E305 Diana Osseyran

Hello. My name is Aziz and I'm the son of a divorced mother. She's really my superhero. That's why it's important for me to support women to share their uniqueness, their personalities, perspectives, and emotions about life. Too many women in this world feel alone. They worry about the judgment of others and they struggle with their mental health. But when they listen to the Rare Girls podcast where empowered women share their voices and tell their stories, many women will feel inspired to live a life of freedom and to overcome all their insecurities. They will feel. It is a safe space to find their confidence, to remember their unique beauty and to feel their self-worth, and they will connect with the sisterhood of rare girls who encourage their success and support their dreams. That's what this podcast is all about. My guest today is Diana Ossairan. Diana is a mixed girl from Donetsk, Ukraine, and Saida in Lebanon, currently living in France. Diana is a dance lover who enjoys pole dance, Bollywood dance, tribal fusion, and belly dance. She is interested in Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, in doing yoga, and in the IT sphere. She has a passion for body movement, from Indian dances to oriental dances to pole dances, and she is an IT specialist, a foodie, and a graduate who majored in Japanese studies and international business. Diana, how are you today? Well, I'm great. Thank you. I'm happy. I'm honored. I'm lucky to have you here and looking forward to know much more about you. So I'll begin with this nice first question, which is, if your friends could describe your personality, what would they say about you? Smiley. I always smile. Smiley, shiny, positive. And this is the feedback I often get. I want to know more, because nowadays people in general, not just women, maybe because of the pandemic and the social isolation or life getting harder in general, they cannot find that positivity. They might think, oh, I need to have a reason to smile and to be sunny, or they think I'll be sunny in the future when I achieve all my big dreams, or just they cannot find that energy. So what do you do in order to be a smiley positive person? How did you develop it? Were you always like this? Did you go through a period of kind of sadness and then you changed it into this? Tell me more. Yes, it wasn't an easy journey. But I think I did inherit a part of it from my mom. This is a good positive side of her that I always was impressed about the ability to see beauty and positivity in small details. Like, you know, for example, you wake up the sun, the sun is shining. This is positivity. Your colleague told you something nice. This is a positive side. Oh, you got to eat good food. This is a side and you just try to, not to say ignore, but minimize the sad and heavy part that makes you negative. It's often not easy, but I do manage to do it somehow. I can't explain how. It's just I think it's a part of me. Thank you. And you said that the way or the strategy that you go about being this person who is sunny is noticing the details. Does this work as well when it comes to dance and body movement? Are you someone focused on details as a dancer? Do you notice details and that's how you learn? How is this mindset something that translates in your dance kind of interest? Yeah, so I myself am not a detail-oriented person, but I do like to see details put into accent and other dancers' movement, and this is what I seek in my practice and that I look forward to carrying on learning from my instructors and teachers. It makes me happy and very inspired. And well, pole dance is like indirectly teaches me this a lot because it's all about details about how to accessing this or that figure. It's about learning which slim part of your muscle has to work or relax in order to for the movement to carry on. Same about belly dancing. It's a lot and it's a very detail oriented style of dance belly dance. You get like the movements look very simple. But then in order to trigger those movements, you need to think what's behind them and you need to feel it. And in order to feel it, you need to be detail oriented. So I guess maybe I am detail oriented after all. Thank you. And that makes me think. A lot of people say that the pole dance community is exceptional and that people are so supportive, so kind, so it feels like a real community. You as someone who is part of the polyglot community when it comes to Japanese and maybe Chinese, the belly dance community, the tribal fusion community, the French, like the Lebanese Ukrainian diaspora in France, a community, all those things. Do you agree with this? Do you feel like that the pole dance community is superior? And if so, what characteristics about it make it so that are missing or not so strong within other communities? Yes, I did stand that it's a very exceptional community. One, it's super international. Now, being a mixed child is definitely a gift and a bless, but it can also be sometimes a curse in the sense that you don't blend anywhere. And pole dance happened to come into my life in a period where I was very lost, and I had a huge conflict with my identities through my parents, through society. I had lots of problems with digesting this side of life, and pole kind of resolved this. I don't have to be Lebanese. I don't have to be Ukrainian. I'm just a dancer. I'm human. I'm a human and I'm a dancer and I'm a pole dancer. And that's all what