As I was growing up I knew I was going to be someone great. I felt it deep in my heart. I was going to be a world famous Tv actress, or a writer. For a small child I had some pretty big plans. I was going to audition for RADA. I was going to journalism college. I was going to write a novel. I had no one to encourage me but I felt it deep in my being. I wrote pages upon pages of stories. Creativity was my lifeblood. I was determined to express myself doing what I loved.

Acting was the first thing I lost. I enrolled on an A-level in Theatre Studies at sixth form college. Not long after starting the course I realised that I wasn’t really very good. I suffered from severe social anxiety as a result of my home and school lives. My dramatic monologues paled in comparison to others. The teacher didn’t seem to like me and gave me no suggestions on how to improve. I started dropping out and eventually spoke to my personal tutor about giving up the course. I told him that I wasn’t doing very well. Even as I spoke the words I hoped he would say ‘That’s no reason to give up’ or ‘We can work on that’ but he agreed and I left the course.

When I started university two years later someone set up a drama society and I went along to the first meeting despite myself. I still had the spark of longing. But I couldn’t bring myself to join. All I could feel was the terror of making an idiot of myself. I feared everyone laughing at me, as kids had through school. Until Theatre Studies, I’d clung onto my love of drama and writing, my passion for creativity, believing that would see me through everything. Until it didn’t work anymore.

Things got worse. I took a creative writing module as part of my English degree and suddenly my writing was torn apart and criticised. I know this is par the course, but I didn’t have the resilience to manage it. Even worse, the students in my group showed far greater ability and got higher grades than I did. And truly, writing at that time was terrible. I was trying to come to terms with my childhood and being away from home and my heart was in darkness. Writing was no longer a refuge. Like acting, it seemed to prove that everything I had loved as a child was built on a lie, that in fact I was NOT GOOD ENOUGH. It was my deepest fear confirmed: I was actually a stupid girl who once thought she was great. What an idiot I had been!

Those beliefs sent me into a deep depression for many years. I still battle with them sometimes, especially when starting something new. I attempted a creative writing workshop a few years ago but almost immediately I realised I couldn’t match the level of those in the group. I was too scared to read anything out. It’s still a real source of sadness to me that something I loved so much when I was a child produces so much fear. I feel grief at not being encouraged as a child. I wish someone had seen the spark I possessed and nurtured it. But no one had cared. My family didn’t read anything I’d written. I think they feared my openness and vulnerability.

However, maybe in all that loss there is a gift. Acting and writing are wonderful talents to have, but they emerge from what we ARE, which is a spark of the Divine. As a child I was completely tapped into that wisdom and desired its creative expression despite the dysfunction that surrounded me. I didn’t compare myself to anyone else because I had no concept of doing so; all I knew was how to BE. Fear wasn’t even on my radar. My heart knew the way. I was walking the path of Divine love and OF COURSE I was – and am – someone great. How could I not be? The mistake I made was looking for fulfilment in someone else’s opinion and believing their judgements as well as my own. I got lost in my head. We are individual souls with our own way of seeing and experiencing the world. While comparison and constructive criticisms have their place, what’s more important is remembering our true nature which is creative expression itself, no matter which particular form it happens to take. Our souls are like trees -we express in our unique ways, but we are all beautiful. As a child I knew this in my heart. My lifelong task is to remember, and keep remembering that despite what I seem to have lost on the outside, I am always good enough.