Hanja Kochansky

please visit me @WWW.hanjak.com

I'm a free spirited, iconoclast, citizen of the world.

My first journey was that of a refugee fleeing from World-War-II torn Croatia to Italy in 1943, when I was six-years-old. My next move, at the age of eleven, was that of emigrant to apartheid South Africa.

In the early sixties I came back to Rome to enjoy the Dolce Vita times and to be actresses. One of my most fun roles was playing a handmaiden to Elizabeth Taylor in the film Cleopatra.

Later, married to an Englishman, I fully experienced the sex-drugs-&-rock-&-roll era in swinging London. I had a daughter, was a battered wife, a divorcee and also worked at the Playboy Club as a black-jack croupier.

In 1972 I wrote Female Sexual Fantasies -- the first book in our times on women's sexual fantasies. It was published in America (where it sold 250,000 copies), England and Australia.

This gave me the money to realize one of my childhood fantasies, which was to see the USA , so I took a long over-land journey (dragging my feisty six-year old daughter behind me) which culminated with me wearing flowers in my hair in San Francisco.

Later I found the Goddess in a temple in India; and in London met the man of my life: a drop-dead-handsome, non-conforming, charismatic American actor. Although I knew that if I took him on I would eventually be living in a ménage a trois with him, I couldn't do without him and embarked on some very exciting adventures, which, at times, had me crying tears to my knees.

We had a son, made a commune in Sardinia, and eventually moved to Rome. Here I ran a lively household, wrote songs, worked as an actress in films and performed a one-woman show -- Story of a Life in 21 Songs -- a cabaret where I recounted memories and sang the songs I composed accompanying myself on the guitar.

When I finally could no longer handle my partner's infidelities I left him, began living a more stable life, and when I discovered I had curative hands I became involved in the healing arts.

In 1991 I was certified as an aromatherapist by the Shirley Price School of Aromatherapy in England, and established the first aromatherapy studio in Rome.

In May of 2010 I moved back to London, where I'm thoroughly enjoying a new chapter of my life.

Amongst a plethora of exciting projects at present I'm also completing The Amazing Adventures of a Woman of Our Times -- a trilogy concerning a thoroughly modern woman.

My motto is Ghandi's aphorism: "Be the change you want to see in the world." I try to walk my talk.