Writing this at 2 am so pls excsue any typos but got to multi task any way I can….
Okay so this week will see a mad last minute rush to put this trip together (Geez Oprah you could have given us a few months notice). I just know it is the start of something wonderful, and I know it will just take its own shape in good time. Finding my Mojo and hopefully helping many others to do the same. Gosh, given the times we have seen of late, everyone is struggling, but some people know how to pick themselves up faster than some of us who get sideswiped and can’t quite bring all the pieces together again easily. I’m not saying it can’t be done because I believe every broken person has the ability to find and heal themselves – it just takes time, commitment and effort. I’ve been doing it for years and maybe, just maybe, this last stretch is really that – the final pieces of my very own puzzle that I need to complete so my total picture is intact. So where did my bloody Mojo go? To be honest it slipped ever so slowly away from me over the last few years but this last year was, to put it simply, completely suckish.

Here it is in brief with some bits I am saving for later:

January 2009 I was miserably unhappy on Biggest Loser which is another story for another time but I will say this : what went on in that place brought me to where I am now today and as hard as it was I am now just starting to be grateful for all the tough things that went on behind closed doors and in front of. Some strange things happened during that time and no one close to me undestands it and I am not sure I ever will.

I have always wondered how and why some women are ruthless, competitive to a fault and territorial….you know those people who will walk over any woman to be on top or not even be on top but to just own everything they can within their reach. See, I’m not like that. I think women should get back to the cave mentality…I think we should all band together, reform the clan and work WITH each other, side by side, together, forever, holding hands (maybe not the unwashed uncshaved underarm bit) but always with the clan, no matter what happens because as a CLAN we have many hands and with many hands much can be done. The sooner we get back to being cave women the sooner we will stop fighting each other and start living with and loving each other, working together to be better and make the world a better place…. then it doesn’t matter who’s “on top” because as one, it is the ripple effect that just flows on through to everyone.

Anyway, as with all things bad they one day turn into precious gems of learning and I have learnt that I want to work WITH women to help women (men too but you hav to start somewhere), I declare NO competition with anyone, I will love and respect everyone for who they are and what they want in their own life and I hope to share my experiences with yours in the hope of creating something life changing and wonderful. Just suppose we all band together and all find our Mojo at the same time? Talk about empowerment!! And for those who already have it then share how you have it or how you found it, shine the light for those of us who are lost and can’t quite see the way (yet!). Anyway I digress and sound a little spookily born againy mormony scientologisty religiousy would you like to buy a magazine-y…. where was I? Oh yeah..I digress….

I knew it was “time to cut the fat” or to be more honest, time to cut the crap. I had done four years of Biggest Loser and it was just not what I imagined it would be and it made me a hypocrite of my own ideals and I knew I had set out to find what made my heart sing, what gave my spirit wings and follow my dreams once again (wow I sound slightly stoned but I promise you I am not…drug test me…clean as a whistle).

I had made some friends here in the USA, people I had met on the Great Wall of China walk with Olivia Newton John, people who were making things happen for me, flying me back and forth, they got me an agent, got me some meetings, we wrote a show, it looked like it was going to get picked up blah blah.

But before I made my leap to the USA I decided I would have my reconstructive surgery (about 5 kilos of excess skin cut off, breasts lifted) just after my 40th (which I will now from this moment forth refer to as my 39a) birthday. A magazine had made an offer to cover it and I was happy to accept the fee without starting a pitching war because I would get the surgery, get some money to start my new journey with and help others make and understand the decision of having excess skin removed had they been thinking about it. So in good faith whilst still finalising the small print of the contract I did the “before” photo shoot revealing a deeply personal and emotional part of me I had managed to keep quite secret (it’s amazing what a good pair of nana underpants can do).

Then a few crossed wires and some strange phone calls later and another magazine approached me (someone close to me) and offered me three times the amount if I would do it with them instead. I am a person of my word and would never have changed mags despite needing the money and not knowing when my next pay check would be, but before I even had a chance to say “thank you but no thanks” the original magazine were jumping up and down, threatening me, telling me it was a small town with long memories blah blah blah. I had not even told them this mag had offered me the deal, they had heard from someone else. Hello??? I had already done the shoot. Of course I was going to stick with them. Just because someone offers you something doesn’t mean you have to or even will take it.

