Natasha Noel had a painful yet inspiring journey from having a troubled childhood to finding her solace in YOGA & Dance.
Her journey was hard but whenever life tried to pull her down she gathered the courage to come back – even stronger!
Recalling her tormenting childhood memory, Natasha shared with Scoopwhoop how her birth mother committed suicide in front of her.
“My birth mother committed suicide. I watched her burn herself. I was three and a half and I can still see flashes of my mother’s burning face in pain and her screams which keep me awake on most nights.”
“But now I’m learning not to victimize myself. I know I had nothing to do with that even though the first half of my life I spent hating myself because I blamed myself. I blamed myself for her death. There was a part of me that thought I caused it. I felt that I could help but I didn’t.”
At the age of 7 when most kids play with their dolls, Natasha became the victim of a male servant’s lust. She was abused. But this wasn’t the first and the last time she was abused or molested by someone very close in the families.
“I played the victim card for far too long for most of my life. When we go through something difficult, we feel the world is against us. I felt worthless. I was so disgusted that I didn’t even want to look into the mirror.
It’s like you feel so ugly that you want to simply cut parts of your body. Then maybe you’ll feel better or maybe so that you can just not feel the pain which is internally eating you up.
You try to cut the fat from your body. You start loathing yourself. You become insecure.Â
You stop listening to yourself and you start taking other people’s opinions into consideration. Bit by bit, you allow people to take pieces of you.
It becomes difficult for you to trust, to communicate with other humans. Accepting love from people who mean well becomes difficult as well. Forget accepting love, if you can’t love yourself how can you ever believe anyone can love you?
And if someone’s being genuinely nice to you, you will always believe that there’s an ulterior motive. Because you believe that you can’t feel, breathe, touch or even come close to happiness.”Â
Painful traumas that she underwent, could have broken anyone. But Natasha stood like a warrior – wounded yet undefeated.
At the age of 17, Natasha discovered her passion for dancing. But, unfortunately, she met with an accident that tore her meniscus and corneal muscles leading to liquid in her knee as well as damaged the knee cap.
“Even in my darkest of experiences, I never lost the hope to live. I always said that’s one thing I would never do. I would never kill myself. Because that doesn’t change anything.
I’ve been trying to fix myself ever since. I’ve been fighting ever since. I’ve been fighting just trying to breathe. Just trying to survive. But that’s not the purpose of life, to simply survive. The purpose is to live. To live it to the best to your ability. To live wholeheartedly. TO LIVE.”Â
She was living unhealthy for quite some time. She was drinking and smoking since she was 15 but when her 5-year-long relationship ended, the drinking got worse. All this led to a lot of weight gain, which came with an additional struggle.
But this was the deciding moment that brought a ray of hope and conviction in Natasha’s life.
She wanted to lose weight but she couldn’t exercise, so she gave up junk food and started eating healthy. Natasha embarked on her journey to healing herself from all the pain and the hurt.
And this is when she started teaching herself yoga. She initially started with books and videos to later learning Yoga professionally.Â
“For so long I was running away from my wounded child. I was just repressing my emotions and destroying myself piece by piece. In each of us, there is a young, suffering child. We have all had times of difficulty as children and many of us have experienced trauma. To protect and defend ourselves against future suffering, we often try to forget those painful times.”