Sitting in front of my wardrobe, realizing the amount of money I had wasted on shoes, I looked up at my clothes and knew that it was time to go through those as well.  Not just a nice sort – but a huge cull. I removed anything I hadn’t worn in a year, or that I felt frumpy in, or that I only ‘kind of’ liked, and I again hate to admit this but I filled 3 green garbage bags with clothes for the op-shop.
Three big garbage bags!
And it didn’t make a dent in my wardrobe.
The worst thing is, and this is something that I’m actually embarrassed to admit, but I hate shopping. Clothes shopping – hate it!
My mum tells the story of when I was 2 years old and she would take me shopping in Perth CBD. I would jump out of the pram and run away! So, it’s something that is just within me, not something I’ve learned to hate.

Back to my clothes, and the real embarrassing thing… most of my clothes were what my mum had bought for me or what my mother-in-law had given me. Both women are shop-a-holics and have wardrobes full of clothing. But here I was a 40 year old woman whose mother still bought her clothes!
My clothing did not reflect me at all. And yes, while I had bought some things, mainly corporate work clothes, nothing else really gelled with me. My mother is a lover of pink but that changed to everything being blue and she would buy clothes that she thought I should wear, not necessarily what I would like to wear.  Having said that, I didn’t even bloody know what I wanted to wear!  My mother-in-law who is really ‘out there’ with clothing (think leopard print and sparkles) would give me stuff that again, I would wear because it was given to me, but not that I felt good in.
Who the hell was I?

I had no concept whatsoever how I should dress, and you know why? Because I didn’t know who I was!

I occasionally went shopping and would buy something that I thought was nice but when I got it home it didn’t go with anything in my wardrobe so I never wore it, or I didn’t know how to wear it.
I love it when you see women walking around that just OWN their look. I love those women who are in their 50’s with funky hair and a funky cut with a floral skirt and leggings and flats and they just so look fantastic. Me? I’d look and feel like the bag lady. But they own it, you can see that they love that look, that it’s them, it’s a reflection of their personality and their style.
Bravo to all of you women who know who you are and dress accordingly. You are all so totally fucking AWESOME.
Not me!

So, here I was with three garbage bags full of clothes and no job.
A lie. I did have a job that my Gorgeous Guy had said I could do, and get this, it was as a labourer/project manager of a site he had just started – more on that next week!

No corporate job and that’s the only way I knew how to dress was corporate. I actually can’t dress ‘casual’. I’m either walking around in my activewear or I’m dressed up even though wearing jeans! There doesn’t seem to be any middle road with me.
And going into this new role for my GG – well, I’d be wearing a fluro shirt and steel capped boots so I didn’t have to worry about clothing for a few months at least.
But, I was seriously lost. I had lost my identity as a Christian (check out my book Christian to Clairvoyant for the full story), lost my identity as an Executive Assistant, realised that I couldn’t buy clothes for myself and feeling completely like a loser by having to work as a labourer for my husband so I could earn money!
Me. A labourer. OMG what the hell was I thinking?

Next week, the hard labour begins…with a lot of time to think…