Luna Gaia's 'Perfectly Imperfect' is on a mission to empower people to be their best

When Luna Gaia was young, she described herself as "the mother-friend", always looking out for others; the one her peers would come to for advice.

Any onlooker would have seen a bright, bubbly girl full of confidence. As a teenager, she realised she revelled in helping people reach their full potential.

However, inwardly, Luna was fading away.

"I hated myself - pretty deeply - but no one would've known it because I was good at faking it," she said.

"I learnt as a young girl, my worth was in what I looked like.

"It was directly related to my body."

Luna started her first diet at 16 and the praise she received from others reinforced to her young mind she was doing the right thing.

It began a 10 year negative cycle of yo-yo dieting, losing weight rapidly and piling it back on.

She suffered from bulimia for seven years.

"I was forcing food into my body, then vomiting it up while watching America's Next Top Model," she said.

"If I just get the right body I will be enough.

"But it doesn't work. It was never my body that I hated, it was my mind. It was my relationship with myself."

Her internal battle came to a head when Luna's 28-year-old brother died when she was 27.

"That was the catalyst of thinking 'what are you doing?'" she said.

"I asked 'Do you want to keep living the way you are living?'

"Do I want to keep hating myself?"

She decided to start fighting the negative thoughts she so easily let marinate in her mind and ruin her outlook and positivity, and instead acknowledge her experiences but choose to focus on positive, healthier thoughts about herself and her situation.

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The difference was immense.

"You can rewire your thoughts so that it's not so crappy anymore, and that you can go do the things that you want to do in your life," she said.

And that is Luna's self-professed mission statement: "to revolutionise the way women and girl across the world see themselves and their bodies so that they can give to the world their unique talents and gifts".

Luna said she was passionate about "teaching you to love yourself".

"When you have confidence and self-esteem, your body looks after itself because you love and respect yourself.

"We need a radical shift in the way we think about ourselves and that will create the change we are looking for."

With a new mindset and the self-confidence that came with it, Luna was able to move beyond her diet-riddled adolescence and start to thrive in life.

"We spend our whole lives chasing enough-ness, to never actually get there," she said.

"We're in an epidemic of happiness-deficiency. Everyone is chasing something outside of them.

"I figured out how to get happy and it's like finding the cure for something - I want everyone to have it."

And so, wanting to share what she had found, Luna sat down and wrote one sentence which would become the driving force behind her first book.

"Luna, write the book you need to read," she wrote.

"The way I had suffered from my own body image and the way I'd suffered from my own lack of confidence within myself and the lack of self belief, I thought 'I really needed this book, and it doesn't exist.' I really felt compelled that I wanted to write the book that I needed to read."

Perfectly Imperfect was published in 2021.

The most common feedback Luna receives from people after they read the book is "Get out of my head".

"People think they are alone in the war they are having inside of their own minds. They think no one else is having negative self-talk or doubting themselves," she said.

"I've lived it, and that is what makes my work so unique. I know what is going on in your head, because it was my head."

One reader gave her a Twitter review: "This is the most important book I've ever read in my entire life".

For Luna, nothing could be better.

"If I can make a difference to one person's life, I've lived a good life," she said.

Perfectly Imperfect is available online and as an audiobook - recorded by Luna.

Find them both here.