Comeback Caroline
I DON’T LET MY PAST DEFINE ME – YOU SHOULDN’T EITHER
JUST call her Comeback Caroline.
The winner of the Harvey Norman Gold Coast Women of the Year ‘Wellness Warriors’ category Caroline Bellenger has one of the more harrowing and also inspiring stories of the 21 finalists this year – and that is saying something.
But somehow she has overcome years of childhood sexual abuse and the two decades of drug and alcohol addiction that followed it.
Now not only has she long since kicked her vices to the kerb, she has built an impressive resume of achievements as she closes in on 12 years sober.
The life coach, fitness trainer, motivational speaker and mother to a teenage boy admits life is a far cry from her mid-20s. Back then you were more likely to find her partying and indulging in drugs and alcohol in Surfers Paradise and Byron Bay.
Asked how she feels about being a 2021 Women of the Year finalist, she says: “Humbled and excited – it’s not so much about the award. It’s about the opportunity to share my story and hopefully inspire someone else.”
She was sexually abused from age eight to 16 by a relative, something she did not open up about or share with her family until aged 23.
It started at age eight with someone she describes as a trusted, popular family member who has since passed: “I used to go and stay, school holidays, and he used to want me to jump into bed with him every morning. And that’s when I felt uncomfortable.
“As I got older, more teenagey, 13 to 14, he would want to look at my breasts because we would go on holidays and we would always be sunbaking.”
There were family holidays to the Gold Coast with extended family – and “he would always want me to sit on his lap and want to look at my breasts”.
By the time she reached university, he would visit with a food parcel and cash: “I distinctly remember him locking my university dorm door. He would just make me lay on my bed, and he would just kiss my breasts and my body. I knew if I would let him do that I would get $50 to go and party. It was this trade-off even though I felt horrific.”
She failed her first year at university, killing a dream of becoming a vet and prompt
ing her to quit the studies and work in and hit the nightclubs in Surfers Paradise.
“I spent two years taking drugs; that’s when ecstasy first came out. Mainly ecstasy and acid. I knew I was getting really sick.”
She tried a stint at home with her parents but then started working in Byron Bay at Commonwealth Bank.
“Byron Bay equals party town, everyone I knew was partying and drugging, you stick with people doing the same because it makes you feel normal.
“I slept around a lot because I had this association that if a guy slept with me, he loved me.
“I used to do sport but I’d (also) be out clubbing and partying. I went to my first rehab when I was 23 in Sydney and did two weeks.
“It was really good – I had only just told my family about the sexual abuse but back then no one talked about it. So it was sort of like, okay it’s done, let’s just sort of move on.
“I’m from that generation when no one spoke about it openly and even now it’s still not. There’s a lot of women I know around my age or 40 plus who have experienced trauma and haven’t really processed it because there’s still that shame and stigma.”
She tried stints overseas, living in Bangkok for 18 months and the United States for a year.
She admits she was “a mess” when returning from the US at 32 due to a relationship with a man she thought she would marry not working out. At her lowest point, she tried to end her life several times.
Now she’s a life coach, fitness trainer, a gym owner who credits her teen son – an exprimary school captain now with a university degree behind him – with saving her life.
“I would not be alive if it wasn’t for him. We have a saying. I go ‘He was a little spirit in the sky and he looked down and went ‘Oh my god that woman is f---ed, she needs some help’ so that’s how the universe put us together.”
They have climbed to Mt Everest base camp together.
She attributes rehab and a stint going to Alcoholics Anonymous for breaking free from her vices.
“The first couple of years was probably the most difficult because I had all of these emotions and nothing to self medicate. That’s when I found running. I was involved with the surf club, because I tried to get my Bronze Medallion before I went to rehab and failed. One of my goals was to come back and get my Bronze. That was on the top of my list.”
She not only later earned it, she’s recently been awarded a 10-year service medal.
“Running is my meditation, my head is always even 12 years later – like a landmine of stuff. When I’m really stressed I just go for a run, I did it instead of AA – I found that a bit depressing. I used to sit in the AA meetings and go ‘Maybe you should drink because if your life’s going to be that miserable, what’s the point’?”
She leads the Gold Coast City Council’s Active and Health programs, running a boot camp at Coolangatta.
She has also rebranded her gym recently to the Mind & Body Wellness Hub.
“The more people look after their body and mind, they start liking themselves. If you can build self-esteem and like yourself, you’ll make healthy choices, you’ll go for your exercise, you’ll go eat the right things. Not because you have to but because you want to – and your business will be successful.
“You can’t build all those things if you haven’t fixed yourself because yourself goes with you. I moved around, I travelled overseas – I escaped – I’d run away from everything but I went with me so I was just as f--ked in the next spot.
“I look back and I don’t have regrets – that is my story and what I want women to understand is you don’t have to be defined by your past.”
When I’m really for stressed I just go a run, I did it instead of AA winner Wellness Warriors Caroline Bellenger