They sent police one afternoon and it literally just woke me know that you’re worthy even if you don’t feel it right now even if you don’t think it even if you don’t believe it believe me i strongly encourage everybody to challenge the notion of feeling like you’re selfish if you love yourself or you’re selfish if you have compassion for yourself because i can promise you that if you take the time to really value yourself and put yourself first and nurture yourself in the way that you would your best friend or your child that you love or your lover then you will be so much brighter and so much bigger and have so much more love and compassion for others that the world will be a much more beautiful place my name is carmen green tree and i’m here to share my story my story is a story of hope and it’s also proof that you can go through all sorts of things and that there is a chance to recover it started out for me as young as i can remember i always felt like i didn’t understand the world it didn’t make sense to me i didn’t feel like i was the same as anybody else so it led me to start searching from a very very young age even as young as six seven years old that i was looking for some sense of hope some sense of happiness when i was 14 years old i discovered the power of surfing i realized wow surfing is something that might give me some life some freedom something joyful and so my eyes got opened up to so many different possibilities and for seven years that managed to at least suppress and prevent me from this other side to me this darker hidden side of where i didn’t feel like the world made sense but then i went into a really critical event it was a six star wqs surfing event and it was the event that was either going to make me get onto the women’s world circuit tour or not and when i rocked up at the event they told me that i wasn’t in the event it was like the lid had come off and this big wave of problems just became exposed i didn’t have that outlet anymore to suppress and push it push it down which leads me to the next part of my journey i decided that maybe searching deeper into a spiritual journey,
i might be able to find the answers so i booked a trip to the dalai lama one backpack on my back and off i went to india thinking that it was just gonna be as easy and cruisy as all my other travels had been in the past but then when i got to india and arrived at the delhi airport and there wasn’t many hotels available because it was in the middle of the night and so i had to just take this really grubby really cheap really nasty to be honest hotel that that night i didn’t get much sleep at all and i was worn down so all i could think about was getting on this bus and i would be with the dalai lama and i was about to book my ticket with this agency and a little boy or young boy 12 or 14 year old boy came over to me and he started chatting to me and he said oh don’t book with this agency because they were involved with the murder of a lady named dawn griggs who was an australian who had been there three weeks before me you he could tell that i was looking stressed and a little bit bewildered,
And he said oh he’ll he’ll look after me he’ll take me to a government tourist agency turns out that they were a non-government tourist agency and they were running a scam and that instead of getting me to where i wanted to go they ended up coercing and manipulating me to go to a place called cashmere when i got off the plane the brother of the the young men that was that had actually sold me the ticket his brother was there waiting to pick me up and before i’d even got to the place where i would be supposedly only staying for a couple of nights he had found a way to start manipulating and pressuring me into a fearful place that a man must vouch for women here and that i should that i must hand over my tickets and my passports and my my bank cards and everything to him so that he can take care of that because if i was to be caught out as a woman here without a man vouching for me that i would be in a lot of trouble and a lot of danger so that happened within the first hour of arriving in kashmir and there wasn’t really any options for me to go and run to someone to to get like some sort of help from someone that spoke english that could understand me and i was already really really scared so yeah within the first hour i felt like i was already being captivated and losing all my power and freedom and control i was sexually abused by two brothers i didn’t think i was ever going to leave for for most of that time at some point in the in the journey the eldest brother did start to get really curious as to how much money my parents had and so he forced me to make a phone call to my father that was the phone call that was able to drop the number of of where i actually was and so that was the way that they were able to get the embassies and the police in australia and in india working all together to track down where i was and implement a rescue and they sent police one afternoon and i felt it literally just woke me up and i realized that that i might actually get to leave i might actually get to live off this boat and have life again in the way where i can take my freedom back where it can be mine again,
