Lorelei Phillips
Halifax, Canada
The Power to Change
Lorelei Phillips grew up in the small, rural town of Digby, Nova Scotia. She is the oldest of three sisters, and was always involved in leadership roles throughout school. She was chosen to represent her town in regional and national exchanges, was a solid B+ student and was even prom queen in her graduation year. To this point, all the good things in her life just seemed to happen with very little effort on her part and she took for granted that’s just the way it is.
At 22, Lorelei found herself a victim of date rape and from there spiralled into dangerous patterns of self-sabotaging behaviour. She began to socially detach, found it difficult to trust friends or make new ones and eventually developed symptoms of anxiety and depression.
After therapy and a lot of personal healing, she finally understood that she had the power to change the course of her life by being kind to herself! This began a decade long journey of self-discovery and forgiveness culminating in the realization that the power of her mind could be used as a force for good!
She was asked to help bring a project to life that eventually blossomed into a non-profit called Start with a Smile; whose aim is to change the world by starting with ourselves! Her work through Start with a Smile reaffirmed the power of consciously choosing how to exist and interact with the world on a daily basis.
For Lorelei, it wasn’t about being positive all of the time, it was about accepting that we are all human, herself included, and to her that meant that some days we have the strength and power to lift others in dark times and sometimes we need to be gentle with ourselves and lean on the strength and power of others to lift us!
It’s about positive social interaction with people who genuinely care and it’s about being mindful of how she chooses to show up everyday.
Today, Lorelei looks at life as an adventure with ups and downs, successes and failures and incredible opportunities for growth! She has learned that life isn’t always the plethora of positivity and good fortune she experienced in high school but that it is her choice to make the best out of every situation by loving herself first!
She has since started a business that connects with her passion for helping others be gentle with themselves, takes better care of her health and is working with a personal trainer, actively faces fears (ex. tubing on the Gaspereau River and moving across the country!), volunteers in the community and makes having fun a priority by letting it all go once a week (at least) with some dance therapy! She is now excited to see what the next decade has in store and knows that through self-compassion anything is possible!
– Edited by Soumya John