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Bold, brash, and deeply caring, this month’s ‘With Intent’ podcast sees us talk to author, entrepreneur, blogger, and mum of seven Constance Hall about the healing power of sisterhood, why she believes ‘victimisation’ has become a dirty word, how she’s raising her sons to be in touch with their femininity, why she chooses to make her private life public, and the unconventional way she got in touch with her spirituality. People either love Constance or hate her. I loved spending time with her, am grateful for her truth and was left feeling inspired by how she’s inadvertently supporting and helping to empower women across the globe. Enjoy the podcast and thank you for listening.
Can’t get enough of Constance? Learn more about her rise to fame in her chat with Em Rusciano, check out her chat with Mia Freedman, or watch her Ted Talk on bullying.
So here we are with Constance Hall. Con and I have just spent how many hours? Two hours talking pre-podcast, so hopefully we’ve still got something to chat about. Welcome Con. I’m so honoured to have you.
Thank you. I’m so honoured to be here. It’s funny you say that because before I left the house, Denim, my husband, wanted to go and do something at 1pm, and I said to him, “I don’t know if I’ll make it back in time.” He goes, “You’re not doing a four-hour podcast.” And for some reason, it’s like I knew that we might get carried away.
I listened to Em Rusciano’s podcast where you were recently interviewed and you said that you didn’t do small interviews?
What I meant was like Today, Tonight. Do you know what I mean? I meant I don’t do small media, but I definitely do the interviews like this with interesting women. I wouldn’t call you small.
Oh, thank you. Well, I was flattered. I was like “Wow, she’s going to talk with me.” But this has been a long time coming.
Yeah, you’ve been very patient. I’m cagey with everybody. I always think, “Oh, I don’t want to lock myself into…” Especially being in someone’s home. You go to someone’s home or them coming to yours because you can’t get away. So I just don’t usually commit to anything ever, but then, when I saw in the supermarket last week, we were just pushing trolleys in the supermarket, and I was like, “Okay, I can definitely engage with this woman very easily and here we are.”
I want to pick up on why you do what you do because I read that you don’t actually like the internet. And your business was born and is dependent on the internet and social media. Can you share why you do what you do?
Well, I feel very lucky to be honest, because as a blogger, there are thousands of blogs out there, hundreds of thousands that people don’t read. And to have everybody come to me at one point in 2016 and start reading my blogs was just such a privilege that I thought to myself, “This is your opportunity.” I’ve always felt like I had a message. I’ve always had an opinion, but whether it’s the right one or the wrong one, I’ve had to go back and correct my opinion, learn new things and all the rest of it, but I still always had an opinion. And I didn’t realize that made me controversial. Do you know what I mean? I was raised by a single woman, I was taught that my opinion mattered. And so, I never really paid that much attention to the fact that maybe I had a louder opinion than other people or a more self-assured one or whatever it was, I just thought it was normal.
And then all of a sudden it was, “Controversial blogger,” this and that. So I never meant to be that that person that was polarising, it just came from who I am. And so, I feel like the fact that people read me for the entertainment, because they think it’s funny or interesting or whatever it is, it’s my responsibility then to put the right things out onto the internet and to do the right thing by minorities or whatever, whoever. I’m trying to do what I believe is right because I do have to look at my platform as a responsibility. And if I’m earning money from it and supporting my family from it, I owe the people that are reading my authenticity so that’s why I give them the vulnerable stuff.
It’s just very much like me. I was a hairdresser for 13 years and I was always oversharing with my customers. Like they would be like, “Oh, my boyfriend cheated on me.” Like, “Oh my God, mine too.” And they’re like, “Oh, you’re not supposed to, it doesn’t look like that.” I would have been a really bad psychologist.
I read in your book that you said you weren’t necessarily a very good hairdresser.
No.
But people came to you for the chats and the connection?