counts. And we bond on this level. And this is something that is very difficult to find in local communities, whether it's in terms of nationality or other styles of dances. I came, I happened to witness it and see it and get the help I needed at that time from people who were in the pole industry. So for me, it's a community that is very dear to me. This is where I made like one of the strongest bonds, friendships. So yeah, maybe I'm a bit subjective, but this is how I perceive it from my side. And this episode is all about you and your subjective perspective. So it's perfect. Thank you for that. And to ask you to, a lot of women from the pole dance community that I have interviewed, they speak about how they become more and more comfortable with their bodies as they become pole dancers. They say they witnessed in their classes women first come and they're wearing covering a lot with big clothes but then over time they're like wearing the smallest tiniest pole dance outfits and feeling confident in their bodies. There is an issue whether it comes to teenage girls or even other women who compare themselves to standards of beauty through Instagram, Photoshopped women, now AI women who are not even real, and that destroys their self-esteem. Do you feel or do you recommend that dance could be a path to finding their own feeling of inner beauty, of sensuality, of falling in love with their body, no matter what, their body positivity? And if so, can you tell a bit more about that? What happens within someone or a woman's perspective about herself as she becomes a pole dancer. What, did you struggle with this before or not? Tell me more. Yes, so one of the aspect that I was surprised about when I started pole dancing is that it is hard. I had a totally different image of it. And I think it's being taught that pole dance is not necessarily a good thing in the Middle Eastern society. We're not really encouraged to uncover our bodies and to show up. So it was something that I came to pole dance. One of the biggest reasons was actually, I had a Japanese friend who was very shy and who once told me she did pole dancing. And when I asked her, she told me that she needed to grow some muscles in her arms and pole dance was helping her to do this. So I was really intrigued. And during my first class, I think my ego was hit a bit hard, like the fact that I couldn't even lift myself, and I'm a ballet dancer initially. The second reason I was really encouraged to persevere, that I saw my instructor of that time didn't have a body, like a ballet body shape. I have a very complex history of eating disorders, and for me it was, I needed to get out of ballet at some point for my mental health. And seeing someone flying, she was doing such difficult things like hand springs, like using her core muscles so much, and it was so impressive to watch. I was like, wow, I don't have to wait for tequilas and I can do this. It's actually, it's about what your body can do instead of how your body looks like, which changed the whole, it was a major shift in my brains. And it was part of my, it was very complimentary to my therapy throughout all these years, which is why I do encourage girls who are looking for a style word where they could get rid of their complexes to go into pole dancing. I know that belly dance also did help me with this because in belly dance you don't need to be skinny neither to belly dance you have, you just need a body, you know, this is what's amazing about movement. You don't have to be perfect because the perfection by itself doesn't exist. We're so different and we're so unique. We don't have the same breath, we don't have the same hips, we don't have the same arms, we don't have the same nose and this is what makes us unique and I do think it's very unfortunate that beauty standards are messing up with so many girls at the moment. It doesn't make me desperate quite often. I do try to fight it in my own way and directly or sometimes directly through white wall when I post written things or pictures and talk about it openly in my personal account I do I am a writer also and I do write in sort of a diary style, like through stories, where I just voice out sometimes some of my thoughts or some of the stories I heard, which impacted me. And I think the world needs some of this input. 100%. And you mentioned that you have been through a journey of therapy to take care of your mental health. Maybe a lot of people don't realize how much a lot of women struggle with mental health, maybe with worrying, anxiety, because there it's recommended to fake it till you make it. They tell them like, pretend to be strong and then they feel alone because they look at everyone who's pretending to be confident and they're like, it's only me. Can you share a bit more about your journey of mental health? Maybe it was as someone who needed to go out of your comfort zone, you needed to face maybe the idea that you could fail and get judged by others or disappoint parents or whatever. And what is your recommendation to other women who might be living to other people's expectations just because they worry that they might get judged or they have mental health issues and they feel oh it will be too scary to go for my big dreams, follow my potential and Yes, a very difficult topic. But yes, I was on therapy for quite a very long time and it wasn't an easy choice. But for me, it was a question of survival because at some point my bulimia