by Vanessa Hawthorne, Child Psychotherapist, UK

The real story is one of ordinary people making extraordinary changes to their physical and emotional lives. I for one no longer suffer from asthma (a lifelong condition with an attack seeing me taken to hospital only 8 years ago), or hay fever or exhaustion and am three stone lighter. My personal life is good, I remain married to the man I was with when I met Serge 9 years ago, I have a great job, a beautiful daughter, and I share my home with my sister. So just from that snippet, my story is the antithesis of the ‘wrong doing’ these anonymous men accuse Serge Benhayon of. I am one of hundreds, is our story not worth telling?

I have taken some time before I wrote about A Current Affair’s segment ‘Healing Community dubbed cult‘. I took this time because I was shocked by the presentation of the women, Serge Benhayon, and Universal Medicine. The obvious editing to support the ‘cult claim’. I have been searching for a word but all I come back to is, ‘embarrassing’. For a national broadcaster to behave in such a shoddy way, I am left saddened. The use of spiritual music, the tone of the presenter was laughably one sided, the cuts of Serge not actually being able to answer questions asked. But mostly how women were portrayed with their obvious stage fright at the beginning of the interview being used against them so they looked like brainwashed devotees was quite shocking and very unkind. Clearly this has been a very difficult time for the women involved, as they expressed a private matter. Of course I have faith in the general public’s ability to discern fact from fiction, so I trust that the truth will come out.

I read also with disbelief “The Da Vinci Mode” published August 25 in the SMH, Good Weekend. The title for the piece sets the tone of the journalist’s angle perfectly. Why am I again in disbelief? Firstly because it is an easy road to take – it doesn’t take much investigation to write in a way that infers such things as inappropriate relationships, odd practices etc without presenting the whole other side of the story. Secondly, there is a real story to be told here if you had just scratched below the surface.

So what is the truth? In the 9 years of attending presentations of Serge Benhayon at Universal Medicine courses I have never once been contacted by them, until I asked to be put on their mailing lists for notification of when practitioners come to the UK. Not once in the beginning did Serge or anyone from Universal Medicine call me and let me know what courses were happening. I have paid for everything I have attended. I did not change any of my lifestyle choices for a good four years before I felt in my body that I could no longer ignore how I felt after consuming ‘x, y, z’. Not once did Serge judge me for drinking, eating dairy, gluten etc. I was welcomed with the same love as everyone else. The rest of the story is that I now weigh 3 stone less, have a great life balance, and remain married. I am discovering more wonderful ways of expressing myself as a woman. Universal Medicine practitioners have presented consistently that there is another way to live your life; one that is harmonious, loving, and joyful. I have watched, learnt and discovered things for myself that work. It is an unfolding into being ‘all of me’ and it is awesome.

In my experience of Universal Medicine there IS a story to be told. I have a passport photo that was taken 10 years ago, and in my current one that I had taken for the renewal I look 10 years younger – well maybe not 10 years but certainly A LOT younger and a whole lot prettier and healthier. The bloating around my face has gone due to the loss of 3 stone, but as a friend said the other day ‘it’s in the eyes’. I look like a terrified little girl in the 2001 picture, in 2012 my eyes reflect something else back – love, confidence, a twinkle. My life is so different from where I was in 2002 and that is a consequence to listening to Serge present and over time trying out some of those things that made sense.