Yes, exactly. And it was a really good connection. I love women. And that took years. I was a bit of a boys’ girl, believe it or not. When I was younger, I was the big beer sculling, hang out with the boys, shit giving girl. Like I could carry my own in a big group of boys – I was funnier and quicker and drank more. And then, it wasn’t until I had kids, my first baby, I was 25 and I realised that those friendships were really quite fickle. And none of them were coming to visit me when I was pregnant and in the hospital and crying. But all of a sudden, there were lots of women coming, women that I didn’t even really bond with that well beforehand. And especially if they’d had children, but even if they hadn’t, they would just come in to sit with me when I was having a rough day. And I really went, “Far out. I’ve been missing some very meaningful connections here.” And I became very grateful to be a woman.
Do you have any men following you?
My following is 97% women.
97% women. And let’s put it in perspective. You’ve written three books, with your first selling over 200,000 copies?
Yeah.
Which is hugely successful in the publishing world because your average is around 4,000 sales. You’ve been interviewed by 60 Minutes and that was another thing that happened. Again, rarely do I watch commercial TV, but it happened, this was before we connected, I just turned the television on and there’s Constance Hall being interviewed by 60 Minutes. Another sign that I needed to pursue you for this interview.
Yeah, and I was like walking in your front yard, really, because I was walking on that beach down there.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Ok so getting back to the point, you’ve got over 1.3 million Facebook followers, 500,000 Instagram followers and your Ted Talk has nearly had over a 100,000 views. That’s pretty phenomenal, isn’t it?
Yeah, it is. But honestly, I think I spent the first year of, I guess my life changed in 2016 when everything went viral and the following just started growing, and early 2017. Oh no, it was all of 2016, was the main big year. And I just think that I spent a good two years pinching myself and then I spent another year with imposter syndrome thinking they’re all going to find out I’m a fraud and that I’m not worth listening to, and that I don’t even know what I’m talking about half the time what am I doing? Someone’s going to knock me off my throne.
I was just waiting for that big news article that was like, “Constance Hall is a fraud.” But I’ve talked to my PR and told them all, and they were like, “But you’re honest about being a fraud. You tell everybody that you’re not educated and that you don’t know what you’re talking about, that you fucked up and all the rest of it. So you literally can’t be pushed off your throne because you’re not fucking on one, Con. You’re just sitting on the ground, rambling shit.” And I was like, “Okay, thanks. I’m okay now.”
But you self-deprecate a lot. And I loved Em Rusciano putting you back in your place.
Constance: Yeah, she did, didn’t she? I’m standing up now.
I know. Have you processed that? Because she talked about the narrative about you and you were like, “What’s so special about Con?” And you had a completely different view to Em about why you have struck a cord with women.
I loved what Em said. And I think there’s definitely something involved. Do you know what I mean? Like what she said is true….But you need to be humble in this world. You can’t go around talking yourself up because you’re not going to get anywhere. And I really listened to Em’s podcast, I thought it was brilliant. She interviewed me brilliantly. And I listened to it because I had to drive my mum back to Perth on the weekend, so I put it on in the car for my family to listen to. And they were just like, “Oh blah, blah, blah, blah. Let’s celebrate Con a bit more, shall we?” And so, they put me back in my place and I was like, “Okay, thanks, guys. You just needed to listen to five minutes of it.”
Well, they’re around you all the time.
Yeah, well, that’s right.
I thought the podcast was really interesting and her talking about your loyal community and why they’re loyal to you. And she touched on what it was about the women who didn’t like you because you’ve had a bit… And I don’t really want to talk about that too much because if people want to, then they can watch your Ted Talk and that gives a lot of insight into the bullying that you’ve experienced. But it was about why you have the haters and that potentially you’re triggering repressed women who try to hide the shame and the darkness of their life, where you just show it all.
I think that part of the interview made me so chuffed. I was just like, “Oh, that’s so sweet.” Not that I want to make women feel ashamed of themselves, but it just made me feel better about so many people hating on me so much. It was a better story than, “Well, you’re just shit.” Do you know what I mean? And I think that the whole coming out as a victim of bullying is tough for me because I’ve been very resilient my whole life. I would never be a victim of anything. I would never admit to being a victim of anything. I would always just find my way out, be resilient, be funny, joke about it.