became very, very bad and it was lots of vomiting. My blood analysis were quite bad. And then I had to make a choice. I do have a very conflictual situation with parents. We did have lots of discussion over this. It didn't work out, unfortunately, although I'm very grateful for all the things, the good things I did inherit from them, but I didn't match the expectations. And at some point I did go very loud on social media at some point in my life as a last resort for them to hear me. I did lose lots of friends, the society didn't appreciate And at some point, some points I did wish I was a bit less aggressive with the way I voiced out things, but I don't regret it in the sense that I do believe everything happens to us for a reason. And some extent this might help others who will witness this or who will witness these sequences to rebounds. And from my side, if I were to recommend anything, I would be, don't go seek help. If you have the opportunity to seek help, just seek it and don't feel sorry about it. Don't worry about people judging you. They are not paying your rent. They're not here for you when you're on your lowest point. Look for people who are likely to be here for you, whether it's morally, you know, everybody cannot be for you for everything. Some people can be here morally, some people can be here financially, some people can be here emotionally. You need to go out into this world, step out of your comfort zone and accept that sometimes our parents cannot offer us what we are asking for in terms of affection, emotions, and that we have to disappoint them at some point and just live our lives. And it's a very difficult step. It's often taken when you go into a survival mode. For me, it was the case. I have lost my job. It was pre-COVID time and I needed to seek help because it's also very costly to have eating disorders. People are not probably aware of it sometimes, but you do spend too much money fixing yourself and it's a short-term solution, but it blows up at some point. And to come back to the issue of fake it till you make it, to some extent, yes, you can't give up right away. You have to try and fake it till you make it. I use it a lot in my pole dance practice. Sometimes if it doesn't work, you keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it. But if it comes to your health, you shouldn't repeat the pattern too many times. Your health and your body, they don't forgive. It will blow out at some point. You have to seek help as soon as possible. Thank you. That's very, very wise and very important. And thank you for that advice, which is essential. Also, you mentioned you had a Japanese friend. I know that you're fascinated with studying Japanese, maybe it's about the culture, then I'm curious, is this something related to because you already are multicultural, like you have the Ukrainian culture, the Lebanese culture, the French culture, and you add the Japanese culture? Was it like an escape or a desire to go like to another place? And if so, why Japanese? Because they tend to have a culture where there's a lot of expectations for people have to follow. It's not a culture of total freedom and going crazy and being limitless. Yes. There is a lot of like boundaries. So can you share more? Yes. For my side, I got captivated by their writing system. The first time I saw a Japanese CD, I was like, oh wow, this is so, I don't understand anything. I want to understand what is written in the CD. That's how I started to study it. It was very, you know, no pressure. It used to distract me. It used to, it wasn't related to any point related to my past or future. It was something out of the blue that I just chose. And my parents chose to follow me in my craziness, let's say, educational craziness, let's say. And I did apply to France for this reason back then, because my Japanese was too bad to apply for Japan, but I had good friends and in France they had a faculty for Japanese, which wasn't the case for Lebanon back then. So this was the main reason. So once I got accepted, I just decided to embark on the journey. And I did persevere thanks to my friends. It was the human factor was very present. Thank you. You said you are captivated by the writing system and calligraphy of Japanese culture and the Japanese language, and you spoke about being a writer, that on social media you write stories, which seems to me like there is a big interest and fascination with writing. What is writing to you? Is it a way to do that human factor of feeling you're connected to even when you're alone, is it just the way that for too long you have repressed your thoughts and you're like finally I have an outlet I need to get it out? Or is it you find it like it's a way to express your emotions and in the same way that you move when you're interested in dance and movement so moving with words or expressing your emotions through words is the same as in your emotions through the body or tell me more. Yes I remember myself journaling as far as from 2005 which is since a very long time and I only went like public on social media like only three or four years ago which is quite recent compared to what I'm used to before but for me it was a way to find myself sometimes you know you write a text and then you realize that this is exactly what you wanted from the situation or this life or from this person. And it's also a way to understand your own emotions. You find yourself, you get lost in your writings and you