This is the video that has got­ten the word out about the #BeBold ini­tia­tive. Enjoy! I’ll post the doc­u­men­tary clips and inter­views as soon as I get them on my face­book and fol­low my insta­gram (@rachelizabethm) for pho­tos before, dur­ing and post jump! Tweet tweet :)

Dear friends,

So many of you are ask­ing why I’m jump­ing out of a plane, and more impor­tantly, why I’m doing it in lin­gere. To fully explain, I’ll have to back up a bit and lay down the his­tory that brought me to this oppor­tu­nity in the first place…

When I moved to Los Ange­les a few months ago, I knew I was led here; I was sup­posed to be here, but I didn’t know why. In many ways, it’s still a mys­tery to me, but pieces are start­ing to fall into place. As I’ve always done to build my net­work and pres­ence in which ever city I’m in, I reached out to a net­work­ing group for women entre­pre­neurs called CRAVE. I had seen their books in Seat­tle, and knew they were a high-caliber socially engag­ing group of amaz­ing women look­ing to build eachother up, rather than com­pet­ing with one another. I found a CRAVE LA meet-up close by and rsvp’d immediately.

While attend­ing that event, I met the two beau­ti­ful and super styl­ish own­ers of Esme & Eve Pho­tog­ra­phy (boudoir pho­tog­ra­phers), Jen­nifer Hoff­man and Marissa Gal­la­gos. We con­nected imme­di­ately. Serendip­i­tously, in fact, as we bonded quickly over the fact that each of us has a tat­too sym­bolic of what each of us rep­re­sents in per­son, and as a piece of an iconic tri­fecta. Jen­nifer of ‘Cre­ation’, Marissa of ‘Love’ and my own of ‘Faith’. Incred­i­ble, of course, because the three of us believe we were meant to meet and with love, step­ping out on faith, cre­ate amaz­ing change in this world. After explain­ing that my busi­ness and the brand of ‘Cause Fit­ness’ was founded on the idea of ‘Fit­ness for Effect,’ and the dream that I can cre­ate and build con­fi­dence in oth­ers through strength and resilience, we all knew some­thing amaz­ing had commenced.

A year ear­lier, Jen­nifer and Marissa jumped out of a plane together in the name of ‘over­com­ing fear’. In honor of their clients, who face their inse­cu­ri­ties and fears to have Esme & Eve take their pho­tographs in noth­ing but lin­gere, Jen­nifer and Marissa stripped down to their skivvies and jumped in noth­ing but.

After hear­ing of this, and shar­ing my own story of over­com­ing rape through faith, for­give­ness and fit­ness, and ulti­mately by fac­ing my own fears, the girls invited me to be a part of their ini­tia­tive. This was only a few months ago. I had just moved to Los Ange­les and I was start­ing my busi­ness from scratch in a new city. I had noth­ing to lose, but every­thing to gain from a blos­som­ing busi­ness rela­tion­ship and entre­pre­neur­ial sup­port sys­tem in these amaz­ing women. I did, how­ever,  have reser­va­tions about mod­esty, per­son­ally, and in rep­re­sent­ing my brand. They assured me I could cover how­ever I wanted to. It would be taste­ful and classy (for what it was) and explained their cause fur­ther (taken from the Esme & Eve website):

in the name of
being bold
and liv­ing a life
less ordi­nary
it is our goal to
inspire more women
world wide to
do more things that scare them and
fol­low their dreams.

this is our story and we believe that by putting it out there and speak­ing our truth we can per­haps inspire other women
to do the same.

Now, not only were they plan­ning on jump­ing. In under­wear. Again. But this time they wanted to take other women on the jump with them.

This ini­tia­tive, now called, the ‘Be Bold.Take the Leap.’ ini­tia­tive is “Esme+Eve’s call to action,” as they stated in their press release, “for women every­where to face their fears, take a risk, and push against what­ever it is that is hold­ing them back from car­ry­ing out their dreams. The jump from the plane wear­ing vir­tu­ally noth­ing sym­bol­izes the bold action of let­ting go and mov­ing on with with one’s life. Each of the woman will take the leap for her­self and for other women who share her story. (Read more about each woman jump­ing here).

Amaz­ing. These women, per­son­i­fy­ing ‘love’ and ‘cre­ation’ are offer­ing me a ticket to fly with them, tak­ing a leap of ‘faith’ with the inten­tion of inspir­ing a world wide pos­i­tive effect on women’s self-confidence and sense of pur­pose? Thoughts of falling from the sky were sud­denly sub­dued by the over­whelm­ing feel­ing that I had to be a part of this, no mat­ter what.

I agreed. Whole-heartedly. And then I asked what I could do.

We’re jump­ing from the sky, and cap­tur­ing the whole thing on video to cre­ate a doc­u­men­tary, while bear­ing nearly all. That brings up a lot of body-confidence issues.

I’m a per­sonal trainer and nutri­tion­ist in the busi­ness of get­ting peo­ple in the best shape of their lives, so I vol­un­teered to be their coach. I offered my new class, The “Un-Bootcamp”, and my 8 week lean-out train­ing and nutri­tion pro­gram, “Biki­nis & Board­shorts” to each of the women orig­i­nally involved (and I so proud of all of their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion to the program).

