Balance
Magazine - August 15th, 2003
Catherine
Oxenberg - An American Princess
"Balance? Are
you crazy? My life isn't balanced! I feel completely insane, being
pregnant, with raging hormones and emotions that run the gamut from
elation to sheer despair-all in the span of a minute! My life used
to be so peaceful and organized when it was just my daughter and me.
Then I got married and had another baby; we recently got custody of
my husband's two young children, and now we're about to have a
fifth child. I feel like I'm the only tidy person in my universe!
I'm struggling to find balance within the chaos of all of these
people under one roof. And, even if I knew how to find a sane way to
deal with all the stress, I'd probably not be able to express
myself coherently, as the pregnancy hormones are messing with my
ability to think clearly! In other words, I can't help your
readers at all!"
Catherine may have
been laughing when she said this, but she meant it. Thus the reason
she has long been one of my most treasured friends. And, as any
interviewer knows, when you get this kind of honesty from someone in
the public eye, you might as well get down on your knees and thank
your lucky stars because this uncensored kind of free-for-all
sharing just doesn't happen when the tape recorder's
running-especially not when your subject is gorgeous and royal.
Certainly not when she's about to host her own reality show
(American Princess on NBC), shoot a new movie, and is married to a
movie star who happens to be nearly as beautiful as she is (Casper
Van Dien: Star Ship Troopers, Tarzan). I mean, what's her
publicist going to say about this blatant honesty?
My guess is that
Catherine doesn't care. "I never felt that pretending to be
perfect would help anybody," she says. "The reality of my
life is that I somehow ended up with a house full of kids, who all
go to different schools, with different pick up times and different
needs. Casper's kids have therapy and so do we, which has been a
godsend; it keeps us sane! Everyone has to be driven here and there
and everywhere and we live on top of a mountain! We might as well
open a shuttle service, although since being pregnant, I delegated
that responsibility to my husband so I can stay in bed until Maya
wakes up. My job is more of the short-order-cook for constantly
hungry mouths variety. The kids wonder why their bedtimes keep
getting pushed earlier and earlier. it's our evil plot to steal
some private time before we are too wiped out! The childrens'
needs are most immediate, so it's a real challenge to find time to
work on the relationship. When we put each other on the back burner,
the whole family tends to suffer; but when we work together, we find
strength in our solidarity, and that radiates to the entire
family."
From before the time
I interviewed Catherine five years ago for my book Lives Charmed:
Intimate Conversations with Extraordinary People, where she divulged
radical truths about being incested as a child and combating and
winning the battle over resulting eating disorders, until now, I
have found Catherine to be humble to a fault and extremely
courageous. She may say that her mind is incoherent, but she's a
genius, and those who know her can't wait for her to write a book.
I've been telling her for years to do so because she's one of
the most profoundly intelligent, forward thinking and educated women
I know. Thankfully, she's now writing one, and I'm sure it will
be the first of many. As far as speaking her mind: It stands to
reason that anyone who is courageous enough to fling giant prawns at
Prince Charles to avoid boredom at a palatial party (causing a
large-scale food fight), has learned a thing or two about getting on
in the world and not being too terribly driven by the concept of
playing it safe.
Despite being in the
public eye since the day she was born (with a New York Times
headline announcing that her mother-the Princess of
Yugoslavia-had just delivered the great, great, great+
granddaughter of Catherine the Great of Russia, and named her after
the Czarina), Catherine never cared much for societal rules or
restrictions, choosing instead to find instruction and models in the
realm of the spiritual.
"I didn't
feel protected as a child," she told me, "but I feel
protected now. I think God is supremely loving and benefic, desiring
for every one of us to reach a self-realized state. I only wish God
could interfere more in our process! Sometimes free will really
sucks. I feel that my responsibility on this planet as a spiritual
being is to maintain my spiritual consciousness while I'm in a
dense dimension, in a physical body. That is hard. It is so
hard."
