Growing Up

I am an empath and childhood trauma honed my sensitivities. I’ve struggled with depression, post-traumatic stress, and dissociative amnesia; leftover dysfunctions of my childhood trauma. Years of therapy and finding my faith have guided my inner child to find the great love of my life; myself.

I have always felt a deep curiosity to investigate details, to understand other people’s stories and their coping mechanisms because it informs my own search of self-discovery.

In this ongoing search to further understand my history and the world around me I have turned more and more towards my love of storytelling. My story focuses on the everyday which is universal because it’s the small and ordinary details of life that make me curious. The simple details of life form and inform us, providing life’s beauty and pain.

As a child, I remember using my Barbie dolls to perform plays. My dad always had books around the house and some of them were plays of Shakespeare. I loved reading through them though most of the time I didn’t quite understand. I liked reading them out loud because I liked the way the words sounded when I said them. “Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head”, in my little girl voice.

I don’t remember which Shakespeare play we picked but my best friend Gail and I used her Barbie doll dream house as the backdrop. She had Barbie and I had Midge. We would move our Barbies around (sitting, standing, changing clothes) between reading different parts of the play. I have no idea if it made any sense.

I’m pretty sure it didn’t. My parents, her mother, and aunt were our audience, sitting quietly and I had the feeling they wanted to laugh out loud. But I didn’t care. We had their attention and that’s all we wanted.

When I was ten, I wrote a letter to the Mattel Company and asked them if they would make dolls of The Supremes. I don’t know how I came up with that, but they did write back! They thanked me for my idea but were not going to add them to their product line. My mother kept the letter of response from Mattel for years, but it was lost. I’m hoping it’s lost among my papers or hers, and that I’ll find it, fingers crossed!

I look forward to sharing other pieces of my life as we journey on to finding our best selves together.