​Early Stages:

I spent most of my youth balancing fantasies of going on big adventures and donning princess dresses with righteous ideals. As a young girl, I was exposed to a lot of male-led movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, but would love to watch Disney films with defiant and intelligent female leads like Esmeralda from the Hunchback of Notre Dame or Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Movies with strong and emotional music, typically composed by John Williams, stirred a desire within me for adventure and excitement. The rebellious nature of the Disney characters who wanted to go against the norm gave me values and purpose for justice and intelligence. I craved to live and escape to a fantastical world where I could go on such adventures and be courageous and explore new lives and new worlds and encounter magic and romance. I would get lost in books and act out the characters and even the narrator. Though singing was a passion and an area I gained training, I began to find that my dreams were not as widely accepted as I had believed them to be. Though I would tip toe forward to new areas to showcase my passion through theater, early rejection, mockery and overwhelming pushes into academia began to make it difficult to continue to uphold the cravings of adventures with fantasy. I caved. I pivoted to the expectation of a good education. An emptiness stirred. Alone time when no one was home was the only safe place I could sing aloud or act things out where I didn’t need to protect the internal forces within me that screamed to live.

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The Silent Years:

For years I stuffed down my desires to keep them quiet that I forgot about them. It became easier to forget living in a tumultuous household where the eldest daughter responsibilities began to hold more of a burden that at times would break me. Desperate for an escape, I threw myself more into academics and moved to different areas and worked multiple jobs for survival. I ventured to learn more about the human mind, self-improvement, child welfare, and the psychology behind human nature. Unbeknownst to me at the time, these topics became major tools for my own journey and played a role in stories I would later gravitate towards. Throughout all this, cravings for performing would pop up in a small voice and I would push it down. It wasn’t until I tried to truly end that voice and commit to a simple life that everything changed. 

 

The Collision of Two Opposing Forces:

Until I stopped living in denial, my life became an endless cycle of escape from trauma and into one hopeless situation after another. My ultimate turning point came at my first major rock bottom (and if you’re lucky, like me, you may be graced with several to pivot to better directions). I spent years running from broken homes, pain, anger, but most importantly, the person who had a dream. I would never say I let her down, but I owed her a better life of adventure and fantasy. My younger self who dreamed, became a constant reminder of my new direction and many times throughout my life journey, there was always something new I could learn from her. She gave me a vision. She gave me a dream. She gave me a direction when I was lost. All I had to do was tap into her freedom, her love, and her creativity and things began to make sense. Who knew that a child less than 10 years old, could hold the key to what her adultself needed? There are so many things we can learn from children but more so from our child selves. I didn’t know how to blend the worlds I craved and the expectations of life, but she did.

 

The Dirt Path….to be continued