Well the vicious and threatening phone calls were devastating….this surgery was supposed to be the final stage in my healing (yeah who was I kidding??) and everyone was ripping at it like a flock of seagulls on a single chip.

I told the big money mag I wouldn’t do it with them, I told the original mag I would still do it with them but that right now it was too horrible for me to contemplate after all this fighting and still technically being under contract to 10 (I had a 3 month exclusion) I couldn’t shoot the footage and I really wanted to have a copy of that for my ever growing files of the evolution of Ajay Rochester. So I put it on hold. HOLD. I was told that when I was ready we could move forward again.

So I went off to the USA to see what there could be for me and to have some much needed time away from the vultures in OZ. Every time I opened a mag or newspaper there was another untrue story about me or something taken from the truth and twisted into something yucky. It was like it was hunting season except that it had been going on for years. But it was also like tranquilizing and blindfolding the deer and shooting it with a machine gun in a barn yard (me being the deer just in case you struggle with metaphors).

Anyway whilst in The US a dear friend’s manager/boyfriend says he will look after me and sends me off to a meeting with some TV bigwigs. Before I know it I am being told to go back to Australia, pack up and move back to the USA in 8 weeks, in time to start shooting, with my visa that they would pay for and get for me and I would then be on the current season of Celebrity Fit Club as a panellist. Yay! Kai and my future looked bright! It was sooo exciting.

So we did just that. Couldn’t take another job as I was contracted to the channel over here. Packed up, did everything I could, gave heaps of my stuff to charity and women’s shelters, sold everything else on ebay at bargain prices for quick sales, kept getting emails from the channel making sure I was doing everything I could to make the visa happen (I was) and then…..about a week before Kai and I were set to fly out I was told the job was not looking good cause the visa was taking so long. I decide that I could probably move the visa along faster if I get there so I leave Kai in school and with his dad and jet off thinking the worst case scenario would be they replace me on the show (this season) and I would have the visa anyway and who knows…if I can get one job I can get another surely.

Hours before I fly out, my “dear friend” tells me that I can’t stay at her place anymore and I can’t use the car she had promised me. Weird on such short notice but whatever (and I have since found out that story but once again, another cup of cocoa on another quiet night). I simply took half a cup of cement and hardened up, cried my heart out, sat at the airport crying not knowing anyone I could call, found a place on craig’s list, caught an airport van to the middle of nowhere and walked into a complete strangers house straight from the airport barely sleeping the first three nights for fear of being tied up in the cellar “It puts the lotion on it’s skin” style. Anyway they turn out to be really really cool film industry people and they rock. They are saving homeless kids and are doing an amazing documentary and other stuff and they are called Spare Some Change- the 11:11 Experiment. Completely inspiring. Will tell you more about them and the kids later.

Anyway I ring my manager and he doesn’t return my calls (soooo dodgy). I get an email from the guy at the channel saying they had to replace me and…..here’s the kicker….the visa they were supposed to be getting for me (the one I had been told all along they were getting as part of my contract)…oh they stopped getting that weeks ago cause they didn’t think it would come through in time. Um, der, did my manager not kind of make the point of getting their end of the contract signed so they would hold up their end of the contract? Nope! Ring the manager and he drops me like a hot potato….not his problem he says. My “dear friend” now ensconced in a relationship with him does what any woman under the thumb does, she just goes silent. So there I am jobless, homeless, friendless and penniless and in another country without my son, having sold everything I own for nothing to get here and well, you could say there may have been some tears. Just a few! How was I going to tell Kai? He was looking forward to coming to live in America – he had fallen in love with the crazy place. We had nothing!!!!!

I decided I would try and get the visa anyway and I did. Yay we love you US Consulate and everyone who helped me. Thank you and forever humbly grateful to you all.

I had been doing Runyon canyon every day and I have to say I was looking pretty damn good, having no money for food and no car to go get it has a way of making you look good. Despite all that stuff happening I was on an ok place. A friend of mine had been harassing me to do a sexy swim wear shoot with him and after much harassing and him promising me they were just test photos I did it. More to break free from the old me and see what the pics might look like having always had a distorted image of what I looked like. So I go over to his house and we muck around, barely any make up, me wearing borrowed Target BIG underpants and not a bikini, no lighting….bit of a laugh and a big step outside my comfort zone.