And my psychologist once said to me, “Do you know whenever we get a little bit emotional, you always crack a joke so that you can side swipe us.” She said, “Just bearing that in mind because sometimes I think that we’re just friends and chatting and I end up laughing at your jokes, and I have to bring you back and get you open.” And I was like, “That’s true.” I’ve always used humour as a way to deflect. I’m not comfortable being truly vulnerable. I do the vulnerable things online, but that’s stuff I’m comfortable with. There are things that I’m not comfortable with that I don’t open up about and I think being a victim of bullying was one of them because I just ignored it for so long. And then I thought about victims and victimisation and how much it’s actually become a dirty word. And that’s really not fair for victims. Everyone goes, “Well, I’m not a victim.” And it’s like, well, what’s wrong with being a victim? There’s a perpetrator and a victim.
And so, when I came out and I said I am a victim, it was really hard for me to say that because I wanted to be like, “But I’m still tough. But I don’t give a shit because I’m Constance Hall.” But I am a victim and it has really fucking hurt me. And it’s okay to be a victim. And I think that gave a lot of the kids that came to me permission to go, “I’m a victim too and this happened to me.” I think hearing me speak the words that are spoken about me, because it was hard, you hear my voice shake, you don’t want to say these horrible things that are said about you for years. It really opened the door for a lot of younger people to come to me, or even mums saying, “This is happening to my kids.” And then we sort of realised how huge a problem bullying is.
So much so. I think I actually messaged you on Instagram when you were openly feeling the effects of some bullying, and I think I messaged something saying, “Con, don’t dance with it. You’re giving them your power.”
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
And you responded with, “I’ve been quiet for long enough. I need to stand up.” And then the Ted Talk came out and I was blown away. The message was all about, love the victim.
Yeah, looking after the victim, putting our energy there.
Direct your energy with love to the victim.
Yeah, that’s right. And it’s just like kids. Like when your kids are all fighting and one of them goes, “Rumi slapped me.” If I go to Rumi and go, “Rumi…” I’m spread so thin in my household, so everybody’s fighting for my attention and that’s the golden pass. I give Rumi the attention. Instead, I’m ignoring Rumi, I’m giving Snow the attention because Snow’s just been hit and she needs love and she needs her cup filled up again. And Rumi sits there and his cup’s just depleting and he’s like, “Well, I’d better not hit Snow again because this feels like shit.”
So it’s kind of the same with bullying. And then when you think about that theory, works for domestic violence. And we’re all gone, “He needs to go to jail. And he did this and that.” Even like, look at paedophile on the internet, it’s the biggest thing that gets people enraged with good reason, but everyone just goes on this witch hunt.
Yes.
Constance: “Capital punishment. We need to do this.” Fuck the paedophile. Yeah, lock him up, of course. But what about the victim? Nobody writes the comments passionately saying, “Where is this child now? Is there a fund we can help this child with?” No one feels as passionate towards rewarding with love as they do towards that fucking witch hunts and the hatred and punishment. So I’m just trying to say, why don’t we shift our energy and then we can all walk away feeling really good? Rather than walking away feeling really unsatisfied because somebody wronged somebody and it’s not right.
Yeah, spot on.
Yeah.
And I think that just gives me an insight into why you do what you do so well, is that you’ve explained some of your followers as being women who have endured some hardships and who are broken, and we all have stories. More women than not have endured hardships, and you’re, in a way, giving them love and empowering them and showing them with the energy of, “Hey, I care. I’ve been there and it’s okay.”
It’s a really hard scenario because it’s so hard to talk to such damaged people because they have been through much more than I have. And now I’m coming from a place of quite a lot of success and so, it’s very hard not to sound patronising where these women are in… I found when I was in a place that I didn’t want to be in, everybody was like, “Well, you make your own decisions. Well, you create your own reality.” And I was just like, “Fuck off.” I actually need somebody to just go, “Wow, that sounds really hard. What can I do? What can we do to help?” And so, for me, I have so many women coming to me and going, “You have managed to just pull your life together and you’ve done so well and you’re so happy all the time. What can you tell me to give me advice?” And I’m like, “What am I supposed to say?” I actually got really lucky.