find yourself in the process again. And well, the difference between, for me, the movement expression and the written expression that for me movement expression is safer. It's a safer space. Words are so powerful and sometimes it can be so hurting or even dangerous. And when I feel it's the case, I move rather than write or I write in my corner rather than exposing my thoughts publicly. So they complement each other in a certain way. I do encourage, however, everyone journal. It's a therapy in itself. Very true. And it seems to me like one of your big values is self-discovery. That whether through movement, you're learning about your body and yourself, writing, learning about your body, yourself, discovering other cultures, learning about your body, yourself. I want to also ask about food. Maybe you discover yourself through food. Is this true? Like, tell me maybe even about human connection. Maybe when you speak to people, their stories and thoughts help you imagine yourself in that situation and learn about yourself. Can you share a bit more? Yes. With that, I realized that people teach us a lot about both ourselves and the world. Now, they don't always reflect who we are. We often tell you that the way we react reflects who we are and vice versa. It depends. Everything so relative which makes it so complex and interacting with so many people of so many different backgrounds I think it tuned down my ego over time also and I learned to listen more than to speak also. People have a lot to say and to teach us we just don't know about it like the more we listen the more we discover things and the more we discover things in ourselves also and the magic of speaking many languages although sometimes it can be so because every language is linked to a culture and cultures can be so contradicting quite often, which is one of the reasons I tend to write my stories in different languages quite often. And then sometimes when I reread it, I realized that some things are like as if two different people were writing, which is very curious. And it's a whole job of aligning these personalities within one person. I think when you a new language, it's also like this small mini price you pay, you have a different you, which gets born. I love that. That's very poetic, metaphorical, the way you described it. And I want to go back to the foodie part of you. You have struggled with eating disorders and therefore is being a foodie for you like a rebellion or an act of defiance when you're Like, I starved myself so much that now I will just really, really, really make sure I enjoy food and find that love in it so that it's not something that I struggle with? Or is it totally unrelated because Lebanon has delicious food, Japan has delicious food, France has delicious food for your life? Definitely. I do come from countries which have terrific food, so I cannot complain. But yeah, eating disorder is an addiction also, so it's a substance. And the complexity with compared to drug addiction, for example, is that you cannot stop eating it's you will have to deal with food your whole life because this is how it is and being becoming a food I was always a food even before I slipped into this unhealthy cycle, but becoming aware of the food you eat and of the texture, you know, the colors, being present in your dish, like while eating, it was one of the strategies to slightly little by little get out of this cycle. And I don't say I don't get relapses. But as per today, when I get them, I'm much more conscious of what kind of food I've been eating, why I've been on this specific kind of food, what happened the day before, what will happened the day after and what people I interacted with. These are the questions I ask myself every time. And being a foodie, it's a way to connect with people also because every person is a foodie to some extent. We all love our country's food and it's a beautiful way to connect. Thank you. I loved our conversation and to finish it with this. If you could give advice, whether to yourself or to other women and girls who are earlier on the journey of understanding themselves, developing their ability to heal and handle their mental health and to go out of their comfort zone in order to reach their potential. What would be that advice that you wish someone came to you, I don't know, in 2005 and told you that? Define your boundaries, girls. Boundaries are a powerful thing. You can save yourself so much trouble by setting healthy boundaries. If you feel the need to get a therapist, you don't have to be in an unhealthy cycle to get a therapist. It's a way also to get to know yourself better. So boundaries, therapy, and self-love. Self-love is priceless. If you don't love yourself, the world is going to eat you at some point. You have to practice self-love and boundaries. These are the two axes that our parents rarely teach us. We have very like a slim percentage of girls who have self-love and healthy boundaries. I haven't met that many of them and I still learn a lot from them. Very, very true. Thank you for that. I appreciate you being here, Diana. Thank you for sharing your voice, participating in this podcast and truly opening yourself up in a way that other women will understand that they're not alone on this journey and that there is so much to learn that will help them that change is possible and that things can be much, much brighter. Thank you so much. Thank you to you, Aziz. Thank you for this project.