it’s taken me 15 years to be able to even acknowledge that and to release myself from the shame and the guilt of of the experience and and to not feel like it’s my fault when i look back now at the whole thing altogether collectively in regards to like who i am right now in this moment i feel like a whole person so i feel like i wouldn’t take any of it back i have no regrets because i’ve i feel enriched with all the colors of life all the flavors of life all the good and the bad and i’ve got the wisdom and the experience from all the good and the bad so for me it’s it’s a sense of of this unconditional love for all of my whole being and all my experiences and so i’ve never felt fuller and more alive and more happy than i than um than ever and i believe that it’s because of my life so i wouldn’t i wouldn’t take it back i i strongly encourage everybody to challenge the notion of feeling like you’re selfish if you love yourself or you’re selfish if you have compassion for yourself because i can promise you that if you take the time to really value yourself and put yourself first and nurture yourself in the way that you would your best friend or your child that you love or your lover then you will be so much brighter and so much bigger and have so much more love and compassion for others that the world will be a much more beautiful place so if i was to start working with somebody and they wanted to find out how they could go about loving themselves more and developing that compassion then the number one tip i would say to anyone is that whatever you’re feeling doesn’t matter what it is if it is shame or if it’s depression if it’s guilt anger so the tip is whenever these emotions arise love them don’t try to push them away if you find yourself trying to run away from these emotions or resisting these emotions then they won’t go away they will keep coming back in another way shape or form i strongly encourage you to open your arms to that emotion as if it is a part of you because it is it’s a part of you with unconditional love make make it completely okay to feel it know that it’s actually feeling the emotion isn’t going to hurt you because it’s there anyway welcome it in feel it and sit with it knowing that it’s okay and then you’ll be pleasantly surprised that it will actually start to soften and will start to shift and dissolve and you can use the breath to help you so sometimes if it really is stuck just slowing that breathing down into a nice steady rhythm deep into the belly whilst you’re just allowing yourself to feel that feeling and get out of the head don’t think so much about it just feel it without any judgment that’s that’s the first big step to healing and it’ll take you a long way my message to people that might be actually currently going through something like some sort of trauma or domestic violence know that you’re worthy know even if you don’t feel it right now even if you don’t think it even if you don’t believe it believe me you are so worthy everyone is important everyone has value and so if you’re listening to these words please please take them to heart and and take some sort of action reach out to somebody anybody and just start to start to give yourself permission to believe that there is an out because if one thing i’ve learned in my journey and this is not just my time in india,
i felt so stuck and so lost and that there was no out there was no improvement of my situation that there always was that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel there is an out but you have to be willing to look for it you have to be willing to open up your eyes and say yes i’m open to seeing that where that out is and it might be really really small in the beginning but if but if you can just hold on to that light that hope and and never let go then what you focus on will grow and will expand and the more that you can focus on even even the power of visualization and and i would like to call dreaming just dream of a life where you have the environment that you’d like to have the people around you and the relationships that you’d like to have the the fun and the joy that you like to feel and just do your best to ignore what is going on like take action to make steps out of the situation but do your best to ignore it so don’t feed it with any sort of thoughts or added drama just focus on like the solution focus on getting getting one step forward and don’t look back that’s that’s what i did when i was in india and i was coming home i just said to myself don’t look back don’t ever ever look back if i was to leave you with one truth that i believe that we should or could all live by to make our own lives in the world a better place especially now with what’s happening in our world is know that you are a sovereign being that you are your own authority that you have a connection inside of you to your own supreme power highest power and that no one outside of you has a connection with that for you that’s stronger than the one that you have with you so so you are your own authority you are your own leader you are your own master and you are very very unique we’re all so beautifully and perfectly unique and that in our uniqueness that’s where we all fit together perfectly in one big whole universe so i wrote my memoir a dangerous pursuit of happiness so that i could go into all of the details and write it from a perspective of healing and heart-centeredness so that the story wasn’t written in this heavy dark doom and gloom this poor crazy sad story i wanted to write this story so that i could get all the the events and the details out but with clarity and with the perspective of love and compassion for myself and for all the other people involved and com and think about it and feel it from a place of compassion and love rather than a place of judgment.