And I’m so grateful that I got lucky, but there isn’t a formula that you too can follow because I waited until I had the money. And I needed to earn some decent money to feel good about myself. I have a million women telling me that I’m great. Do you know what I mean? Like I can’t say to someone, “Well, start a blog and get a million followers and then you too will get the confidence that I have.” So it’s really about, I don’t know, you tell me what you need. It’s more, I can’t give people advice because I didn’t make that path all completely on my own. I did it with an army of support and love. And I just really don’t want to ever come across patronising to what women…
If you came on my tours, you would know. And I’m sure you know anyway, because you’re really intuitive, but women are in such a worse position than people think. People think, “Oh, they’ve got equality and all the rest of it.” And people just don’t know how much hurt we’re carrying and how tough we have to pretend to be, how happy we have to pretend to be, how grateful. And when you get them all in this really safe environment and they’ve all got each other’s backs, you really hear it. I try and give cuddles and photos with like 500 women at my shows, and they’ll always whisper something in my ear.
And it will just be like, I’ll try and educate my husband as much as I can educate a man, but you don’t know. You just don’t know. No one knows what these women are going through. When I was in Ireland, touring Ireland, and they can’t have abortions and this woman had a man having an affair who kind of, “You’re fat and ugly,” and treated her like shit. Husband, he raped her, she was 12 weeks pregnant telling us, “What do I do?” And then there’s women standing up and going, “I will take you to England.” “But it’s 12 weeks, I don’t know.” “Well, I will look after the baby for you. You can move in with me.” And it was just this incredible vibration was just getting lifted up, but it was also what a reminder of the situation that Western women are in. It’s not just like, people go, “Oh well, imagine how Africa feels.” And it’s like, I always say to everyone, “Just because your son lost his life in the war doesn’t mean that you can’t feel sad for my son who lost his legs.”
Right.
You know what I mean? It’s nice to empathise with them, but we can empathise with everybody.
And I think that the power of the sisterhood…
Constance: Yeah. Crazy, isn’t it? I think that’s going to be the change for us. I think that women need to… The laws let us down, the systems let us down and I think we need to do, rather than fighting ScoMo, who’s a fucking idiot, and fighting all these people in power and saying, “Give us these rights.” There are people that need to do that. Penny Wong, I interviewed her. Amazing. Fight for us, but in the meantime, we need to just go, “Okay, do you know what?” They just pulled out on the extra funding for the domestic violence thing after the… I don’t even know the word for the politicians that decided it was just a COVID problem and that we didn’t need more funding. And I was bawling my eyes out hearing that answer. And Denim walked in and he was like, “What’s wrong with you?” And I had makeup all over my face, I was like, “We live in a fucked country. No one cares about women.” And he was just like, “Well, stop fucking crying about it and do what you can do.”
And I’ve obviously got my resources at my fingertips, but I’ve also got a spare bedroom and a couch that no one sleeps on. I’ve got a big, comfy one. Do you know what I mean? I think that we, as women, need to go, “What’s our power?” If you were in an abusive relationship, I could so easily just say to you, “Come and live with me for six months. We’ll find you a really nice house,” and all this stuff. And people just need that from each other, but no one has that. We all think we’re going to be in the streets or we’ve got this vision that we’re going to be in some refuge home five hours away from our family. And it doesn’t have to be like that, we can actually come together as a team and a force, and we can be more powerful. I really do believe divided, we fall. If we all stand up, everyone’s going to be scared of us. Men will be scared because we can fix each other, we can heal each other and we can change their lives.
Well, I think yes, all for women and empowerment and I see the whole equality movement, so powerful and so strong. I’m all for it and think it’s very positive, but I also want to see it all in balance?
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
I think because it has been so out of balance, it’s rising and I’d just love to see a balance.
