Gemma Cairney - Open Your Heart: Learn to love your life and love yourself

To Ling gone but never forgotten.

Every time the sky looks magical like the neons of

an orange sunset, or a giant glowing moon I think of you.

this book belongs to

CONTENTS

I am brave

I am brash

I am bold

I am wild

I love to cuddle

I am loud... but

I am vulnerable

I love to smooch

I am serene

I am bored

BUT ALWAYS EXCITED

I am goofy

I am beautiful

Why do I find it so hard to write that?

I am deeply saddened

but at the same time so happy

I LOVE my life and I love the world

I sometimes dont like myself though

I am not perfect

Im sometimes tired

I am always raring to go

I am as deep as an old well

I am shallow like a lame puddle

I am strange

which means I am normal

I am not preaching

I am a friend

with an OPEN heart

I am me.

WELCOME

Welcome to Open Your Heart: Learn to Love Your Life and Love Yourself.

This book is here to be your guide in times of need. Keep it on your shelf and go to specific chapters during those moments in life that mess with your head, or leaf through and devour it cover to cover. By opening this book you have become part of #TeamOpen, and part of the movement for open hearts and minds. There is no one that this book isnt for.

During years of presenting, and more recently with The Surgery on BBC Radio 1, Ive encountered a huge variety of people who are dealing with lots of different things in their own ways. My own life hasnt always been easy, and whilst Ive dealt with some of the stuff that comes up in this book, Im not an expert in everything all I can do is communicate openly about what Ive been through and be a friend. Ive consulted lots of people who are experts in the issues covered, though along with a list of people and organizations to speak to if you need more information on anything.

This book covers some tough stuff, but theres nothing you wouldnt find in the storyline of a popular soap opera, and definitely NOTHING you wouldnt find within a four-second Google search. Open Your Heart is about real life and everything that comes with it.

This book isnt all about me, its also about you and all the other incredibly clever, brutally honest, brave and awesomely inspiring voices woven within its pages. This book is yours and I want you to personalize it in any way you see fit; to embellish it and make your own mark on the pages. There are no rules. Douse it in gorgeous gold pen, doodle across it with a blunt pencil or a defiant marker pen, or cover it in magical stickers and whatever your approach, feel free to respond to however the words make you feel.

JustYOU

DEAR READER

Its only been a year since the original Open was written, my blood, guts and pumping heart stitched together in a book and SO much has happened since then. Time is an oddity when it comes to love and fun. It moves slowly on halcyon days, new surroundings and hazy holidays, or when youre waiting for the clock to move quicker and are looking forward to seeing someone or doing something in the future. But time, when it comes to love, can flip fast too. I look back breathlessly at this year and realize that love can change as intensely as its created. Love is a storm, a perfect one crashing, loud, wet, intense, exciting and scary.

Love, love, and all those fish in the sea

Have you ever opened your eyes underwater when swimming without goggles or a diving mask on? Exposed your eyeballs to the mystic scene underwater? Experienced the sparkling swimming-pool blues or those shafts of light that sear through the sea from the sun? Its beautiful. Theres a second, maybe two, a few beats where everything feels magic. Then you realize you cant breathe, and that the loveliness has ended as quickly as it began. So you charge upwards to reach the surface again, to grab some necessary air. Once youre back in the air, you breathe for a while, take in what happened down there and bob along the top, kicking your feet, treading water as you go. Love feels like this for me right now. Ive experienced yet another heartbreak since writing Open. Not only that, but Ive cried out old ones too. Im soaked in all the emotions of break-up and overblown thought and excitement for new horizons, bobbing along on the top, trying to catch a breath, still treading water. Trying to avoid jellyfish of the stinging variety jellyfish called regret, bitterness, stupid decisions and societal expectation, Im doggy-paddling to somewhere, where there are lots of tropical and lovely fish. There are plenty of fish in this sea.

Ive even found myself reading the Heartbreak chapter of my own book, remembering that this thing called heartbreak, though it can ache, will get better. And at the end of the day, when I was putting my heart on the weighing scales, weighing up being either alone and happy or with someone and sad, I knew I had to take my own advice.

A Volcano family

Im not sure how I expected to get away with writing about the importance of opening up without some of my bloodlines and relations doing the same. Its been a heady process my own family members reaching out to tell me stories, and have important conversations and a bit of emotional grappling. But overall its been important. I stand by the fact that lifes a journey there isnt one day when everything makes sense and you are protected from how family can bring up ALL THE FEELS. Everything written about my family is only my opinion after all. We all experience life in different ways and nobody is one thing, or one persons experience of them. Ive learned to remember that it is never too late to reconnect with those in your family who once upset you or let you down, and to always assess whether raw emotion blurs solutions which might be better in the long run.

We can be whoever we damn well want to be, do whatever we want and change our own mind on whatever we fancy. There aint nothing set in stone when it comes to our hearts, minds and decisions not even loved ones.

Naked truth

This summer I took part in an experiment for BBC Radio 4s Womans Hour, with the brief to do less doom-mongering stats-based studio chat and more actual ACTION: to get out there and talk to people on the streets. Two other presenters and I were given three days to come up with an activity or product that made women feel better about their bodies. I learned about the powerful feeling known as embodiment from an expert psychologist specializing in body image.

There is a theory that in order to experience a positive understanding of our body, we need first and foremost to grasp and accept its importance in keeping us alive. My journey to capture this feeling has been both empowering and fun: I learned about the brilliance of life drawing by posing nude for a charcoal-sketching artist. Dont get me wrong, it was mightily strange pulling down my pants in front of my radio producer (I was hoping for a glamorous robe) but I kept on my Converse for good measure! It was fun not to be naked for washing or sex but just to sit with my naked self and let someone get lost in the shapes it forms by simply drawing it. Were so embarrassed by nudity in our culture and society but I think there could be something in the idea of letting that go.