The weeks went by and word got out about the ini­tia­tive. Sud­denly we have spon­sors, emails of encour­age­ment and inspi­ra­tion (some of con­cern and/or mis­un­der­stand­ing), and open doors to even big­ger plat­forms of oppor­tu­nity to share the love with more and more women around the world. It’s taken flight!

In a recent reply to a com­ment in which the author was upset by my own deci­sion to jump with these women, I explained fur­ther where my heart lies in all of this:

 

“I under­stand that at first glance what I’m doing looks com­pletely out­ra­geous (admit­tedly, it is pretty out­ra­geous) and to some peo­ple, even some very close to me, judge­ment will be the first and pos­si­bly remain­ing response. It’s hard for me to han­dle think­ing about at times too, but, as I would with those I know, I urge you to take a closer look at why I’m doing this.

My brand, Cause Fit­ness, was founded and is rooted in love: love for peo­ple, because I love God, and the more I learn about Jesus, the more I under­stand that his only objec­tive was just that…loving peo­ple. So, that is my objective.

Cause Fit­ness is: Fit­ness for Effect. This brand was estab­lished to share the joys and ben­e­fits of a truly healthy lifestyle with every­one I touch, so that by that lov­ing out­reach, I can be a tool that God uses to change lives. Through my influ­ence in fit­ness, He can use me to inspire con­fi­dence through strength and resilience, so that peo­ple with start to under­stand their own value through the change in their self-confidence, pos­i­tive body image, and ulti­mately find that they are, each of us are, of infi­nite value to our Father, God, Creator.

Fit­ness is only a vehi­cle; a cat­a­lyst for pos­i­tive change; a way to bring light into a dark­ened world full of dis­as­ter, trauma, abuse, betrayal, pain, hurt, and death. Fit­ness is the vehi­cle I choose, because in my own story (causefitness.com/bio), when my world and self worth were stripped from me after being raped…my rela­tion­ship with God was my foun­da­tion and sta­bil­ity, and fit­ness was my phys­i­cal out­let for the stress and emo­tion that were uprooted in the process of heal­ing. I know that I am a lit­tle ‘crazy’ for being so open about my story, but I also fear noth­ing because God loves me despite every­thing, and despite all the hurt and loss of con­fi­dence in that sea­son, I know my value as His child and the joy that comes from know­ing that only pro­pels me to share it fur­ther, on a big­ger soap-box, with a micro­phone, on top of a moun­tain, or even from the air after jump­ing out of a plane for film/television.…and beyond!

My hope in jump­ing isn’t for show or dis­play of self, but it is a bold procla­ma­tion of what it means to have over­come some­thing trau­matic that could have, and for many peo­ple does, destroyed me and my atti­tude and future. As a Chris­t­ian, I am called to for­give because ‘to whom much has been for­given, much is required.’ So that said, rather than let rape ruin me, re-define me with lies of inad­e­quacy, and trap me from pur­su­ing my pur­pose, by for­give­ness because I was for­given first, I can only see my past as the per­fect cat­a­lyst for shar­ing love with other women strug­gling through sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences, or much much worse. Know­ing that judge­ment and ret­ri­bu­tion are not my job, but the job of a very able and just cre­ator God, I can be sat­is­fied and start to heal and use my story for the good of every­one who will listen.

I can only hope that this event, and the shar­ing of my story, and the women I’m jump­ing with shar­ing their sto­ries, will encour­age other women every­where. Our goal is to encour­age women to not be defined by what has hap­pened to them as much as how they respond and not just sur­vive, but thrive and face their fear so as to enjoy a full life of joy and love, rather than stay­ing stuck in a cycle of painful mem­o­ries and self-hate. 

About the underwear…

We’re all jump­ing because of a dif­fer­ent story of ‘over­com­ing’, so the jump sym­bol­izes a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of an inter­nal shift we each have expe­ri­enced in dif­fer­ent ways, and we’re all jump­ing in lin­gerie in honor of women every­where who can relate to one or all of our sto­ries. We real­ize that it is an incred­i­bly bold move to acknowl­edge the pain of your past and embrace it as some­thing to make you stronger rather than weaker, so we had to do some­thing incred­i­bly bold. We took what the girls did last year, and ampli­fied it.

Yes, we’re doing it for atten­tion, but we’re not doing it to pro­mote ego (believe it or not, I’m incred­i­bly scared, and embar­rassed to be fly­ing from the sky in lacy things despite my rel­a­tively healthy level of body con­fi­dence). We’re doing it for the atten­tion of the masses. We want to wake peo­ple up. Shock the sys­tem and break the rou­tine. We’re admit­tedly try­ing to ignite a world wide change; an awak­en­ing in women’s self per­cep­tion and inspire pos­i­tive steps for­ward for any­one strug­gling with sto­ries like ours.

For ‘Cause Fit­ness’, this is just another way I hope to be part of a world-wide holis­tic health and fit­ness Effect.

Because after all, Cause Fit­ness is, Fit­ness for Effect.”

Thank you for tak­ing the time to read this, and I hope that you can be inspired or at least, reflect on why we’re doing what we’re doing and live your live just a lit­tle more boldly because of that. Be the change you wish to see in the world and you can change at least one per­son. Change one per­son, and you can change the world.

All my love, and God bless you all,

Rachel Eliz­a­beth Murray

A spe­cial thank you to all of our sponsors: 

*Sky­dive Skin pro­vided by LATHER www.lather.com*

To read the arti­cle that Good Morn­ing Amer­ica inter­viewed me for, click here.