#7 How To Accept All Parts of Yourself Through Life Lessons with Bek Antonucci

Today's episode is a deep conversation with Bek Antonucci, a passionate advocate for authenticity and self-expression. Bek's journey traverses core wounds of shame and unworthiness, from the trenches of high school bullying to the complexities of disordered eating, culminating in a life-altering herpes diagnosis.

Episode Highlights:

• Bek shares her experience of receiving a herpes diagnosis, a pivotal moment that reframed her perception, transforming what seemed like a devastating blow into an unexpected blessing. This diagnosis propelled Bek into a journey of self-discovery, where she defied societal norms, liberated herself from shame, and embraced radical authenticity.
• Bek's journey, from the depths of shame and unworthiness led her to help women worldwide in reclaiming their voices, personal power, and living authentically aligned lives.
• The episode challenges societal stigmas and explores the profound concept that true self-acceptance, encompassing all facets of oneself, is the key to overcoming external labels, diagnoses, and social judgments.

Key Takeaways:

• The power of embracing all aspects of oneself, despite societal pressures and stigmas, in cultivating true self-acceptance and personal empowerment.
• The transformative impact of reframing life's challenges and diagnoses as catalysts for personal growth, abundance, and profound self-acceptance.
• Insights into the intricate interplay between mental health, self-perception, and the creation of personal realities.

This episode uncovers the profound connection between personal experiences, deep-rooted emotions, and the narratives we craft for ourselves. Join us on this transformative journey towards embracing authenticity, self-acceptance, and breaking free from the chains of shame and unworthiness.

About Bek
As a sought-after mentor and coach, Bek has empowered countless individual's globally to embrace their unique voices, reclaim their personal power, and live authentically aligned lives. Her magnetic approach to transformation led to her one-on-one client books being consistently full, with a devoted waitlist—a testament to the depth and impact of her work. Bek's vibrant world offers a plethora of opportunities for those seeking not just transformation, but a joyful, fulfilling journey towards self-discovery and authenticity.

Connect With Bek

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bekantonucci/
Work 1:1 with Bek:  Application Form
Raw, Real & Vulnerable Podcast: Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Disclose With Confidence: https://bekantonucci.podia.com/aligning-my-life-to-my-desires

Your Joyful Host - Jemaine Finlay

Women's health naturopath, personal trainer, NLP & behaviour specialist, Heartmath coach, podcaster, speaker, sun-seaker, and world’s most curious human when it comes to consciousness & human behaviour. A bit of a mixed bag! But hey, at least you'll never be bored!

Connect with Jemaine
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/its.allwellness_podcast/
Website: https://jemainefinlay.com/

Transcript

JEMAINE FINLAY:
Bek, you are such a powerhouse woman with an incredible mission behind your message. So I am honored to have you on my show today. As you may know, what I teach is this understanding of getting to know the being beneath the behavior. And so I think not only does your story deeply resonate with what I really hope to inspire with this podcast, but deeply resonates with my own personal story as well. So I do genuinely believe what we dive into, wherever this conversation takes us today, is going to be really powerful for everyone. And I can't wait to dive in.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
I'm so pumped when I got your voice memos and I think there was like three of them back to back and I was listening to everything that you were saying. Everything that you're saying so deeply moved me and resonated with the beliefs that I hold about life and about why we manifest and call in certain experiences and people and places. I was just like this woman gets it and I cannot wait to have this conversation. I'm pumped, I'm excited, and I don't know where it's going to go, but I think it's going to be something really special.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
Oh, so do I. Now, I mentioned to you as well in previous conversation, I went down the rabbit hole on your podcast, Raw, Real and Vulnerable. And I think, you know, this is going to be a really great topic and theme to start with, to give our audience a little bit of context as to what your message is and the backstory behind that. So if you're open to sharing, I'd love to start with where all this began for you.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Yeah, so obviously now I support women to learn essentially how to love themselves and express themselves courageously and accept the parts of themselves that they deny and or they think that society will shame. And my journey for that stemmed way before big capital T traumas ever hit. And it actually stemmed all the way back to my years in high school. So when I was a teenage girl, I was bullied horrifically. I went to a prestige all girls school in Perth, Western Australia, and my best friend turned essentially the entire year group against me.

And when you're a 14 year old girl, popularity is basically the pinnacle of the success. And I felt like the one that didn't fit in, I felt like the black shape. And I didn't understand what the conscious or subconscious mind was then, I didn't understand anything about what I was thinking and feeling about myself. But what I did remember was all the words that those girls used to scream at me. And I spent the rest of my young adult life living from those ineffective beliefs. Everything my bully said I felt was true about me and I was trying to do everything that I could in my life to not be that. So these girls used to scream at me things like, you're disgusting and you're rank. And I remember leaving high school so fearful of the world, so fearful of women, just feeling like I wasn't safe. In fact, I attempted to take my own life. That's how severe the bullying got. And then when I left high school, I was like, well, not realizing that all I wanted was to feel safe and this deep sense of belonging in the world. I went and got a boyfriend. Obviously I'd marked women or young women as bad or painful or hurtful or harmful. I was like, okay. naturally the human being designed to survive looks for what's next.

So men, men hadn't hurt me yet. I went and got a boyfriend at age 19. He punched me in the head with a closed fist, knocked me unconscious. And that's how we broke up. This is my first boyfriend, my first love. I don't know if everyone listening right now remembers their first breakup, but it was so painful. It was so shameful. It was drenched in embarrassment, humiliation, and all the thoughts that I had been trying to run from, from the girls who had bullied me in school of, you're disgusting, you're rank, no one likes you. All those thoughts started to scream to the surface and I used to think, why did this happen to me? Why am I not good enough to be liked and loved? Why am I not good enough to have friends and to fit in or a boyfriend treat me right? And instead of knowing that that was actually what was occurring for me, I decided to run from that, run from the pain. And so I went through a huge disordered eating journey, trying to find ways to learn how to love and accept myself. I thought if I was beautiful, then I wouldn't feel bad about me.

So then I went and got the perfect influencer body, the perfect fitness body and people started being nice to me. So that was really exciting because when you were nice to me, I felt really safe. I felt like if you were nice to me, you weren't going to bully me. Or if a man found me attractive, he wasn't going to hurt and harm me. So I spent my young 20s trying to run from the pain that was caused for me through the bullying.

And at age 25, like I could give you so many scenarios of just the universe or God or whoever you resonate with whacking me with signs that it was time to learn to love myself from within. But the final thing to really wrap this up with a ribbon was at age 25, I slept with a friend. I left my partner and I slept with a friend who promised me that he was STI free and he transmitted the herpes virus to me. And that was the most earth shattering, world ending, worthiness, any piece of worthiness I thought I had remaining just felt like it was ripped from me. And really, that was the only other time in my life I didn't attempt to take my life, but I considered I was suffered with a lot of suicide ideation, feeling like my life wasn't worth living, carrying such a stigmatized virus within me. And that was the catalyst for this entire journey.