Well, I think that with the rise of the feminine, we’ve had to survive in a man’s world for a long time. That’s what they’ve called it, the man’s world and all the rest of it. And I think men can rise with us, but they need to embrace their feminine side, and they need to embrace heart and soul and kindness and that sort of nurturing mother. So I really do believe that that’s a really strong, feminine… Look at us, we are naturally just biologically more connected to our babies and each other. And men now need to understand, yeah, there is place for that sort of masculine energy, absolutely. But right now, we’ve got to embrace the feminine and they do as well.
I agree.
Yeah, because we’ve been really good at embracing our masculine energy, haven’t we? We’ve had to do it for so long. Look at Tinder, women going, “I only want sex.” And meanwhile, they’re saying to their mate, “He won’t call me back.” But you’ve got to play the game. We’ve really played the game, now they’ve got to start playing our game and be like, “I really want a relationship.”
So you’ve got many boys?
Five.
Five boys. How do you raise your boys to embrace their femininity?
Well, I don’t know yet because my kids, I haven’t seen how they’ve turned out. The jury’s still out. I have a caveman son who’s such a boy. He’s that typical, they say that boys single focus and you can’t get them out of their zones, whereas my girls can do… I got, “Brush your teeth, hairbrush, put your shoes on.” Whereas boy will be like halfway through one shoelace. He’s like, “What was I doing?” I have the caveman son, I have the really sensitive boy. And one of my boys, I just got a call from the school saying that he’s been intimidating someone and he’s the most gentle, gorgeous boy.
I just don’t know exactly what to do, all I know is to continually try and to raise them with love and kindness rather than punishment. I’m just wanting to punishment and discipline. Discipline, the word comes from “teach” and that’s all we’re here to do, just guide. They can teach us, we can just try and guide them the right way. So the more aggression, the more hideous toxic masculinity they’re exposed to, I believe the worst they’re going to get. So when it comes to, and probably you won’t like this with your drive for balance, I think when it comes to relaying the guidelines and doing the discipline, I like to leave it in the feminine side. Because we are the nurturers, so we are the ones, we’ve been nurturing in the right way. And so, I always say to my husband, “Do you mind if I handle this?” Even if it’s his son who’s not biologically mine. “Do you mind if I handle this? Because I just feel like he might need that.” And my husband always gives love anyway. He’s really feminine and really in touch with his feminine side when it comes to that.
But I see, for example, in Africa, the charity I work with, Rafiki, they deal with the most traumatised people in the world, children, prostitutes at three. And yeah, I don’t even like using that word because it sounds like they chose it, but they deal with street boys. And these street boys are between the ages of like 10 and 17. And everyone in Kenya has always gone, “You cannot rehabilitate these boys. They are rough, they are dangerous, they will turn on you. It’s like trying to tame a lion, you just have to leave them alone and look after your children first.”
Anne-Marie and Sarah, the founder and co-founder of Rafiki went, “No, we’re not having that.” They’ve been feeding the kids in town, going in and giving them food and cleaning their clothes for them for years. “We believe we can bring him in and we believe we can love them and change them and help them.” So Anne-Marie does is play therapy. She’s a psychotherapist and she is all about reward therapy, love therapy, play therapy. She doesn’t punish anybody. And everyone thought this group of boys is going to come in and they’re just going to work you, girlfriend, and going to leave you with nothing. She says, “I don’t believe it.” She just brings them in and she has episodes, because they’re damaged.
But she said, for example, a boy pulled a knife out on one of the carers, and it was a Kenyan care and his initial response is to get angry and to punish. And Anne-Marie happened to be there and she just grabbed the boy and she just hugged him. And she said, “I’m so sorry.” And he was like, “For what?” And she was like, “I’m so sorry that you feel so threatened, you feel like you need to defend yourself. You feel like you need to protect yourself with a knife because the world has hurt you so much and shown you that. But you’re safe now and you don’t need to do that.” The boy burst into tears and he is now running the farm because he’s grown up there and he works there. And these are the boys that no one would go near.
