A few years ago I made a promise to myself. No matter how little I’d slept, how fat I felt or how few acting jobs I booked, I would do my best to feel awesome. I would do my best to understand that I AM AWESOME. 

This promise came after years of creative self doubt, depression, anxiety and disordered eating. For years I’d let my inner voices say all kinds of awful things to me and it hadn’t worked out well. I was sick and tired of hating myself.

I knew though that waving goodbye to depression wasn’t going to be as easy as packing it a lunch and sending it on it’s way. It was going to be there lurking in the shadows, waiting for a moment of weekness, to saunter toward me like a like a bengal tiger and climb onto my back.

So I made a plan.

I would do all the things I loved. I would fill my life with them. I would do them because I loved them. I would not use them as conduits to prove my worth. I would do them because they were a part of me. I would be a writer an actor, a painter, a sculptor, a mother, a singer et. al in VERB form. The NOUN was irrelevant. It did not matter was I was called. It mattered what I was doing