That was age 25. And that was basically like God hitting me on the head with a two by four saying, Rebecca Antonucci, You have got to learn to love yourself from within and experience and embody worthiness from within regardless of what the external world says about you, thinks about you, what people's opinions are of you. You get to learn how to carry yourself, hold yourself, love yourself, accept yourself. speak to yourself. So that was my journey, my personal journey to getting me to here. And then at age 25, I didn't really care about helping women then. I was in so much pain that when your cup is so empty as a woman, you have no space to love anyone else or care about anyone else. So all I was desperate for was to find a way to heal this part of me that I hated. And that was essentially the journey.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
Do you find through that, I mean, two very different experiences, right? So there's bullying, and there's this lack of safety and this fear of the feminine, but then there's also this herpes virus as well. Do you find that there is any synergistic meaning to both of those different experiences?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Oh, absolutely. If you're someone, I mean, a lot of women come into my world. In fact, we finished a container of mine today. And some of the women were sharing how deeply healing this was for their sister wound. Now, I think so many of us can resonate with being bullied, or being bullied by women or being made to feel inferior by a group of women or feeling isolated or feeling not good enough or feeling like the black sheep or feeling like just being a young woman and saying, I remember looking at all these women with all these groups of friends and just being like, where's my group of friends? Why do I have one friend? And it looks like, and I'm not saying this is true, but it looks like everyone else just fits in and has this beautiful group of people that love them. But people don't feel that way towards me. Why am I so isolated? Why am I so different? Why am I the odd one out? Why am I not the one chosen for the sports team or the birthday parties? I think so many of us can resonate with this conversation to varying degrees.

Although when you go and test positive for the most stigmatized virus on the planet, that whilst it's common, the conversation about it is uncommon and the thoughts about it are isolation, I'm not good enough, I won't fit in anymore, I will be rejected. If you carry the core wound of rejection, which a lot of us do, testing positive for such a stigmatized virus is insanely triggering because all of a sudden our core wound screams to the surface and for me it was like, not only will no man ever choose me, now I don't trust women anyway, but I didn't tell my two best friends in case we got drunk one night and they started telling people and they told everyone in Perth. Now, if women knew this about me, they might not want to be my friend. Or if this went around Perth, because there's such a small town mentality, no matter where you live, New York City or rural Australia, of like, once one person knows this about me, everyone in my city is going to know this about me. Well, once that happens, who's going to want to be friends with me? So all of a sudden, the isolation that occurred for me at age 14, 15, 16, is now happening again at age 25. Not saying that was true and that the external world would think and feel that, but that was my lived experience. If I tell you, you are going to reject me, women will not want to be friends with me.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
Do you find, so I'm someone who speaks a lot about the dis-ease beneath the disease, and I often say, you know, we're talking about an external infection here, but I wholeheartedly believe that there is a reason why your body wasn't resilient to that infection and why it landed. I, myself, through common conversations with women and my background as a naturopath, I do often see patterns with similar physical expression to the emotional underpinning Do you find that there's one key theme or emotion that has followed you through life that you think may be reflected through that virus?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Yes, absolutely. My massive fear of rejection, the lack of willingness to be authentically, not saying this exists now because this has been my work to be able to embody this, my lack of willingness to authentically own all parts of the self and really believe that that's worthy to be accepted without needing to be better. So when I was 14, I went to a prestigious girls school, my family weren't wealthy. And so I was like, well, once I'm wealthy, then I'll be good enough. Once I'm beautiful, then I'll be good enough. Once I have the partner, then I'll be good enough. The money, then I'll be good enough. Everything was once I get X, then I will be Y. And I think many of us have gone through that journey to different degrees as well, where I'll get that thing and then I'll feel that thing. And then we get the thing we're like, Oh no, this isn't good enough. I need to get more. And then we sabotage whatever it is that we've got, because that was the external world was never going to reflect back our worthiness when we don't feel it from within. So then we keep playing out that loop.

Even if you want to talk about weight loss, just to make it super easy for people. I know that women have gotten to a certain aesthetic and decided that wasn't good enough until they've moved away from it. And then look back at a photo and be like. If only I had that now, then I will be happy. But you've had that before and you weren't happy then. So it doesn't actually matter what the external world looks like if you're not feeling it from within. And so mine was the good enoughness that I really got to embody exactly as I am without becoming something else or something more or getting something outside of myself. That was essentially the journey the entire way through and healing that energy of needing to prove the self.

Everything was about proving, proving that I'm enough, proving that I'm good enough, proving that this boyfriend chose me, that made me worthy, proving, proving, proving, proving, proving. And the herpes piece was like, There's nothing to prove here except for full ownership of self and a willingness to reclaim my voice essentially in front of the bully. That was my choice point moment of talking about it publicly, of being like, this isn't a self-love piece yet. I haven't learned deep self-love because the bully teenager still didn't feel it from within me. But what she was willing to do was actually use her voice in front of the bully that she never spoke up against. And that was the real ownership part for the herpes piece.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
So interesting. Have you ever looked into Ina Segal's work? She's written the book, The Secret Language of Your Body. No. Oh my gosh Bec, you're gonna love that book. It's almost like, I've got it here actually, it is a bible. It's almost like a reference bible. You can look up a physical expression, a symptom or an emotion and it will show you the resonance. And it's so interesting because I was having a flick through that before we jumped in our call and when we're looking at the emotional significance of viruses specifically, feeling vulnerable, feeling attacked, feeling criticized, feeling harassed, when we start having a look at the emotion of shame.