These boys, I get to the farm when I got to Kenya and they were just hanging off me, like there was one every meter. And I was like, “What do you guys need?” Anne-Marie goes, “Oh, they’re just protecting you, honey, because you’re their queen, because I’ve told them all about you.” And I felt really unsafe going to Nairobi, but then I was like, “Denim, I’ve got to go back to [inaudible 00:22:05]. Where are my protectors?” And that’s all just coming up.
That is a really powerful story.
Yeah, isn’t it? I’ve been telling people that like, like Anne-Marie is amazing though. She’s one of those psychotherapists that you wish she was your mother-in-law. She’s just got love for everybody. And she teaches me things. I said to her once, “I’m having a fight with Denim and I just cannot fucking get over this. We fight over the same thing all the time.” And she goes, “Well, whatever you’re doing isn’t working, so do the opposite.” And I was like, “What do you mean the opposite?” And she’s like, “Well, when you walk in and you want to say, “Get the fuck out of bed, you lazy blah, blah,” just give him a hug and say, “Honey, it must be horrible not to to be able to get out of bed.”” He was out of bed in 10 minutes. And it was just like, I’ve always needed her to continually recheck me.
That’s like one of my mentors who I’ve interviewed, Melaney Ryan, her whole purpose is to show love and compassion in every single exchange.
Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s amazing.
So as a human being, if we can show love and compassion in every single exchange. And I mean, it’s so beautiful and…
It’s so hard.
So hard sometimes, isn’t it?
Does she live like that?
She’s very loving and compassionate. I’ve never seen her be triggered and she’s doing amazing things. Yeah, I think she very much leads by example and role models what she says.
Yeah, I agree. And that’s how you learn, isn’t it? I reckon you only learn from… You don’t learn from being told anything.
Role-modelling.
Yeah, or seeing someone else live their life like that and you go, “Actually, I could probably copy a bit of that.”
How do you keep open and loving? Like when you do get into a funk.
Yeah, well it’s hard.
You get angry?
I think I went through a whole year of, after my divorce, I got a lot of the people that kind of loved me, I don’t know, maybe because I hadn’t really been honest about the fact the that marriage, I was leaving, but I was gagged kind of. I couldn’t really say these things because I was still feeling my way through it. And then I met Denim like straightaway as well. I think we broke up in January or something like that. Anyway, it was a very small amount of time. I’d already met Denim as a friend and blogged about him, and we didn’t get together for three months, but I don’t think many people believe that because a lot of people say that, don’t they? But I was actually chasing him and he stepped up. It took him three months to sleep with me. And average is rare, but he takes sex really seriously. Weirdo.
Anyway, so I definitely think that there was a stage where I felt like I’d always had my squad, I’d always had my girls. They’d say something to me, they’d always be there for me, then all of a sudden the tide was changing a little bit and they were like… I hate that one so much, when people commenting on something says, “I used to love Constance Hall.” It seems to carry a little bit more depth. Do you know what I mean? I feel like I’ve let someone down and that was happening a lot, and I think that my happiness was just sort of triggering some people.
I’d really made this decision for me. I’d done everything for my children. So had Denim. We both say the same thing, like we both chose each other for us. It was the first time that we just went, “This is for me.” And people just saw me as a woman going for love and disregarding the last marriage and not disregarding the children at all because I wouldn’t do anything that I didn’t think was for them, but I was just going for myself at the time. And it was just rubbing some people up the wrong way.
And that on top of the bullying… And being in love, I definitely wasn’t as relatable as a lot of women are that struggle with making the relationships work because I was just in that lust period. So there wasn’t a hell of a lot that I could really write about without getting slammed. And so, there was probably about a year where I was a little bit cagey. And I didn’t want to be at all, but I just might’ve changed my tone a little bit rather than being my vulnerable self. I just didn’t want to be vulnerable. I just felt like I was too vulnerable so I needed to be a little bit more protective. And that’s probably a good thing. And so then, after a long time, I was just like, “No, I love these women and I am writing for the people that love me, not the people that don’t or the people that used to.” So it was a conscious act. It became a conscious act.
