Interview with Francine Fallara
By: Gurpreet Dhariwal
Tags: Strong Women, Biography, Interview, Blue Insights, Interwith

Where do you belong to? Is there anything you would like to change about the place you belong to?

I belong to nature. My cardinals are the sun, the water, the stars, and the moon. They are my benchmarks and my home base. The wind is my natural and instinctive drive. I learned to take off against the wind which brushes my long curls while directing me where I need to orient myself following purely my instinct. Rocks are both protecting my aura and offering me all the needed strength to face my life. Rocks give me the strength to frolic forward, press play, and strut, creating my own path listening to my heart.

No, I am a ‘no regrets’ kind of girl, so I would change nothing in my life.

2. What sets your soul on fire?

In one word, PASSION.

In three words, I AM ALIVE!

Since I can remember, I have always moved forward in life using two gears. Either the GO-gear or the OFF-gear. No in between would satisfy me. To try to stop or slow me was, and still is, a big mistake. Two words that totally makes me want to go faster are WAIT and PATIENCE. Every time I hear those words, my brain blurs them out and answers “Fuck this!”

How often people misunderstand my fast pace drive as either stress or anger. My brain used to want to scream. Now with more wisdom I always answer “I am not stressed or angry, I am alive!” adding silently “big fucking difference!” This usually shuts them up.

Why do I have to be told to slow down all the time? Jealousy? Are they scared of their non-passionate ongoing slow paced state?

And why should I have to slow down to please them? I never say to people “GO, FASTER!” I just simply adjust my pace, but why should I always have to be the one to compromise my pace?

Being passionate has a price to pay. Achieving things fast, we are generally tagged as botching our work. We are not, we usually have higher multitasking skills enabling us to do great things faster. People taking extra time to realize something are always perceived as perfectionists and cautious. Why are they just not tagged as not passionate, non-dreamers?

Turtle speed is not for me. Oh yeah I have fallen often for going too fast. But I have always identified my mistakes, got back up on my feet, 1–2–3 and GO! I have no time to waste and WAIT.

WAIT for what?

WAIT for who?

WAIT for when?

Waiting implies wasting time, dwelling, hesitating and not wanting to take risks. Risk takers are the entrepreneurs, the influencers, the inventors, the designers, the builders, the discoverers, the out-of-the-box thinkers, the Speedy Gonzales of this world.

Speedy Gonzales was one of my favorite animated cartoon character (Warner Brothers Looney Tunes). I just admired him for just being the “Speediest Mouse” in Mexico. In high school, Speedy Gonzales was another of my famous nicknames and I was really proud of it. Arriba arriba, ándale ándale!

3. Which one is your favorite family memory, and why?

Unfortunately, my strongest family memory is related to negativity, which I have learned to transform into the most positive influence in my life.

The consequences of being raised by a bully forged inner beauty in my soul. As far as I can remember, I continually promised myself to be as beautiful as I could. Not physically beautiful but as a human being. Developing the most positive traits I could to eliminate as much as possible all the negativity that surrounded me growing up. This unexplained trigger was set into me not by my bullying parent but by my own survival extinct.

As far as I can remember, my survival extinct has always been very strong. My bully would try to teach me red and I would learn green. He would scream at my face and I would smile back. Constantly trying to destroy my world I would leap back up behind his back always with a mocking smile quietly saying “poor coward”.

As the bully tried to destroy both me and my world most of my life I would always react with surprising calm constructive energy.

Opposite’s reaction forces would always even out the dark forces versus the positive ones. I would automatically perceive the bully’s negativity as non-existing and would shove it out of my world as fast as it bounced into my life.

Hence, without realizing it, the bully was teaching me to defend myself. I became a Teflon frying pan. The bully’s bullshit would slide off me as fast as it was directed at me. Leaving his world dark and evil.

As time passed, my world sprouted into a garden filled with resisting wildflowers. Each and every flower grew to oppose each and every action and words of my bully.

I do have a few interweaved great family moments.

My best childhood memories will always be my souvenirs with my brothers around family meals.

My father’s love for nature and traveling has always fed my true life explorer’s nature. Listening to his traveling stories made me love anything related to geography, maps, and history. He gave me the love of flying and observing Earth from above in all its natural beauty.

