Sometimes everything in a woman's life is coming together from outside: the profession, the recognition, the upward movement. And inside, the sense of living somebody else's life grows year by year. The split between the image and the person is painful on its own, and one day it stops holding. On how that works, Peruquois, a top World Music performer in Australia, a musician, composer, author and facilitator of personal development trainings for women.
How it looked from outside
“When I was a jazz singer I looked like a super sexy singer, but inside I was very masculine,” says Peruquois.
She explains where it came from. All her musical partners were men. Jazz musicians are cool people, they have everything under control, and next to them she shifted into the same register. “I was in a certain sense in an overload of masculine energies,” she says.
What follows is a description many women in male professions recognize. I am cool, I am fun. If the guys joke with me sexually, I do not mind and I can come back with a sharper one. I was one of the guys.
And inside, all that time, there remained a very sensual woman who was drawn to spiritual practice and meditation. Back then she did whatever she could find. Creating her own practices came much later.
What the success was made of
“I projected success, ambition, results in every way,” says Peruquois. And she adds something important: “I was even more ambitious than I was successful, and I was successful.”
She describes herself how that reads from outside. When you meet a very ambitious person, being near them is slightly uncomfortable. Ambition works as an engine, and it takes up all the room.
Underneath it lay an entirely different request. At seventeen a clear knowing came to her that she wanted to sing for healing, so that her voice would make things easier for people. By twenty-three she was living a life in which that request did not appear at all.
The collapse
“I was this cool, bright, jazz-successful singer, but that was my projection, that was not me. And I did not fully know who I actually was,” says Peruquois.
The split between the woman who is deep, sensitive and rich inside, and the image she presented to the world, collapsed at a certain point.
“And when all of it fell apart, I saw the compromise I had been living in, all the pain of that compromise,” she says. And then the understanding arrived: I am living someone else's life, this is the wrong path for me.
From outside it still looked as though she were moving toward even greater success. Inside she felt she had lost the connection to what inspired her at the start.
Why the leap toward yourself is frightening
The decision was hard on her.
“Making that leap toward myself was frightening,” she says. She knew how to project her image, and herself she understood only in shades.
The fear makes sense. An image brings income, recognition and a circle of people. It is tested, it works, the people around confirm it. What lies underneath has been confirmed by no one and guarantees nothing.
Which is why many women hold an image for years after they have stopped fitting inside it.
The ocean and the first awakening
At twenty-three she went where lying was not possible.
She grew up on the ocean and was born on its shore. “For me the ocean is pure force. She does not lie. I can lie to myself,” says Peruquois.
She came to the water with the question of where she had lost her way. And there, she says, the spirit of that water entered her and rose through her, and inside her there was a storm. For the first time in her life she used her voice to connect with the element.
“That was my first real awakening, as a professional singer and as a woman at the same time,” she says. The two parts met, merged and woke inside her. From that moment everything in her life changed.
What this story shows
Success built on somebody else's model holds for exactly as long as a woman is willing to pay for it with herself. It can look flawless and deliver real results, and all the while lead her slowly away from what the whole thing started for.
There is one marker here, and every woman has it. It is that first request, the one that arrives early, sounds clearly, and then lies for years beneath a layer of achievements.
If you want to come back to what was yours from the very beginning, take Peruquois's course How to Hear and Follow the Voice of Your Calling.
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