The next thing I know the photos are for sale and I say to him, “Do NOT airbrush me to ridiculousness” Yeah, take out some stretchmarks and those zits, I had tights pants on under the swimmers and the reality is even though I could pull my loose skin out like a stretchy jumper, I could also suck it in and hide it quite well. Anyway with promises it would be all okay and needing money for the visa I agreed to do a feel good look how far I have come story which would be the precursor to me surgery story.

Totally told the journo about my loose skin, totally told the journo I still wouldn’t go to the beach in a bikini, totally told them they were photo shopped and happy to have people say that because this was all about how far I had come from the days of being a beached whale. They were photo shopped but not as much as people made out and um, hello, people do it all the time. It might not be right but you would find barely any shoots go totally un photoshopped. And I have not seen the originals to this day it all happened so fast. These days I would not jump so quickly. I have learned the hard hard hard way.

Anyway the original mag I was doing the surgery story had been in contact with me and I told them I was actually going to come back to Australia and have my surgery (It seemed like the sensible thing to do now I had some time up my sleeve haha). I wanted to do a beautiful piece revealing to people the side I had been hiding all those years and was now going to fix. Instead the magazine ran a horrible story, the very next week without telling me, using the incredibly private and personal pictures I had entrusted them with to be used as my before shot AFTER I had the surgery. Instead they used it to twist what had been a lovely piece and a precedent to what was going to be my true reveal and made it something dirty and horrible. OMG I felt sick and so so hurt. That’s when my downward sprial really began. I was devastated, humiliated, hurt, violated….I went on a date and the guy mentioned he googled me oh god I nearly died….I had been hiding it all those years and only ever wanted those photos to come out once they were not a part of me. It “alluded” that I had lied and already had the surgery when in fact they knew I hadn’t as I had email contact with them the weeks before telling them I was happy to now move forward and wanted to do a wonderful feel good piece tha woudl hopefully help others in my situation. For the record I never got paid for the photos they used of me and the story they wrote despite having a contract with them from earlier in the year. I probably should have sued but really, who can afford that? They also pretty much ruined my opportunity to being able to then sell that story. Revenge is a dish best served cold and I just got a fist full of it.

So I went back to Oz and the same magazine said that they would still cover my surgery story and would actually pay very well for it. Seriously, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me…..I should have known better. But I am a trusting person and I was being told by people I trusted to trust them.

And I needed a break. Earlier in the year I had been offered a BIG chuck of money from one of the TV shows to totally dish on Loser but I didn’t so I really really needed some money now that all these thigns had fallen through and these people were assuring me and the people supposed to protect me were assuring me it was going to be beautiful……it would finally put all the rumours to rest, it would be a feel good, wonderfully inspiring story of hope blah blah…It would be enough money for me to recover from my surgery comfortably and live off for the next year (frugally) and for Kai and I to settle in the states and give Oprah a really good go. So I flew in to Sydney and went straight into surgery.

Three days post surgery the TV station who shot some footage for the doctor aired the story on the surgery before they were supposed to and because for some silly reason they had not been made to sign something making sure they would not air it they did anyway, ignoring my managers plea to hold off even knowing they were not supposed to air it. I got sucker punched. The magazine then told me they wanted to me to say “I lied” or they wouldn’t do the story. I have not lied and I will not say that I did and in fact they were the ones who openly mislead people and I couldn’t help but remember the text messages I still have to this day saying “this is a small town Ajay and the magazine people have looong memories.” Using the tv show’s airing of my surgery story as an out they dropped the contract and left me penniless in my hospital bed. Was this an act of revenge? Bad management? Foolishness on my behalf for trusting anyone in my home town?

Who knows but there I was, three days post surgery, literally cut in half, breasts looking like they have been put through a sausage press, me feeling the same, I was told that the deal was off and in fact there was absolutely no money to live off. Kaput. Finished. Suck those lemons now get off your no longer fat decapitated arse and get a job to survive. I had tubes coming out of every part of my body and I could not even sit up without two nurses helping me..I was in deep sh#t. Literally (but that bit you don’t want to read about).

And so I sucked it up. Again.

Went back to the ridiculously expensive place that I was staying in that was supposed to be paid for in “the deal” and was so poor I could not even buy the bandages I needed for my breasts. The person who had told me they were going to be around that week to look after me (weeks before when organising my recovery) went away for a romantic trip to the Hunter Valley with her boyfriend. I rang her two days before she left to ask if she could help me get up the road to get some food for Kai but she was busy. I sucked it up and caught a bus, bruised and still bleeding to get some tinned soup and mac cheese and see how many dressings I could afford with the few dollars I had left. Got off the bus and couldn’t walk any further and a complete stranger picked me and my groceries up and walked me home. This is when I began to know the kindness of strangers in a completely new way.