My mom’s love for nature and fauna has given me the observer’s eye. I am a visual. I see the smallest details in a world lost in generalities and mass movements. I see the outlier standing on its own in all its unseen beauty. My mom showed me to keep my little girl’s heart and eyes alive. To always express my awe as freely as I feel the beauty of the simple things in life.

4. Is there anyone in your life you could give your life for? If yes, why?

My world is now magnificent and enables me to give back beauty to my surrounding. My main happiness comes from helping other bullies’ victims. Being able to transfer my inner powerful anti-bully Teflon attitude is priceless.

Anyone in need. I am a true empathic. I truly feel other’s pain and sadness. As I cross many unhappy people their despair flows through my veins. I could feel this in my prior life too, but not as intensely.

Now our crossings are symbiotic. I cross their eyes with a gentle smile transpiring friendly support. I can sense their genuine surprising appreciation in our blessed unspoken exchange filled with heartwarming emotions.

5. Do you pour love into self from time to time?

Yeah, my cape got ripped and bruised so I will need time to stitch it back together. Projected into a single’s world has made me love myself.

Egocentric? NO!

Why shouldn’t I love myself?

I am now spending non-stop 24 hours with myself. What would happen if I would dislike myself? How could I go on?

Some days I feel completely weak but content. And I love myself even more.

Egocentric? NO!

Why shouldn’t I love myself?

I am now more fit than I ever have been for the past 20 years.

What would happen if I maltreated myself?

Why would I auto-destruct myself?

During the last four years, life has shaken my foundations. I want to advance and become the master of my happiness through my daily choices and attitude.

After my father’s death in April 2018, I started a wild and ongoing walking and hiking spree which has brought both revival happiness and a load of sorrow. While walking, mostly alone, my mind took these precious sessions to sweat out all the rough events I had to live through for the past years.

Walking for me has been incredible! Physically I have not felt so alive for the past couple of years. Mentally, movement brings me extreme joy. Combined with all the kilometers of natural beauties my eyes have captured and securely stored in my brain.

I decided to look forward and become a positive impact on my encounters. I did so, to set and force my brain to extract as much darkness as it could. And so, not wanting to stress my brain, I gave it another two months. My days were simple, cry and walk, walk and cry, cry and walk, and sweating all I had to cry out of my system.

In August 2018 I initiated a milestone Life movement: Hello Sunshine! Breaking the chasm of hard times towards a better life filled with friends and natural beauty.

“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” Mahatma Gandhi (Born Oct 2, 1869)

Press Play & Strut through your life became my personal life slogan to define my new life, repeating myself — You deserve it!

‘I scheduled a deadline for my sorrow’…. Yes!

“You are being drawn away from the crowd because there is a wild child in you that longs to be set free. Rise above who they told you to be a wild one. Remember who you are.” (Bleeding Ink, Brooke Hampton)

Yes, I would like to Press Play & Strut and move forward without crashing anyone on my path. I will remain as is/was without any changes and that is why my focus is now on me. No one can help me with these changes. Just for once, I am trying to give myself a little extra fluff and love myself unconditionally!

I was never a diva or a high maintenance girl. I was never too nice either towards myself. Giving away all my love and heart to others and keeping the crumbs for myself. I always was my worst competition (never with others). I decided to stop that auto-sabotage. Stop being so harsh with myself.

My father-in-law used to say don’t be so harsh on yourself, the rest of the world will do that job for you and they will be the first to push you down.

So my motivational motto since, which I have reinforced within the past few months is really to get myself moving. To wake ME up!

This emotional stagnation state I am in for the past four years is NOT me. Between 2017 and the end of 2019, I have not cried as much then my entire life.

Being in a stagnation state is like living in a parallel world not wanting to fit in. Being alone for the first time in my life forced me to do a little soul searching and hence developing a more spiritual side of me.

Scary? Yes!

Scared? Not anymore!

Ironically, the past four years have prepared me both mentally and physically to go through the Covid-19 pandemic. The slow-paced baby steps transition during the past months has changed me. I used to always want to do everything fast. Still, now, patience is not my best virtue. It will often kill my drive and interest. When I decide to do something I am all in or all out. In between is a hard state for me. It makes my mind wander too much.

I do not need to control or plan everything in my personal life. I was never a big planner anyway. I never really sat down to define my personal or career goals. I went with the flow and had a general path of dreams and goals in my head but I always stayed open to surprise opportunities. Closing doors and opening new ones as I strutted ahead. Again, this high rate of resilience is very useful during our present Covid-19 pandemic.

For the past four years, this has been completely impossible for me. My brain has completely turned off the dreams/projects. Completely empty. Like doing so, it gave me time to expand other of my personal creative and artistic traits I had always dreamed about but never pushed or explored.

I know I want my life to be full of surprises. I still do not want to plan my future. I just want to move on in my era and bring on myself buckets of love.

6. How often you observe the people near you?

My first year after the break up I took all the time I needed to rebuild a life (still cannot say my life) and a place to live (still cannot say home). Since I live alone, I started the second year of my separation thinking I would like to help some special people financially in need. I chose wisely.

My compassion towards my surrounding has always been important but has now risen exponentially. Like I feel all the pain, deception, and hurt within people around me. I have always helped people in need around me. But somehow, it seems I can manage to help more now.

For three years in a row, I offered my help to children with cancer. For the Great Cycle Challenge, in June 2018, I raised roughly 5000$ and cycled 513km. In June 2019, I raised roughly 2100$ and cycled 1010km. This year, the Great Cycle Challenge was postponed in August because of the pandemic situation. So at first, I wanted to pass this year. But then I told myself I could still do it, so I engaged to cycle 500km and setting a fundraising goal of 1500$. I have now a total of 3980.6 km and I have raised 2194$ in these hard financial times. It was harder to get donations, but at the same time these kids’ diseases and the situation were not just passing through, it is their everyday life.

I surprised my taxi driver Eugénie, a hard-working African woman raising on her salary her five kids and still taking care of her family in Burundi. She is a great inspiration for me. She never asks or complains about anything. She is always punctual, dedicated, and laughing. I just felt she deserved a break.

Special friends and family members have also been taken care of without any of them asking.

7. What do you hope for? Does it change something within you or around you?

Have a new life soulmate to be….. Hopefully, he will not need to disguise himself in suits and ties. He will remain a real man, true to himself, sexy and irresistible. Hopefully, he will not need to impress me with money or anything materialistic. He will win my heart just by being himself. Hopefully, he will not need to be pretentious about his position in society and brag about his standing. He will make me trip over him by showing me he is empathic.

Ascending the next fifty happiest years of my life with a new life soulmate to be… Can a girl still dream? One-line to sum up my years to come:

8. How does it feel like being a woman to you?

After years of common and loving-compromising life, I am, for the first time in my life, living alone since I was twenty-one years old.

All this time alone is gradually transforming me and I sense the long-forgotten inner rebel self, waking up and affirming herself regularly.

I chose to listen entirely to my body’s needs without following any robotic routine.

I eat when hungry using the Spanish tapas meal approach. No diets for me. Never did and never will. I eat whatever I want and when I am hungry without remorse.

Being regularly active every day for me is still a must. If I skip a day, I feel it badly in my head and body so the next day I naturally extend my activity to compensate. No regular routines either for sleeping. I only go to bed when I fall asleep and I wake up naturally with the 7–8 hours my body needs to rejuvenate.

My slogan is ‘walking at a minimum pace of a weekly marathon, which for me is equivalent to a pleasant walk now. You may think I am intense, but no, when you break it down, a marathon is 42 km subdivided by 7 days comes out to a little 6 km a day. I generally walk 8 km a day now.

All this walking and cycling have transformed the curves of my body by turning my aching pounding pounds into pretty powerful muscles of beauty. I feel like a beautiful woman both mentally and physically. I have lost over 40 pounds on the scale, keeping and wearing my old leather belts to remember, I have added an extra 10th hole this summer to adjust it to the new me.

My beauty has finished resting. Press Play & Strut…

Slowly, but surely, without any planning, I started opting naturally for the rebel punk rocker attitude and look I had through high school and college. I’ve always kept my hair long since I can remember. I opted for letting my hair grow even longer and mixing the whites with enhancing blonde highlights. Wearing free wild hippie-style gypsy bracelets and earrings. My tight rocker’s jeans and T-shirts/blouse has returned to be my only style.

All these judgments about our age are imposed on us by society. My age has never stopped me from doing whatever my mind was set up to do. For me, age is like the weather, nothing we can control, so let’s not fuss about it.

I do not want, and never will adopt the old madam way of living and looks, society dictates a fifty-year-old single woman to be. Nope, I am a true dynamic person who refuses to embrace the accepted stereotypes.

My rebel self will ensure my genuine rocker’s heart will always be alive and kicking.

9. What you would like us to remember you for?

My authentic and genuine candor

I will always be passionate about anything I decide to do.

I cannot be without passion…

I cannot live without passion…

I cannot think without passion…

I cannot create without passion…

My drive will always be on the FAST GO-GO-GO gear.

I am Alive!

10. How you would describe your life?

For many, I have been an untaggable enigma. All my life, I stayed far from constantly complaining and whining individuals. People who would try to dissuade me from doing something they found hard would give me an instant opposite reaction. I would just ignore their negative attitude and if still interested I would pursue my own actions and make my own mind. Could not care less if I was judged. Would never let these life-sucking depressed individuals ruin my world. No negative influence would bring me down.

I am self-raised and very proud of it. Every major life decision was taken by me and I live with no regrets.

Society tries to impose so many rules on us and life patterns we should follow, but who says this is the way to live.

If people would seriously listen more to their inner voices they would be happier, more optimistic, avoid depression, and be grateful for their life achievements.

We are the master of our own lives. We need to understand we can change anything we don’t like in our lives. We can all stop living to satisfy other’s judgments and start living based on our convictions.

We can all take control of our lives, be self-raised, and free from unhappy life suckers.

Don’t betray your dreams for the sake of fitting in.

Dreamers move the world forward.

Richard Bronson

11. What keeps you on your toes, and how do you like to spend your time?

I am dynamic and motivated and enjoy fulfilling new challenges. As my Medium profile presents me, I am a very passionate, genuine, and creative simple girl striving daily to keep my inner rebel warrior alive.

Most of my free days are spent outside exploring a new area combining both my love of walks and photography by long photo-walk sessions. I enjoy any form of art, so I am a museum roamer too. I enjoy both urban and nature walks. Writing is a daily process I love to do too.

“A rt is my cure to all this madness, sadness, and loss of belonging in the world & through it I’ll walk myself home.”― Nikki Rowe “Life is full of challenges. We all have them. Art has helped me through my own deep valleys.”― Sarah Jio, All the Flowers in Paris “Creating artwork allows your mind to be in a safe place while it contemplates the tougher issues you are dealing with. One can use the tools of brush, paint, pastels, crayons, etc. to expose and even for a short time color those issues in a different light.” ― George E. Miller

Personally, I find it fantastic that people turn to the arts as therapy in these difficult times. Art in all its forms helps us to quit everyday life. Hours go by without a hassle. Our gentle escapes take place over time. And we have time to spare. Without constraints and rigid schedules. The alarm clocks and watches of our lives can also breathe a little and finally just reflect time without working in duplicate by ceasing to constantly push us against time.

12. When life gives you a lemon, what do you make out of it?

My eternal positivity carries me through life’s waves

And so the Adventure Begins…Free Your Dreams is my attitude….

Begin living dares

Enchantingly free your dreams

Shake your soul to strut

Excuses discarding our hopes, stop waiting for the perfect moment, to dream in the present tense, priceless in a society urging to live later, snoozing the present and regretting the past.

13. What mystery of life you would like to have an answer for?

Things I cannot comprehend and wished for them to disappear are any kind of social injustices and humanity at its worst:

Gender inequalities are too a mystery to me, I am not a feminism, I am all up for equal justice and opportunities. I do not want to get anything in life based on the fact that I am a woman. I consider myself to be a classy woman.

On women’s day, I say it loud and clear, I am not feminism, I am for 50/50 equality. As a woman, it disgusts me to see men who are mistreated, manipulated, disrespected, and psychologically abused by women who think they are superior. The reverse would be unthinkable, so why continue to denigrate men like this?