This is what she literally quite, like quite literally writes in it. So, shame affects the reproductive organs and sexual areas of the body. It can lead to genital herpes, chlamydia, impotence, ovarian or prostate cancers, compulsive eating, kidney stones, urinary infections, vaginitis. And the reason why I flick through, I flick through this every time that there's like a medical underpinning to one of the interviews that I do, because I started to, in my own professional evolution, I very much pivoted from a personal trainer and the physical body. And then I recognized there's something so much deeper than this. And then I went into neutropathy thinking that that would be holistic. And I still recognize like, this still isn't addressing the root of it, right? And so I did NLP and I started to recognize the dialogue and the internal manifestations that are happening before. And I found as I started going down there, I started applying that to my naturopathic cases. And almost every time I could have a client who has gone through full body breakdown, everything from cardiac issues and kidney stones and endometriosis and reproductive stuff and all of this stuff going on. And we have a look at every individual symptom and have a look at the emotional manifestation, and it will come back no matter how spread out it is throughout the body. It'll be the same emotional lesson that's sitting there. And it's just, like I said, I've been down the wormhole of your podcast and different interviews that you've done yourself. And I just hear this theme of just longing for acceptance, for love, and this theme of feeling unworthy, feeling vulnerable. And again, this is why I was just so resonated with your story once I heard all about it.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Oh, so good. And even the conversation, you know how I said so many things hit me in advance prior to the herpes virus, even the reference point to compulsive eating. I got very, I went so down the rabbit hole of diet and fitness and restrictive eating. But when it tipped to the other end of the scale, it was compulsive eating for days, weekends, weeks. what sometimes felt like months on end. And I used to sit there in all of this shame and all of this humiliation and all of this embarrassment. I'm really stemming that back because I know you said vulnerability. I know you mentioned the word shame. That was essentially everything that the bullied teenager felt, shame, embarrassment, disgust, that they're the words that were being yelled at her too. I literally continuously manifested different physical experiences of the emotional pain that I went through at 14 until I was ready to actually truly look at and confront it.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
So let's go down that path a little bit of your journey as well. You mentioned the gym season of your life and really focusing on trying to, quote unquote, fix the body in that search for acceptance. Can you speak a little bit to that part of your journey?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Yeah, so at 19, obviously, after the partner and I ended, and so now I'm 19 years young, I have no idea about the world, except that I have this massive belief that men and women won't accept me. And I also felt incredibly weak because I've always been such a kind of moral, proud person. And I No, my parents are very good humans. They've taught me to have great values. And I just knew that a man hitting a woman is very wrong. And so I felt all of this shame around and lack of safety around where women bully me, which leads to physical pain. I attempted to take my life. Men hurt me. I love them. And then he punches me and that ends up in physical pain. So no matter what I do, I'm not safe in this world. And then also what I never admitted was I just want friends. I really wanted those girls to like me. I don't know why I didn't fit in. And I wanted my partner to love me and not hurt and harm me. I was so obsessed. I wanted to get married to him. And I just felt so weak of like, oh, these people that hurt me so much. I just wanted them to choose me. And I don't know what's wrong with me and what's bad about me that they didn't love me.

And so I thought to myself, what am I going to do? to make myself look like I'm strong. And I thought, well, if I go to the gym, I'm going to look strong, even though I don't feel strong, and then maybe people won't hurt me. And so I got a personal trainer. She gave me a diet plan, an exercise program. And I went to this gym in Perth, Western Australia. I don't know if anyone remembers it, but 15 years ago, Fitness First in Aloo was basically a nightclub during the day. And if you're 19 years old, I see you nodding. If you're 19 years old, impressionable, gone to a school where popularity is the pinnacle of everything, you've got men training for gladiator. I'd never seen men with muscles before. Men training for gladiator, women training for sports modeling competitions. Everyone looked like beautiful and cool to me. And I'm 19 and fearing the entire world. As soon as I started to eat a certain way, the way that my trainer taught me, you know, boiled broccoli and steamed chicken and a few almonds, why I dropped so much weight quickly. And I'm naturally quite a muscular woman without even really trying as much as I do love exercise. And so all of a sudden, within a matter of two months, my body had rapidly transformed from just a normal 19 year old girl into a little fitness model, essentially. And I went to this crazy busy gym. And all of a sudden, all of these people that looked really cool and really scary to me, started to be really nice to me. Men started to talk to me. Women started to be kind to me. I was invited places. Facebook had only started. I had all these Facebook friend requests. I always had something to do.

And I immediately, without realizing it, correlated looking a certain way to being validated by the external world. And if I felt validated, I felt safe. So people think this is why I never judge any woman that's obsessed with her Instagram or obsessed with her body. I don't look at it as a vanity metric. I look at it as someone who, underneath, is so desperate and dying to feel accepted and a deep sense of belonging and also safe. Because as soon as someone told me I was beautiful, or they loved my body or complimented me or added me on Facebook or invited me somewhere, I didn't realize at the time, but there was a deep, exhaled breath out of like, This person isn't going to try and hurt me. I'm okay. But I couldn't live from that energetic of fear and fearing like the entire world was only going to choose me if I looked a certain way.

So that was a journey. And for as long as I was, you know, I'm doing air quotes right now, on the wagon, everything was good until I couldn't sustain that high level of fitness and that restrictive dieting that basically so many young women go down. Because for the validation that I received, for as long as it was filling up a cup of not-enoughness, there was basically a hole in the bottom and it was always draining out. So no matter how much weight I lost, it was actually never enough. And no matter how many compliments you gave me, they would basically hit and be like, oh, that feels good, but it'd only ever be temporary. And then I'd need more because the cup was constantly emptying. And so the diet, it was like I started dieting, felt good. Then I started restricting more and more and more and more to the point there was no more food to restrict until the straw that breaks the camel's back breaks. Then the compulsive eating begins. And that was basically a cycle that I lived in for so many years.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
I know that this is going to resonate with so many women. I've seen it a lot in my professional career. And as I mentioned at the start, my personal life as well when, you know, it's exhausting, right? Trying to maintain that image and chase that constant validation, it is exhausting. And I can totally resonate in that. for me, my background with seeking that love and acceptance, it came from family core wounding.

My parents split when I was two, and I lived with my mom, and my mom, we always lived with other families. It was her first partner and his five daughters, and then it was her second husband and his five kids, and then it was her best friend and their five kids. And simultaneously, I was shared custody with my dad, who also remarried. She had four kids, and they had two kids together as well. And so here I am in between both of those homes, feeling like my family now have their own family and I didn't even know where I fitted into that and so I felt like I had to earn that love and acceptance. I had to be seen and at first it was using my career and I would be a workaholic and like that was where I would receive praise, like I was good at what I did and that validation just kept driving until burnout, drive, burnout, drive, burnout. And then when I stepped into that physical fitness realm, my body is similar in the sense that once I train, I can gain muscle and quite well. And again, that I just had constant like, you're so strong, oh my god, you should do do bodybuilding, do do like competitions, you should compete. And again, it's that it's not sustainable, but it's a trap. And the scary thing is back when we were younger, they used to talk about, oh, you know, it's just a girl on a magazine. It's airbrushed. It's not true. But when you're in that gym environment and your friends and the people around you are actually that lean washboard ab kind of physique and tanned and beautiful, and that is your world. then it is very hard then to not feel that unworthiness, to not feel like you've got to maintain that status to fit in, right?