Catherine's family
knows about hardships. They were driven out of their Yugoslavian
palace and homeland by Hitler in WWII and forced into exile in South
Africa. Although they had to leave everything behind one fateful
night, Catherine's grandfather-Prince Paul-was ultimately able
to rebuild his fortune and move the family to France, where they
started a new life. The whole lot learned to carry on, despite the
devastation of being humiliated and sacrificed on the world stage.
In perhaps one of the most fascinating political tragedies of the
war [profiled extensively in Lives Charmed], Catherine's family
showed incredible resilience and strength-which her friends know
to be two of her strongest traits. Certainly these qualities may
have been handed down from those born long before her, and will add
to the reality behind the reality of her show, American Princess.
I relish researching
the woman I once admired from afar on the television screen; the
stately Dynasty home portrayed in the hit nighttime soap, of which
Catherine was a star, was near my childhood home. I was mesmerized
by Catherine's cool accent (a result of growing up predominately
in England) and her total confidence. Little did I know, she was at
the height of an eating disorder and painfully insecure. She was
faking it. acting.
Catherine remembers
her Dynasty days as if it were a lifetime ago (even though worldwide
fans of the show continue to be part of the astronomical flood to
her website, CatherineOxenberg.com,
which gets as many as two million hits per week). "I was a
basket case on that set! People who meet me now often think I am
extroverted. That is only because I have healed a lot of the part of
me that wanted to wither away and disappear into myself."
After watching
Catherine consciously choose healthy habits for years, I asked her
to share some of the things I know she does to stay balanced. She
jokes about being out of control, but her life is beautiful and she
has great discipline. Yes, the details can make you dizzy, but much
of what she does within and around the chaos works brilliantly.
"I never, eat
junk food, never; and I don't drink coffee, smoke or take drugs.
Once in a blue moon I'll have a glass of wine. Supplements and
nutrition are key. I try to maintain a regimen of going to the gym
or doing yoga five days a week, and I align myself with the divine
force each morning and evening with prayer and meditation, although
both have been harder lately with the full house. If I'm too busy,
I pray on the treadmill. I am very conscious of my downtime because
I run on empty quicker being pregnant and have fewer reserves. I
love to read inspirational books and do so whenever I can find an
extra five minutes. And, I'm less afraid of being called a selfish
bitch, if that's what taking time for myself means. In fact, I'm
proud of my newfound bitchiness and say, 'When Mommy's rested, the
bitch is gone.'
Quite honestly, the
older I get, the more effort I have to put into staying balanced and
healthy. Stress can really take its toll on my skin. I am noticing a
huge difference by using a line of skincare/cosmetics and herbs from
Fem One [that Catherine is now representing]. I suffered at the
beginning of my pregnancy with hormonal imbalances; I felt terrible.
Then I found these herbal remedies, which gave me immediate relief.
Hormone imbalances, from pregnancy, post-partum depression, PMS and
menopause can send many women into depression and despair;
antidepressants are often not what we need and many of us have been
looking for alternatives to HRTs (hormone replacement therapy). So,
part of my stress management is using these safe remedies and
products, which were developed and patented by Angela Harris, a
woman who was pregnant and cured herself of stage four
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. She went on to have the baby and two more,
which doctors claimed impossible. She believes that by tapping into
her great-grandmother, who was a master herbalist and spoke 18
dialects of Native American, she was literally able to access the
genetic history of her great-grandmother, including her
strength." As she's talking, I wonder if she sees the
coincidence here.
Catherine may
say that she's in a midlife crisis, but my guess is that we'll
see her catapult through the chaos, playing a much more public role
in coming years. From TV host and actress, to author, spokesperson
and public speaker, she'll undoubtedly be asked to wax
philosophical about inner and outer beauty and the secrets of
balance. And, we'll get it straight from the Princess's mouth!
By
Linda Sivertsen |
