Hi, I'm Halle Cottis...
One day when I was nine years old I was playing outside when I overheard a family friend telling my mom, "Halle’s going to be a beautiful girl once she loses that baby fat".
It stopped me dead in my tracks. Wait, I’m fat? I’m not beautiful?
I can vividly remember praying to God, “God please, I’ll do ANYTHING…just make me thin again”.
3 years went by and God had not answered my prayers, and I felt so betrayed. At that point I knew I had to take matters into my own hands.
I started by dramatically restricting my calories and exercised hours upon hours each and every day.
The weight came off, but as you can imagine my self-hatred for myself started to manifest quickly.
I continued to have these limiting beliefs that I was not good enough and never would be.
It was no surprise that I got involved in a toxic relationship with a narcissist who mentally and emotionally abused me for 3 years. I didn’t love and respect myself, why would anyone else, right?
It's funny how lessons are taught through unexpected circumstances.
You see at the time this was all going down, my horse Mingo became lame in one of his legs. The vet informed me that in order for him to heal, I'd have spend some time with him and ride him daily.
So that's what I did. Each day I rode out into the pasture in hopes that this would help my horse heal.
But little did I know as my horse began to heal, so did I.
You see, spending time with myself as we went on our daily rides allowed me to heal my self-hatred for myself.
And you know what...once I started to love myself again, I became stronger and by the grace of God, my toxic relationship ended.