This little girl is me

International Day of the Girl

This little girl is me.

She was born in Portsmouth in 1975 to a mum labouring alone because the police trainers wouldn’t wake their cadet until the morning. They slid a note under the door. He arrived hours too late. 

This little girl shone at primary school taking lead roles in the Pied Piper, Watership Down and The Three Wise Men while writing precociously long stories and loving life. Secondary school started well with straight As in every subject and an invitation to an advanced maths course at the local university, but she soon dumbed down (on purpose) to avoid standing out. She didn’t fit in to the county Catholic School with its nuns graveyard at the bottom of the playing field. 

Her parents divorce came after her mum found career success and her dad didn’t want things to change. It was complicated and she ended up being raised mainly by her father from 13. Life was turbulent and her early self-belief faded into teenage insecurities and a level of self doubt that would continue to plague her to this day. 

But this girl’s spark was still there. She was always entrepreneurial. In sixth form without faculty support, she started a school magazine finding paid advertisers and student contributors. This girl also put on the school’s first graduation ball, when again the faculty didn’t want to know. 

Dumbing down, clubbing from 15, and a lack of focus on her studies meant this girl ‘failed’ her A levels, despite passing the Oxford entrance exam. With a BCD she pleaded her way into Cardiff University to study Journalism, Film & Broadcasting because a resit year was not an option. Her father was selling her home and by Christmas it would be gone as he moved in with his pregnant girlfriend. She had to go. This girl struggled and dropped out of uni a year later with depression. Life seemed hopeless and she felt unwanted and alone. Neither parents home was an option and she couch surfed her way to London finding a job as a receptionist to pay the bills. It didn’t suit her.

This girl was lost, but she was not a quitter.

She started to recover and found a job filming and editing ceremonies at Buckingham Palace. She went back to uni and got a Professional Broadcasting degree from industry-respected Ravensbourne. She went on to work on The Bill, Holby City and Silent Witness fighting her way into the script department. She still suffered with crippling self doubt but she felt she had made it. She was 29. 

BBC cut backs led to redundancy and this girl realised she was burnt out. A five-year plan was hatched. She bought a one-way ticket to Australia to take control of her destiny and do what she always loved. Write. She planned to use TEFL to pay her way around the world while she developed her own scripts. But life never goes to plan. Instead she met an American, fell in love and came home a year later. It was a magical time. She wrote her first script and was just beginning to send it out when she fell pregnant with twins. It was a difficult pregnancy but she loved the experience. Eleven days after two beautiful identical boys were born, Elliot died and this girl broke. 

Now learning to be a parent while also grieving her child, this girl lost her ability to create. She couldn’t write a thing. She could no longer enjoy fiction. Or listen to music. Or watch films. It was all too much. She took refuge in teaching English to adults while she learned to live with this new version of herself. 

A few years later someone asked her to help write a few web pages. Then someone else did too. After a few years writing around the edges of life, fitting it in sat in her car during lunch breaks or late at night while the kids slept, she went for broke. Words by Page Ltd was born.

Now she’s been a full time copywriter for over five years. She dances in the kitchen to Spotify. She reads. And she has also found enough self belief to start writing scripts again. She may be 45, but this girl knows she can. 

Why am I telling you this? Because 70% of girls feel more confident about their futures after hearing from women role models. I encourage all the amazing women in my network to participate in this campaign by Inspiring Girls International led by Miriam Gonzalez Durantez.