Not only did the dieting become less and less in terms of the quantity of food that I would eat, but also it was less and less in my relationships because I would stop going out. It was too hard to be able to measure meals and do that gym diet while still catching up and going to family dinners or going out for things with friends. it becomes very restrictive, not just in the diet, but in life in itself. And yeah, I so resonate with that part of your journey.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Oh, and it takes all the I mean, my ex partner, we broke up about six months ago, but we had a beautiful relationship for three years. And we both love food. And he he doesn't know the version of me that suffered with disordered eating. But he was just so perplexed of like, Food is one of your favorite things. And I'm Italian, I'm half Italian, and my family came to Bali to share time with me over the weekend, and everything was based around beautiful food. And I robbed myself from so much joy. I wasn't able to be present. Like, Christmas dinner would come, and it's such a beautiful experience for my mom to cook about 10,000 different meals for everyone, and we just end up so overly fed. But I would be there with 40 grams of fish and some spinach. and force myself to eat that because and I could just see the pain in my family's eyes witnessing me because they could also see a depleted person not in their joy forcing themselves to do something that she didn't want to do to try and feel something that I wasn't even feeling. And what feels awful about it is it's so, I cannot even resonate with that version of me that existed then, but it felt, that word that you used, compulsion, that felt compulsive. The restricting felt compulsive, and then when the eating occurred, the eating felt compulsive.

None of it ever felt good, none of it ever felt enjoyable, and the feeling that I was trying to get, I didn't even really know what it was, but I just, no matter what I tried, it was never coming. And yeah, for any woman going through that, I just... I really thought that diet or a personal trainer or some kind of fitness modality was going to be the secret source to my fulfillment, my happiness. What I was searching for was deep self-acceptance. But I wish that I knew that the deep inner work was going to be the thing, going to be the key piece that supported me to learn how to understand where these behaviors were being driven from. I didn't know that. I had no idea. I was just, all I wanted to do was fix the experience that I was in. I had no idea how, and it left me feeling so powerless and again, weak. afraid, shameful. And I was at a point where I just was so resentful and hated food. And I would sit there and think, I wish I was a drug addict. Like I would never, this is literally the pain that I was in. I wish I was a drug addict or an alcoholic, because this obsession with food, I can't not eat. I can't take food away from me. And I don't know how to, it's not like I can just go cold turkey and be like, right, no food for me because I can't have a healthy relationship with it. And it was, I would say it's a huge call, but I believe it so deeply to be true. Healing from disordered eating was so much harder than the herpes virus, but the herpes virus saved me from my eating disorder.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
And do you know what? It's interesting because I always look for, again, that emotional resonance underneath it. And for me, like my binge eating and what you mentioned earlier about it being a couple of days or a couple of like it could last months. And I remember when I first recognized it, I was in the middle of a binge and I was just all the shame and I was a closet, like my partner had no idea. I was with him for four years and he had no idea. But like, you know, hide the chocolate and I could eat a block of chocolate in the car on the way home and get home and still feel unsatisfied, right? And I sat back and looked at it and I realized over the time, is it that that compulsive eating is a lack of fulfillment in my life, like this at a physical level, like I'm actually finding a way to feel myself? Or, in my sense, chocolate? Like, is it a lack of sweetness in my life? And so, you know, we can look at all of these different little elements that we get so caught up in looking at what we should and shouldn't eat, and the quantity, and all of the things, and it's like, it's not always so macro, and it's not always so tangible. What lessons are there? What questions can I ask to find the bigger thing here?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
I love that so much and I have a high value for health and I still eat whatever I want because now I have the intuition for it. I don't like being overly full and I can now have a dessert and be so satisfied. A part of my personal standards when it comes to food is that I experience pleasure as I'm eating it. So I will never again force myself to eat something that's healthy that I hate because it's healthy. I used to just drink these most disgusting, gag-provoking shakes because my personal trainer said it was good for me. Just the supplements that I would force down, just the awful things that I would make myself do because I thought that I would get the body on the other side of it. And now it's so important to me that my life is led by desire and pleasure and how I feel. That I must feel some amount of pleasure and deliciousness as I'm eating, even if it's healthy. I love a mango, and I'm like, that is pleasurable and delicious. And I don't like being overly full, but because I put so much energy and effort into experiencing joy and pleasure and fulfillment in so many other areas of my life, now one small Kit Kat will satisfy me, whereas before, the whole bar would never have been enough and would have compulsed me to want to eat more. And then I would have eaten more, hoping for the, the satisfaction, the satiation to actually occur, but nothing would ever hit. And then I would try something else. I had the jar of Nutella. I remember eating an entire jar of Nutella in my parents' pantry, driving to the store to replace the jar because I was so embarrassed, eating the replacement jar and having to drive to the store again to replace it again and continuously repeating cycles of that. But for as long as, and I agree with that, for as long as I was unfulfilled, there was nothing that could fill that hole. And that was an attempt through food. And that's why it was constant lack of satisfaction, no matter what was being put in.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
This is what I love about storytelling, right? Because again, binge eating is another thing that's so incredibly common. And I would have 50 year old women who they would self loathe and then beat themselves up and then the anxiety and the self loathe will drive the stress and then the stress physiology then drives the food, the desire for that immediate energy for survival. And it's this perpetual cycle. And I noticed, I recognized after my pop passing, my nan opened up and she was saying she doesn't cook dinners or anything anymore, but she would just eat boxes and boxes of ice cream. There is a huge emotional element under food. And I think that when we start going into the power of storytelling, we start to give others permission to feel seen and heard through your own experience. which is why I love that you've come out and you've spoken about your herpes experience because it allows people to recognize, I am not alone here. And I think that's what we do, especially in the Western world, right? You look around the world in Italy and all throughout Europe and in the Philippines and throughout Asia, there's so much community. There's community in the way we eat. We have multiple generations living under one roof and there's so much togetherness and belonging. But in the Western world, We isolate, we got to hustle, we got to push, we're eating in the car by ourselves. And it's no wonder that we self-soothe with food. I think it's beautiful when we can actually start coming together as community and especially women-centered business. This is what we're great at, right? And creating community to feel seen and heard through story.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
It's so interesting that you say that. I've actually, now that I'm in Bali, I love, there's so many different cultures around me. And I love women and my, my client base is predominantly Australian American. And I feel like this hard work, hustle, isolate, even just the eat in the car analogy, like part of my food standards is I do not eat in my car when I'm driving, not that I drive here in Bali, but when I was in Australia, because I don't actually consciously acknowledge that I'm eating food whilst I eat and drive. And so that's no longer a part of something that I do. But now I'm in Bali, I witness women and I just like breathe them in and soak them in. And sometimes it's like looking at an animal in a zoo of like these women from different cultures are just so different to us. We've kind of got this like work ethic and this like rigidity drilled into us. And yeah, it does. I love that you reference that, like the isolation.

