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When it comes to diverse and global beauty strategy, Eryca Freemantle is the industry’s go-to. An educator, public speaker and wealth creation coach, Eryca has stormed the makeup and beauty industry with her wealth of expertise, one of the UK's leading life coaches. She has influenced the health, beauty and wellbeing arena to rethink their strategies on inclusion with campaigns, most notably the creation of ‘Embracing All Tones of Women’ (E.A.T.O.W), a leading business beauty member educating and empowerment platform. Outside of the beauty industry, her interest in education has seen her appointment as a Governor for a prestigious school in England as well as being an ambassador and life coach for The Prince’s Trust.
Dear Eryca Freemantle,
Hello Sweetheart.
I'm writing this to you - we are 3 years old. What an extraordinary life you have ahead of you, however I want you to close your eyes and imagine. Read and be strong, trust me with the narrative. Take a deep breath, here we go.
You will be sexually abused at the age 4to 6 years old by your uncle. He will make you promise, not to tell anyone and it will be your secret, in fact you will not tell and share it with anyone until you are at least 48 years old. Hold that thought!
You will be bullied at school between the age of 5 to 16 you will be the school idiot. You play the idiot, you will be abused, spat upon and beat up repeatedly then you will be told that you are ugly, and you will believe it. This will go on every day of your life until you are about 17, by which time it will be your normal way – something in you will accept this to be normal behaviour.
In your 20’s, you will be hit by a car in a petrol station whilst paying for your petrol, you will lose all your hair and have over 250 scars to your face and almost have your left leg amputated. Your leg will be broken in 5 places.
You will follow your career into makeup artistry alongside property. You will choose makeup artistry because you will want to help people cover up their scars on their face. You will become one of the world's leading consultants in the beauty space not really pursuing makeup artistry as you thought you would but working for some of the biggest brands in the space. In 1995 will be very special for you because that’s when you will land one of the biggest breaks in your life.
At the tender age of 47, you will have a nervous breakdown, 5 fibroid operations, full hysterectomy, hip replacement, open back surgery and be paralysed for two years. You will lose all your confidence and fight for your sanity all by the age of 50.
Eryca my darling, you will be in a number 1 documentary which will trend on Netflix (Netflix is a thing of the future, a huge platform, it will make sense at the time) dipticing how you hated the skin that you lived in. It will be shot in Nigeria, your second home. Yes Nigeria is where you leave your heart, you will have visited Nigeria 54 times by the time you hit your mid 50’s. You will be catapulted to success and your career even more so in this space even though at this stage you would have retired.
At the age of 56 you will love the woman you are and the woman that you will become. You will believe in your best life having one significant best friend and ready to live your most fulfilled life. You will be divorced twice bounced back and hope one day to fall in love with the right person.
Eryca you will make it and have me here waiting to catch you at every hurdle. I want you to realise Eryca that you are beautiful, intuitive, hard-working and you will be a force of nature. You will continue to inspire others every single day of your life. Your zest and enthusiasm to live your best life will be magical. You will be a global citizen and you will also be the proud daughter of Sarah and Ashman Freemantle who came to the UK on a promise back in the early 60s. Your parents had never been able to live their fulfilled life but being the only daughter to them you will accomplish your dreams and their dreams by living and pursuing all the things that you want to do within your 56 years, the best is yet to come. You must never give up hope and I never want you to feel that you are not going to make it because even when you do feel like you will not make it will be here here to tell you that you will.
Life must go on, have a wonderful journey even though it will be dark, miserable and sad, enjoy the peaks, let go of the negativity and let live.
I look forward to meeting you 53 years from now.