In the beginning, people used to say to me, “You’re so brave through all the things that you share.” And I said, “That’s unusual because it’s very natural for me to be extroverted.” And I’ve always done things that I’ve really regretted on my private Facebook with fighting with husbands and boyfriends and putting stuff on. So tragic when I look back, where the anger drove me and I, “Blah, blah, blah, ruining you. You’ll never run me again.” Type, type, type, fuck my life. So I’ve been a little bit more responsible with it, but everything that I share just comes really naturally. Whereas after that year of… Whoa, this is actually really hard. I’m out on my own. I’m not a media outlet, I’m a person and it’s personal. So then I backed off and then I had to call on that bravery that people were talking about, then I had to go, “No, you can be brave. You do it.” And I think that the sentiment has come back around and that I feel really connected again with my audience, which is so important to me.
And you’re in love. You’re not in a place of hardship.
Yeah.
Isn’t that interesting? Whereas the women that were following you before, it’s almost like you being happy and in love, they didn’t like that.
Then I had all these feelings of, “Have I normalised shitty relationships and made people feel okay about shitty relationships, and now they don’t like me anymore because they’re still in them? Is that what I’ve done?” And then mine and Denim’s relationship became more normal because we had a kid together and stuff like that. And then I realised that no, I wasn’t ever normalising unhappiness. I was just saying it’s normal to not always be happy. So I’m kind of okay with that now, I did question it for a little while.
I can imagine. I see Denim’s into meditation a bit. You publicly said he’s far more spiritual than you.
Yeah.
How spiritual do you get? Do you feel like you have this intuition that you connect to and guided you?
Well, I had a boyfriend when I was 17. 16, 17. Did you read my first book?
Yes. And the mother, oh my goodness.
Yeah, so I desperately tried to become spiritual because they were so spiritual. So I spent two and a half years like-
So can you just explain to anyone who hasn’t read the book…
Okay, so if anyone who’s listening, his mother was a clairvoyant, spiritual healer. I try not to give away too much, but she always made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. Like she took us to get, what are those things? A chakra photo? Aura photo.
Oh, right.
Aura photos taken by these specialists. And he had like all just red aura and he was meant to be her spiritual, she thought that he was a gift from another dimension. And I had every colour under the sun and, “The woman uses Photoshop. I’ve got to get my husband to look at this.” He called his neighbour to come and look at this and he and I were like, “Oh my God, we’ve never seen anyone so…” And I was just sitting there and the mom was just seething. And I was like, “Oh my God, maybe I am spiritual, but I didn’t know.”
Because your energy, they were blown away by you.
Yeah, they were completely blown away. They were like, “We want a copy of this.” And I was just this awkward looking, cut off all my hair, chubby little 17 year old. And they were like, “Wow.” And he was this graceful, tall… So in the car on the way home, the mom was like, “Just so that you know, the reason your energy was so good and Matt’s was red was because you’ve actually sucked a lot of his energy out of him.”
Oh my Goodness.
Yeah, she was awful to me. She didn’t even see it, she thought she’d been really loving and really, “I’m helping you, but this is what you need to understand.” And I looked at him because he was driving and I was in the backseat through the rear view mirror. I was giving him that look that you give your boyfriend, like, “Are you really going to let her speak to me like this?” And she caught me. She caught my eyes and she goes, “If you’ve got something to say, say it.” And I was like, “No I haven’t got anything to say. You’re right, I’ve just been sucking his positive fucking vibes.”
So I went through years of wanting to be good enough for this family and they was sort of above my pay grade, if you will. And I really just wanted to be there, I don’t know why. And then I realised, no matter how much I was reading, no matter how much I was forcing myself to be this visual person and closing my eyes and wishing that this intuition would just pop into my head and tell me what to do. And I was just like, “Let me levitate in front of her, please. God, if you will…” And then I broke up with him.