And the reason that women love my group so much is there's such a deep sense of community, like there's never a selling point of the work that I do, but when they come and they get to receive that, they're like, this is the gift that I didn't even know. that I needed. And then the ability to be seen and heard so vulnerably and truthfully without needing to put on a mask or be anyone other than exactly who you are and be so loved and accepted for it by not only the coaches and facilitators, but also the community of women, like-minded women around them. They're like, this was so healing for me. And then the other reflection that I often get from my groups is just, I know you reference storytelling, is I tell stories in such a way that it's relatable. I don't speak like I'm better than anyone. I speak like you're having dinner with your girlfriend and we're talking about the guys that we went on a date with on the weekend and it's like fun and it's light and it's truthful and it's deep and it resonates because I'm not speaking from a place of hierarchy. I intend to lead, but one of my mentors said lead from the circle as if you're all sitting in circle together and no one's opinion is more important than the other. No one's standing on stage talking in front of a group of people. It's just women basically sitting in circle like we have done for thousands of years. all teaching each other. And that's my intention as I tell my stories, so that women feel resonance and relatability rather than, oh, that person's better than me. And I feel like that's why it's so deeply healing for the women who resonate with my voice.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
Let's have a bit of a chat about that. So do you speak specifically to women struggling with herpes? Or do you find that is the core wound of that self-acceptance? And like, who is the woman that you speak to?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
I speak to a woman who is challenged with ineffective self-worth and body image stories. So self-worth could be, I'm not good enough exactly as I am. I'm unlovable. I must become more than what I am to be worthy of acceptance from the external world. There's something about me that I do not like. I'm not willing to accept. I deny. I never want to give a voice to. And ineffective body image could be body dysmorphia. bulimia. I always refer anyone that's navigating anorexia over to someone else. That's not my zone of genius. STI shame, sexual shame, sexual trauma. And then the herpes piece is something that I'm just so good at that I can't not speak about.

But essentially, my woman is a woman who desires to deeply embody acceptance and express herself courageously so that she can live her unique life lit up, alive and on fire. And so for some women, it's the herpes virus. But for so many women, it is another vehicle that brought up all the exact same emotion that the herpes virus brought up within me. But it showed up in her life in a different color, a different shape, a different thing. I mean, I've had women come to me whose husbands have had an affair and then they've gone like, fuck him. He's had an affair. I'm not choosing him. I've told the family, I've told the friends, everyone's like, no, leave him, whatever, he's done. And then once the dust has settled and she really sits with her and her and her husband are desiring to repair, she realizes that she wants to still choose him. She wants to keep the family unit together and she wants to actually work on repair. Well now, because there's so much stigma around a man cheating, especially a married man cheating, she then has to face off with the family and the friends who all decided, nuts, stuff him, he did what he did and we should never accept him. And so she's navigating her own stigma and shame around choosing the husband that had an affair and her using a voice about it and now her being seen with the man that had the affair and still choosing him. So it's just wild the different vehicles that have come for my clients that resonate with herpes but say, I didn't carry the herpes virus but I resonate with everything that you say.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
Yes! And again, coming back to storytelling, this is why I think it's so powerful because we're all looking at the world through our own bias lens. You might share your story, and through my bias filters, I'm pulling parts of that that I can resonate with so that I can connect with you and say, oh, I understand, or find an element to bring that conversation back. And so I really see that so powerful, which is why I wanted you to come on this show, really, because I think you've got a lot of genuine life experience that I think a lot of us struggle with, but we just don't have that voice for.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Yeah, I believe that we're all waiting for someone else to go first to make us feel okay for our pain, because it's so easy for the ego to tell us, well, you're the only one. I was so sure that I was the only woman with herpes, or I was the only beautiful woman with herpes, or I was, I was just online looking for some kind of socialite, some kind of attractive woman that looked like she really cared what people thought of her to say that I was okay. I wanted her to go first. If she went first and I would feel fine, but I couldn't find her. And that's because we all carry a deep desire, a deep core human need to belong. People think that it's wrong to want validation, like it's a part of our biology to want to be a part of the pack. You cannot avoid that. It feels good. We're all out here searching for our like-minded tribe, our soul community, the people that really get us connection. It's such a beautiful part of the point of living. So when someone speaks and shares something and then through, like you say, the bias lens hears and is like, that resonates with me. It's like, hold on, with Jem, I'm safe, and with Jem, she sees me, and Jem really hears me, and wow, I feel included, and I feel like we could spend and share time together. It'd be fulfilling. It's a beautiful part of life. It's such a beautiful part of life.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
And as you touched on at the start of the episode, safety, right? Human survival, you go way back through the centuries. you survive in pack. Any animal, you survive in pack. As soon as you deviate from the pack, you're no longer safe. So of course, this is a part of the brain as well. We mirror people. We've got these mirror neurons to allow us to mirror people because if we stand out, we're in trouble. If we fit in, we're okay. And so there's this big fear piece, this big survival piece. And as you mentioned as well, it's like, how can I find me, the beautiful people who are sharing this and it's breaking down, even that in itself is a stigma. Anyone can have it, you know, whether you're single or whether you're in a relationship. It's, you know, we've really got to have these conversations to be like, hey, it is just a part of human existence. You know, you might have some of your closest friends may have it and you've never had that conversation for them to feel safe to be able to disclose that.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Yeah. Anyone, I mean, anyone can carry the virus. I've had women in my programs that are in their late 60s Like I speak to a specific age group, very targeted online, even though my work is open and available to all women. And I have had women in their late sixties and early seventies carry this secret with them their entire life. I've gone through multiple marriages and never shared the truth of their experience because there has been so much shame there from when they were a very young woman, teenage girls, all the way up into late seventies.

I've had women who have desired to be virgins up until marriage and then through peer pressure decided, okay, I'm going to sleep with someone. The first time that I've had sex, be on the receiving end of the virus and gone through deep shame around, not only did I give up what I actually never wanted to give up, I was saving this for marriage, then to be on the receiving end of a stigmatized virus is just huge for them. I sometimes have months where all I get is applications from men. Like the past four weeks, about 80% of my application forms have been men and they all say the same thing. I know that you talk to women online, but I resonate with what you're saying. It's just like, herpes doesn't select, it doesn't make you special or bad or unworthy or any of these things, or not pretty or pretty. My old housemate was like, I think it's only for hot girls because I've had way more casual sex than you and you somehow have it. And he's like, how do I not have it? He's like, it's because you're really good looking. But it's got nothing to do with any of that. And if you carry it, what you're looking for is someone who looks like you to make you feel okay. So when I was searching for someone, I wanted a beautiful woman who looked like she cared what people thought. But I could find dorky men and very academic women. Well, they didn't remind me of me. And that's okay to be like, When we're searching for friendship and community, we're searching for like-minded people because that's a resonance. It doesn't mean that the other doesn't exist, it just means that I'm going to feel safe and belong in that community.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
So between getting your diagnosis and then first coming out and sharing your journey, what was that time frame and what was that journey like before you decided to speak out?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
It was six years. I first went into denial. The shock and the shame and the trauma and the sadness of the transmission of the virus is just so huge. And what I found was the hardest thing about it is the first outbreak is quite often the worst one. And because there's not a lot of information on it, I mean, hands up who wanted to be a herpes expert and or educator prior to finding out that you have herpes. Probably no one. So we're all finding out about this hands-on, like it's a hands-on learning experience of like, oh my God, I don't know what this is. I don't know what's happening to my body. For a lot of us, we didn't get to choose it. We weren't sat down and disclosed to, so that really just adds to it even more of like, oh my God, I've got this forever, like there's not an antibiotic or an injection that I can take to get rid of it. So it's truly a really painful experience to go through. And doctors can be really poorly informed and educated about it. Like I was handed an A4 information sheet by my doctor and told, I was like, what antibiotics do I take? And she's like, oh, no, honey. There's no cure for this. This is lifelong. And in that moment, I'm experiencing this painful outbreak. So I don't know if this outbreak is going to go forever for the rest of my life, is going to be recurring every month for the rest of my life, if it's ever going to end. I had no idea. So that really adds so much more trauma to what already is painful. And then the outbreak didn't come back. And so what was great for me was like, right. I don't want to own that. I have this. I don't want anyone to know that I have this. I'm going to pretend that I don't have this.

And so I lived two years denying it. Two years of just total denial until I had this siren in the back of my mind that was constantly yelling at me like I wouldn't own it. But it was like this constant chronic voice all day long. You are disgusting. No one will love you. No man will choose you. You've ruined your life. You've ruined your sex life. You have herpes. It was like. on repeat all day long. And I got to a point where I thought to myself, I have got to do something about this. I can't continuously have this on repeat in the back of my mind. And so I decided I bet I can heal this naturally and never have to tell anyone about it. I'm sure in the Amazon somewhere, there is some kind of tree bark or toad poisoning or some eye drop or something that I can ingest that will purge me of this horrid virus. And so I was doing ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms and working with the shamans and the Senenga and the toad poisoning and the purges and all the things for two years. And I would go and do the thing, I'd go and get the blood test and I'd always get back HSV2 antibodies detected.

And after two years, and I think it was my final ayahuasca ceremony of the two years with the intention to heal it naturally and heal it naturally, not to help anyone else. If I healed it naturally, I was never telling anyone. I was like, everyone else who's suffering can suffer. I'm free now. I don't need to care about helping anyone else. And my final ayahuasca journey really just reflected back to me that there was no herpes virus. I hadn't received outbreaks in those two years. I just received the thought, the fear in my mind. And so it basically reflected back to me, where is herpes? I was like, I have herpes. And this thought came to me, whether you want to call it God or your higher self or intuition. But this thought questioned me being like, OK, Bec, where is herpes? I was like, I have herpes. Yeah, OK, great. Where? Where is it? And I was like, well, hold on, where, where is herpes? Like, if I have it, where, where within me is it? And I was like, it's in my mind. It is my fears in my mind. And that was the almost like aha moment of. I don't need to heal it naturally to cure myself because it's the thoughts that get to be cured. And that was the almost awareness point of this is the work that gets to be done.

So after the first two years of denial, the next two years of trying to heal it naturally, the next two years were committed to moving through the thoughts. And I thought that I could only move through the thoughts. and only share it because my biggest fear was people knowing it about me. That's what I didn't want to ever occur. I was like, I can just tell my lifelong partner and he's the only person who needs to know if I can just do the work to get to sharing privately with him, that would be enough. But all of my life, There was so much resistance and so much struggle everywhere. And I was so frustrated because I'm such an incredible worker. I'm intelligent. I'm smart. I had a business. I had three jobs and just like I was financially suffering. I was in so much debt. Nothing was working. I was like, why? Are things just not aligning for me? What is happening? It feels like I'm pushing this heavy boulder that's 10 times more heavy than me up a hill. And again, the voice was like, you get to own this. And the moment that I was willing to give it a voice, not just to my one intimate partner, but publicly, that's when all the jigsaw puzzles started to join together. And that was essentially the path of least resistance where my business took off, money started to come in. Aligned men who really respect and love me and cherish me and treat me right came in. Aligned friendships, soul community, everything just, everything that was not meant for me fell away and everything that was meant for me started to magnetize towards me.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
I just love that. I just love everything about that story. When you started talking about the plant medicine, I was like, oh, I'm so curious to know what the medicine was telling her, what lessons she needed to take from it. And I just think there is a divine purpose that's within us and it comes from our life experiences. All of us go through challenges and they are so unique to us. and the thing is where we can stand in our power and our authenticity and speak words to our own truth. I'm currently writing a book at the moment and a huge chapter which just I did not expect to unfold but it's talking about this element of consciousness and there is no such thing as truth because the human body is the only way that we can put voice to an experience and create truth. But any truth that's there comes from one person's experience, but it's not the truth.

And I think, again, this is what comes back to The power of storytelling, but also coming back to our purposes, when we can just own our challenges with absolute love and acceptance for our whole journey, the hardships, the shame, the growth and the lessons that come from that, the hindsight and all of the things, and when we can actually sit with that and take the lessons and put words to our own truth, then that in itself becomes our purpose. It's like all of the shit through life, it has a purpose. The life theme that followed you, the shame and the guilt and the unworthiness and that whole journey through external validation right through to like the universe slapping you in the face and being like, listen to me woman, like this is within you, like it's not outside of you, it's within you and now I'm going to give it to you so it's within you and it's up to you to figure out how you're going to release that. And I think it's so beautiful.

I see a lot of powerhouse women who are moving into this beautiful business space where it's not the push and it's not the hustle culture and it's not the go, go, go and meeting resistance. It's like, let's just accept. every part of ourselves and speak truth to that and come together in the feminine way that we do in community, in storytelling, in connection and speak that and business happens naturally. Life flows, your romantic connections flow, finance starts to flow because it's your truth. It's what you were meant to do, it's why you were given the shit to work through. And you can look for somebody else sharing your story, but they're not going to have your tone of voice. I'm sure that there are many people in the online space speaking to herpes, but probably no one speaking to the beautiful woman, speaking to the emotional, not just the medical underpinning of what a virus is and how to fix it, but the spiritual significance to it. And some people may not resonate with it. there is a huge population of people who have been searching for it. And I'm sure you've found that within your own business model.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Yeah, and I've worked with so many women who are coaches to support them to be able to come out publicly because that's been a part of their journey. I'm never an advocate for everyone going public. That's your own personal journey, your own personal desire, your own internal calling. If that's what you want, I can help you do that, but only if you want it. But one of my clients, this is something that she's moved through and she's like, Do you feel like everyone that you're helping now is stealing your clients? Like, shouldn't they all just be going to you? Number one, I reflected back to the kind of scarcity and competition and comparison mindset that's attached to that. And also, I believe that my voice, and I was taught this by my mentor Preston, my voice is meant to resonate with those that it's meant to resonate with. I already believe that the women and men that I'm here to impact have my name handwritten on their soul and vice versa. And so. Anyone else, the rest of the world could all start talking about herpes tomorrow. Like everyone could. And the ones that are meant to hear me will not be able to hear the others. It will not. That concept of truth. My truth will resonate with them and it will hit their body in a way that feels true for them, which makes it true for them. It doesn't mean it is the truth. There is no such thing as capital T truth, just as you mentioned. But that's what I truly believe. Everyone tomorrow could all start talking about herpes and still the thousands of people that are meant to only hear from me can only hear that message from me.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
Amen, sister. Now, I would love if you could share that person who is hiding their authentic self, whether that be herpes or there's stigma in so many different elements, whether it's through pregnancy termination or IVF or specific diseases or labels that we give ourselves. If someone is fearful of expressing that authentic self, and again, it doesn't have to be public, it can just be in your intimate relationship, what advice would you give to someone about just owning that authenticity and being true to themselves?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Yeah, I would definitely love that woman or man to consider what the fear is in owning it. is the fear, oh my God, if people were to know this thing about me, men wouldn't love me, men won't choose me, women won't be friends with me. What's the fear? And where did that fear, where was the seed of that fear first planted? When was it first planted? Because I really believe that that's the healing. It's not the thing that's showing up. The thing that's showing up is just here to point you back to the direction of your own healing, my opinion.

And then I would love for you to consider If you were to give it a voice, who is someone that you really love? Someone that you really trust? I really believe that our vocal expression, our voice is such a key to our personal freedom and connection is something that we all deeply desire. And when we can sit vulnerably with another person eye to eye and share like, hey, Jem, this is really challenging for me, but I've been carrying something. for a long time and you know I haven't shared it because it's super vulnerable and I really desire to share it with you because you're one of my friends and I'd just love to know that you could hold this in complete confidence and that it won't go anywhere outside of us but I just feel like I've been carrying this heavy backpack full of bricks on my back and I don't want you to carry it for me I just desire for you to maybe help me lighten this load and typically anyone that you speak to like that is going to say whatever it is you've got my complete 100% conviction that I will not share this with anyone. I would love to be able to support you and then share whatever the thing is. What I found through doing that, this was my journey to sharing the herpes virus with friends. Friends would then share something super vulnerable back that I had no idea that I were navigating.

And so in that moment, I was like, not only did I receive love, validation, support, I experienced deeper connection because now my friend trusts me so much that they trust that I can hold them in whatever they're going through. Because this is something my mentor Preston also says a lot also often is what is most personal is most universal. Now the ego will have us convince us into believing that I'm the only one, I'm the only woman in Australia who has herpes. But we all know that's not true. And so what's most personal is most universal, which is why once I started talking about it, I received so many of me too's to the point that even if I was judging it within myself, I could never judge it ever again because I've just realized I've got enough evidence to prove that I'm not the only one. Like I'm completely okay. There are hundreds of thousands of beautiful, incredible women and men all around the world who have this. I'm not bad. And that's what we're searching for.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
And it's just getting it out of up here in our mind, right? We get stuck in our own story. And as you mentioned at the start of this episode, is we actually start creating our own reality, right? We're projecting whatever's going on in the inner world. And when we actually find that expression, we find that, you know, it, the reality that we're creating starts to change and navigate and redirect into another path. you know, we, we create the reality that we are alone, and we are isolated, and that's projected back to us. But when we can actually open up and share, like you said, it's like the universe will then, you know, you felt safe in opening up. And it's like, cool, let me now show you what opening up is and show you that you're not alone. And we create a whole different story from that. So I love that.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
And we're looking for evidence as well. So I always the final thing that I'll probably add to what I would share is like, finding the person who has gone through what you're going through. and letting them pave a way forward for you so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Like, someone has already walked the path and walked through the fire. And like, I've worked with so many incredible mentors. I've also worked with mentors who were the polar opposite of that. I have looked for things, tried everything, like I was any, anything, anything, any amount of money, anywhere in the world, if I could just support myself to get through this pain. And so I've already tried everything. to find the best tools that I know will support me and everyone else to move through this. So whatever you are uniquely going through, I would encourage you to find the person who has done it and figure out like they've gone through so many steps that they're never going to tell you to take because they know those steps don't work. And they've got basically their unique secret sauce and recipe for success. And you can read their book, you can listen to their podcast, you can ask them questions, you can join in on their Q&A, you can watch their IG lives that they do every three days. There is someone that has already done it.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
Find them. Yeah. And you know, as you said, find your avatar that is you, right? So I see a lot of women, for example, mums, who find a coach who's sharing their experience. Let's just say, for example, herpes or binge eating, or maybe business, let's use business. So they find a business coach that has what they want, but it's not a business coach who's also a mum. So they're trying to get this six-figure month and all of these things, and it's like the internal frustration is they don't get it. And you start self-sabotaging and almost pushing that person away, paying for their service, but pushing them away because it's like, they don't get me. I'm a mum, I've got this, I've got all of these things and all of the excuses. And it's like, find your you, who looks and sounds exactly like you, who's doing what you wish to achieve. So that's such a valuable message.

Now we're right at the top of the hour. So I would love, because I think there's another big theme here that comes down to confidence. You've mentioned there was six years of you living with herpes before coming out and expressing, and then there was a huge life from 14 years of age going through this similar theme around confidence. And I know that confidence is something that affects all of us to some degree. I'm wondering if you could just share some short words of wisdom to somebody in redefining confidence. Because I think nothing has meaning except for the meaning that we give to it, right? And I think we are all seeking this version of beauty. And it's like, well, you know, some people find that Botox aesthetic look beautiful. Some people like the all-natural woman beautiful. Some people like curves. Some people like that stocky crossfit build. Some people like the leaner physique. So, like, what is the definition that we're searching? It's the same with intelligence. But I think when we're looking at it so generally, we don't find that confidence because there's no one definition. So some parting words of advice for someone wanting to feel confident within themselves. What would you share?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
I would share two things. One is courage. The other is congruence. I don't really believe that confidence is something that is just given to us or you can work towards without doing lots of things courageously first repeatedly so that you can build the energetic body that can actually feel confident. I didn't feel confident when I first started speaking about herpes online. And everyone told me it was brave and vulnerable, and it was. Now it's not. Now me talking about herpes online is like me saying, I just ran out of coconut water. It's got the exact same amount of energy for me of like, it doesn't, I'm proud of it, but, and I'm not proud of running out of coconut water, but it just is. And or maybe I am because it means I'm so healthy. The other so repeated moving in the direction that you desire to go. Walking with courage is going to be the thing that leads you into being courageous. The other part. is congruence and integrity.