14. How were you different five years ago from what you are today?

Those who follow me regularly, already know the story of how I embarked on the Medium adventure. For those who don’t know the story. Brief and simple, my nephew introduced me to this site, in October 2018, during a hard time in my life. He was 18 and mature enough to know this would help me force out the darkness out of my system.

I had no idea which direction I was going to focus on. My family and friends were, and still are, surprised by my writing, expressing some of my deepest feelings and moving as far from the once Cartesian, less emotional girl I was. Don’t get me wrong, I was, and always will be a very empathic and sensitive girl, but never really expressed or, even openly, shared my feelings as I regularly do now on Medium.

Before October 2017, I had never written a poem or a short story in my life, except for the required writings through high school and college. Afterward and still now, through my career as a geologist, I have written many technical geoscience reports. These for many of my colleagues sound excruciating, for me, it has always been so easy.

I never understood poetry until I started writing my own poems. And now, there is not a day that goes by without me writing some kind of poetry and reading a bucket of them daily. I can honestly say now that poetry is one of the most beautiful forms of writing. For me, poetry is so free. Everybody can write poetry seeking deep down in their soul their real feelings. Poetry is unique for all of us and reaches out in various ways.

My writing on Medium is literally a daily escape for me to venture on my artistic inner self. Through Medium I get to share my cultural love of any kind of visual expression and combine it with my own live emotions I feel in the instant of my writing.

It is priceless to be able to express my feelings and illustrate them as much as possible through my own photos, which is another of my passions. To express my emotions of the moment, if none of my pictures suits my writing, I venture on the various public websites. I enjoy adding various types of visual arts from known and/or emerging artists. Finally, my ultimate writing experience is when I can accompany my contributions with musical references, music being another of my artistic passions.

Though, since the end of 2016, I had to live through several harsh bumps and blows, overall it has been a blessing to be able to stay mostly positive. My strength resides in my resilience and positivity. I know I do not want to spend the rest of my life alone and so, living through life-marking experiences has built the base and foundations for the rest of my upcoming incredible life!

15. What would you like to leave as your legacy? Is there any message you would like to communicate to us?

I am a natural life coach manager and motivator. I often gently sparkle people’s hidden talents and let them naturally open their wings to awake their dormant dreams.

‘What we can’t control, we have to learn to cope with and remain flexible’ (Francine Fallara… my first official quote… 2018–10–12)

Learning to Tame Your Grays Between the Dark and the Fake

Learning to always move forward by rushing through all the pitfalls of life is an art. The palettes of our scenery will change from the darkness of deep abysses to Zen whites and dangerous endless stagnant grays.

Resilience is the strongest force of nature. She teaches us ongoing lifetime lessons. She knocks on our facades when we forget to remember we have the power.

We have the power to pick up the brush of our lives to tame our own grayness into greatness.

Dare to redraw your blue azures, your yellow wonders, your energizing orange forces, your green vitality, your pink tenderness, your purple emotions, your golden minds, especially your golden desires and your red passions, and most importantly our multicolored dreams.

“It’s an art to live with pain… mix the light into gray.” Eddie Vedder

In mid-September 2018, I had redefined my life’s wishes adding a positive note to it and naming my new life’s chapter as the Press Play & Strut era.

Press Play was symbolic and meant for me: Pick yourself up, move, and go on, live your life!

Strut was symbolic too, meaning: Go and don’t be scared to show off your beauty and don’t be scared to be YOU

Strut your way through and flow without overthinking!

My authentic and genuine candor…

My eternal positivity carries me through life’s waves…

My love of music…

Mixing both my flat bran side and my sugar-coated side…

The importance of continuing to create with passion, conviction and truth with all your soul, and not just to please the masses, takes on its full meaning here.

My humble poetry…

Seeing the beauty in life’s grayish backgrounds is liberating ourselves from dull meaningless quests. Seeing the beauty in life’s grayish panoramas is living spiritually neutral and balanced. Let the grayish scenes become masterpieces paintings of peaceful lives.

2020 imposed in all of our lives’ scripts in unpredictable chapters. We all need to proofread these new and imposed pages of uncertainties. But we all can continue to write and edit our lives.

I will buy myself a brand new journal. Fancy colorful pens and highlighters to continually write, adapt, and process my life’s script creating my paradise.