I actually went to Melbourne and I lost heaps of weight. I was a chubby teenager. It was a really interesting time in my life, I went from being this invisible chubby teenager to losing lots of weight and just being the person that everyone turned their heads at when I was 18. And that really gave me severe anxiety because I was so scared of going back to being invisible. I was getting the job at the cool pub, at [The Cot 00:30:17], and they only had hot chicks. And all of a sudden, I was a hot chick and all the DJs wanted to talk to me. And it was just like, I was so scared of going back because I’d realised now how invisible I’d always been. I didn’t realise that. And now I know that I was not invisible at all to the people that mattered. You know what I mean? It was just this pretentious little world that I was invisible to.
I still do think that society’s got a long way to come when it comes to how we view women and their weight and their appearance. So the severe anxiety kicked in. Anyway, I moved to Melbourne and started hanging out with the gay boys.
Oh. I love that.
And they changed my life. All of a sudden, I have these tall, handsome, smart men who really valued my opinion and who really just loved me. And I was an apprentice hairdresser, I had no money, and they would pay for me to go out with them and take me home and sleep in bed with me. And it was just incredible, I had never experienced anything like it. And I feel like that gave me some real confidence to be this more spiritual person.
I had spent three years studying to be spiritual. And then I moved back from Melbourne and I was just felt really graceful and I felt really self-assured and I felt really better than these people because they were trying to put this ego in their spirits. They were trying to make me feel worse, but I was okay with them. So I was like, “Not that I’m better than you, but I don’t need anything from you anymore. I don’t need your approval.” And he was gravitating towards me and I put the boundaries up.
So you finding your spirituality was really finding a connection to yourself?
Yeah, I think so. I thought to myself, “Well, personal growth. I’ve come such a long, further way than when I was trying to be spiritual.” So maybe this is my version of spirituality. I’m still not good at sitting down and meditating. Denim’s a cynic though, so Denim doesn’t believe in any spiritual people at all. And I’m a little bit more inclined to, I’ll give people a go. But he’s just seen so much full of shit stuff.
Yeah.
Constance: Yeah But you really do see what you’re putting out there as well. I think that he feels guilty that he doesn’t do the meditating that he knows he should do, whereas I don’t really feel guilty at all about anything that I’m doing. So I feel like just going through a walk in the forest is my way of being connected. And so, then I actually see good and I see spirituality in people and I go, “Oh my God, they’re so beautiful and so grounded and so enlightened, and I want to be like that.” And Denim’s like, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Okay. So you’re the spiritual one?
Maybe I am. That’s what I’m getting to.
Do you wear perfume and connect with the power of scent?
I love the power scent to the point where, like my dad used to put rose oil on me when I was little and take me to the butterfly enclosure in the zoo, and just wait for the butterflies to come to me. I used to just be like… So yeah, I just felt like a flower. And so, any time that I’d smell it, I’d smell him. And I think my smell is my strongest sense. I can walk past a bush and I’m taken back to sometime in my childhood.
Yeah, the power of scent. So do you use it?
I’ve always sort of thought, “Perfume, chemicals.” That’s just what I’ve always thought, so I’ll wear a roll on, like an oil, but I never realized that there was this whole movement of beautiful, oily perfumes that don’t give you rashes and asthma and won’t give you cancer.
Well, a lot of commercial perfumers do use synthetics and they can be full of chemicals.
Well, yeah. And they’re the ones that are… I’ve got to get Denim to his appointment now.
Oh, okay.
Sorry.
You’ve got to go. Oh my goodness. That was quick.
That’s why he’s angry at me, because he’s got to do his driver’s test in 15 minutes. I had no idea, we’ve been here for like four hours.
We’ve got partway through our podcast. But you know what?
Part one.
This is absolutely part one. We have to end it here, but as you can all hear, Con is absolutely fascinating and your energy is off the charts. And there will be a part two.
There will. Thank you so much for having me.
Oh, thank you. You’d best go.
Constance: Thank you. I’ve been dismissed.
All images courtesy of Constance Hall @mrsconstancehall www.queenthelabel.com.au