Now, the reason that so many women, I believe, feel like they're not confident is because we put on a mask and we put on an act so that people perceive us as confident. I want you, I want Gem to think that Beck is confident. So I'm going to come to this podcast today and rather than just speaking truthfully and authentically, be my pretend self so that she validates me and all the women in her community and my community like me. Now, if that's true, I'm actually living it, like if I'm having a terrible day today and I'm not sharing truthfully about my experience, it doesn't mean you always have to be like, oh my God, today was so hard.

But I went through a breakup for this year, right? I have been very honest about it. It's a part of why I'm so confident because on my bad days or on the days where I'm crying or on the days where I closed the curtains and lied in bed and cried, I was quite truthful about it. But also on the days that I'm happy and I feel good, I'm truthful about that too, which means that I, because I own the fullness of my human experience, there's no act, there's no pretend. I just am who I am and I honor what I feel. And so I never feel like I have to uphold some kind of vision that someone else has of me because I'm just Rebecca Antonucci. And that's what I'm honoring in every moment. And I feel that the more that people can start to give permission to the real truth of their real human experience. On the good days and on the more challenging ones, that will be a part of the piece to you feeling confident because you'll no longer actually feel like you're living in basically the essence of your mask, of your external image that you are upholding to the world.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
And through doing that expression, right, it's healing for other people, because no longer do we live in this false mirage of the highlights reel. And we actually start to realize that even the most stunning person who gets to live the life in Bali and travel off to America and do all the things, you know, her life isn't like that 365 days of the year. We've got the natural flows.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Yes. I'm going to finish with this. One of my best friends messaged me the other day. I went away on a girl's trip to Lombok and Ireland two weeks ago. We took a load of photos and he messaged me saying, great to see you happy. finally seeing you post photos of you on the internet. And I share all the time on social media, I love writing, I love speaking. But for the first, and I was going through actually a frustration about being in Bali, being a woman that has an online business, but not being able to take photos of myself. But my truth was, I'm not going to take a photo, be like, hey, Gem, will you take a photo of me pretending to be happy in this picturesque, like I was still receiving the sunset and being with the sunset. But it felt so out of integrity to be like, hey, Gem, Take a photo of me smiling in the sunset right now, because I didn't feel like smiling in the sunset and having a photo taken of me. But now that I've gone through six months of the deep emotions and confronting everything that was hard to be with in the breakup, on the other side of that healing, I now have photos to share of me that are actually congruent because I took them on days. that I felt joy and I felt like I wanted my friends to take a photo of me smiling. And that's a part of, I will not share a highlight reel. If I'm not happy on that day, there will not be a photo of me smiling on the internet. It's just not who I am as a person. And that's why people perceive me as confident because there's so much willingness to just be truthful and honor my human experience on every day that it happens.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
You are the living proof of that is when you do live authentically in alignment, life happens for you, right? Life is happening through you, not to you. And I am a huge believer in everything is energy at the end of the day. And when we start to align with love or above, we have that reflected back to us as well. Yes. Now, final question that I have for you, I ask everybody who comes on the show, if you could leave a reflective question for all of our audience just to see it, that might be the difference that makes the difference in their life. What question would you have them ask themselves?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
I already know what it is. I would ask you, what is it that you are avoiding? Yes. And if you wanted a little bit more context about it, I would leave you with this statement, the avoidance of emotional pain will only further manifest more pain into your physical reality. So that's why I would always have you sit with the question of what is it that I am avoiding?

JEMAINE FINLAY:
So many yeses to that. I wholeheartedly agree. Beautiful question. Now, Bec, we are going to wrap up here. Is there anything that you wanted to add in or anything that you feel like we missed out on today?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Nothing, I just feel for anyone that is resonating with this conversation, I believe it's important for you to remind yourself that if that can break through it, you can too. If you can accept, and this is something that I like to say to the groups that I work with, if you are going through an experience that I went through, but you see me through the lens of acceptance, yet you're judging yourself, you have tangible evidence that acceptance is possible. Like if you can see me as a beautiful, if we're talking specifically about herpes, if you can see me as a beautiful woman, as a sexy woman, as a confident woman, as a woman who's worthy of love and relationship and all the good things in life, And I carry the exact same stigmatized virus that you've got. Evidence that acceptance is possible. And so now what that's showing me is that it's actually not about herpes because you accept me with it and you see me as inspiring. So what is it about you and herpes? And you really get to look at that.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
That is powerful. What a way to finish. I love that. Now, Beck, as I've mentioned at the top of the episode, your podcast, I'm absolutely in love with, Raw, Real and Vulnerable, and I highly recommend any woman who is just resonating with Beck's vibe to jump straight onto that podcast because it is raw, real and vulnerable. And it's not just about herpes, it's about all of the stigma that society keeps us confined by. So besides the podcast, where else can people find you?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Yeah, I'm most active on Instagram. So Instagram over at Bec Antonucci and it will always be me that responds to you. Instagram or the pod are the best two places to come and have a little play.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
I love it. And quickly as well, are you coaching? Do you do coaching containers or what is it that you're offering?

BEK ANTONUCCI:
So my one-on-one client books are full and everyone is waitlisted, which is beautiful. I have a group program. My signature group program is called True Transformation. We just closed that out today and we start again January 17th, I'm pretty sure, as the next cohort. I have a mini course coming out very soon. It's called Aliveness is My Birthright, which is supporting women to live their lives lit up turned on and committed to their own unique path of aliveness and alignment. I do monthly masterclasses, and I do a Q&A every Wednesday over on Instagram. I have my podcast that releases every Monday. So there's a lot in my world for someone that wants to come and have some fun.

JEMAINE FINLAY:
Yes, I love that. And I'll make sure all of those links are included in the show notes so people know where to find you. Now, Bec, thank you so much for your time today. I genuinely appreciate it. I know that you've got a busy week heading off to America this week, so I am so grateful for you squeezing me into your calendar.

BEK ANTONUCCI:
Well, I'm grateful for you making time and space for me too, and I can't wait to share this amazing conversation.