Anyway fast forward a bit, it was school holidays in Oz, I was recovering (supposedly) and I had to find somewhere for Kai and I to stay. I had another job offer in the states starting January (through the same friend who went away the week she was supposed to look after me so I really should have known…god I really need to trust less) so I just needed to survive till then. I scrounged around and managed to get a book deal (phew) but that didn’t end up coming through till about February and so Xmas was tight, and I won’t go into details but we have certainly learnt the joy in the simplest of things in life and we have also learned that literally when one door closes another door opens.

Anyway we got to the USA and were told there would be a house, a car, an advance and weekly pay check and I would shoot my pilot…I just had to get Kai and I here……
Hahahahaha. LA is a sunny place full of shady people.
I am not going to bore you with the details of what happened next other than, well it involved a roach motel, a stay in The Roosevelt, a dodgy craig’s list apartment from some guy who skipped to Mexico with his (and my) rent of six months, a court order to get out, our few precious possessions stolen from a homeless transexual living in my friend’s garage, a crazy dream where I was visited by some Indian guru who told me where I needed to go, I went and found a miracle landlord who amazingly gave me a place with no bond and no rent in the heart of Beverly Hills, and a whoooole lot more…… boy were they tough times - emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially (but not all of it was bad…there was some incredible awakenings as well) and OMG there’s so much more to tell but I have to get to the point cause believe it or not, there is one!!!!

Anyway it came to be that Oprah announced these auditions for people to host their OWN show on her new network and I believe that this is my destiny. This is how I ended up here not signed to another station or show and having just focused all of my attention and energy on my son’s well being before I could even think of focusing on mine. It will be what it will be and like anything that happens to me I will enjoy the ride wherever it takes me.

However as I started to look beyond my son’s needs it came to my attention that I was sorely in need of more than just a trip to Jiffy Lube to get my car serviced. I looked in the mirror and I am in desperate need of a total overhaul…where had I gone? This is when it became obvious to me I needed to Find my Mojo, whether or not I get this job, whether or not I meet Oprah, whatever……but what I do need, as a woman and a mom and all the other things I am, is to remember my spirit, wake up and jump out of bed excited by what the new day will bring, to be content in who I am and where I am before I even contemplate where I might be going - I need to find my missing Mojo baby! And NOW! And the best way I know how to do that is to learn from others as I did years ago in my first book Confessions of a Reformed Dieter.

You have to speak to people who have been there done that. And the best way I know how to do that is by using what we call in Oz, The Bush Telegraph. This is a bit like Chinese whispers where you get people to spread the word one by one till you have an army of people who hear the cry of help and they are happy to get their hands dirty doing whatever it takes to do the job.

I want people to point me in the direction where I might find those people who can inspire me and others like me, I want women to work together and say, “I know blah blah, you should talk to her”, I want complete strangers to tell me about a woman in New Orleans or Mississippi and I want to get in my van with my son, my dog and my camera and I want to go interview her and find out just how she “sucked it up” and got on with the job on the days she had trouble doing so. I’ve been doing ok but I have to admit on the tough days I’m struggling. I haven’t even told you about the stupid car accident I was a passenger in two weeks before coming back to Australia for my surgery. Yep, talk about being sideswiped – literally! Just had that surgery to fix it this week so hopefully it will be the start of my recovery, albeit a little longer than I thought it would take but we all know the story of the tortoise and the hare. But I do need a little help and I know I am not alone. I know from all my years of doing we think we are alone in our struggle but the person sitting next to you reading this over your shoulder may well have cried three times before breakfast today. You are NOT alone!

And so I ask anyone, anywhere to join me on this journey. I have the van thanks to for three weeks but it won’t end there, this is just the beginning and the Oprah stopover just a blip on the radar of my Finding my Mojo. If anyone anywhere knows who I should, could, would, must seek out then please hook me up. Let me know who is out there, who has stories to tell and experiences to share. I’ll go anywhere. It is summer vacation and Kai can’t wait to hit the road and discover his new country of residence. He doesn’t care where we go and neither do I. So ladies and gents, I implore you for three things should you still be reading: