us do, I lost it somewhere between consistent acts of self-rejection and self-abandonment. I spent too many years trying to fit in and please others in order to deserve their love and acceptance. Who would’ve known that it is my own love I needed this whole time? Not me.

 

Anyway, I spent the last 7 years falling apart and building myself back from zero. Trying and testing new things, career paths, discovering myself piece by piece. In the midst of my Dark Night of the Soul, I searched for God and a deeper meaning of life, going from one extreme to another, trying everything I could just to help myself get out of the dark when my life just seemed to only get worse and worse. I lost hope so many times trying to figure it all out on my own, having to surrender control over and over until I arrived to the understanding that the sweet spot of life lies somewhere in the middle, where the physical and ethereal meet in a perfect balance.

 

I guess everyone can resonate with this at some point in life. This is the Hero’s Journey that the American writer Joseph Campbell talks about in his books. The Hero has to answer the soul’s call for adventure, walk through the Valley of Death, overcoming the trials and challenges, slay the big scary Dragon living in the dark cave of her psyche, die to her old self, rise again to a new authentic, powerful version of herself, and finally enter a new stage of her own evolution. That’s where I am right now - a caterpillar turned into a full-grown imago, spreading my wings, and ready to fly, lighting the way for others on the same journey. This is what Martamorphosis is about.

 

In this virtual space, I’ll be sharing my journey, along with a lifetime of knowledge and wisdom. Using my gifts and talents to help you remember who you were before the world told you who to be. I’ll be sharing everything I do and offering my personal assistance should you feel called to invite me to join on your own Hero’s Journey. I’m here for you, my heart is wide open and ready to pour into yours until you stand firm beside me, shining your own light.

 

This feels like a good start to our relationship. Later, I’ll be sharing more of my story with you, but for now, I’m going to bow down to you in gratitude for spending your time reading all the way through this post and invite you to join me for the ride. Onwards and upwards!

 

Love, M

Butterflies. What do you know about butterflies? Well, it starts as a caterpillar. Gets into a cocoon, and then in about 2 to 4 weeks it morphs into a whole new creature. Fascinating! That process is called metamorphosis. But you already know that.

 

What I’m going to tell you next, I bet you didn’t know. Turns out, when it’s time to hatch, a butterfly has to work her way out of the cocoon, pushing and kicking those gentle baby wings into the walls trying to break free. Apparently, it’s a painful process since the wings are small and shrivelled, and the body is big and swollen. A butterfly suffers trying to break through the small crack in the cocoon. Did you know that?

So now imagine that you know that the butterfly is in pain, and you decide to help and tear that wall, before a butterfly does. What would happen then is, it would get out of the cocoon easily, but because there is no resistance to work her wings against, the fluid from her body won’t make its way into the wings in order to enlarge them to the size that is able to support the body. So it will stay crippled with no ability to fly for the rest of its life.  

 

The wisdom of metamorphosis is in the profound meaning of struggle. Why am I telling you this? Because this story helped me get through my own Martamorphosis. It helped me find meaning in my own suffering, and gave me hope that the dark night of my soul will eventually give rise to a new version of me. Transformed, upgraded and free.

 

In my caterpillar era, I crawled this earth trying to mold myself into something others could understand, accept and love. I abandoned, rejected and betrayed myself to get others to love me. And I was miserable. And then I had enough. I got into a cocoon where my whole world started to fall apart: my relationships, my career, my self-image, my beliefs, my values. It kept falling apart until there was nothing left. It was scary. It was painful. And I learned that not only there’s no love anywhere outside myself, but that self-love was the single, most important foundation that could keep my house standing even through the greatest of storms.

 

In my butterfly era, I’m building my house on a rock. The rock of self-love. It might sound romantic, but in reality it’s a full-time commitment to being my own best friend. And that doesn’t always mean spoiling myself all the time. Sometimes it means doing the hard thing I don’t want to do, because it’s good for me. Eating a healthy thing I don’t prefer to eat, because it’s good for me. Saying no to that thing that doesn’t serve my best interest. It means being kind, patient and forgiving with myself. Finally, it means believing, believing and some more believing in myself! In my butterfly era I am more confident, relaxed, loving and powerful than I’ve ever been. And this foundation of wellbeing cannot be swept away by the storms of the outside world, because it’s built on the rock of self-love.

 

This is what I want you to know about me today. Nothing else really maters. Not to me, anyway.
 I AM alive, I AM happy, I AM free. HERE. NOW. This is what matters!

 

In conclusion, I’d like to say, that we often might look at the butterfly in awe of her magnificence, and sigh thinking that we could never reach her heights. But this is when I’d like us to remember that the butterfly is only beautiful, because the caterpillar is brave.

 

Love, M