The Start

As a child I was a voracious reader outside the classroom. Attracted to books about coming of age, outcasts and travel. I devoured books wanting to read them over having conversations with others. Along the way it became a problem, looked at as anti-social. As I deeply longed more than anything to fit in, the books went on the shelf and I became obsessed with theatre.

Theatre gave me an outlet to read plays and step into characters I wanted to understand while giving the world the access to an "extroverted" me that the world craved or told me I was. Perhaps, I was or perhaps I was as I identify now an extroverted introvert who happens to be hardwired to share and likes a bit of attention.

At University, as an acting major I read plays frequently but rarely picked up the fiction and non-fiction that would've been life changing for me personally and my craft on the stage.

The years after graduation I flirted with books, on dates I'd offer with confidence quotes I'd read in the New York Times book review boasting I had read the book when ashamedly I had not. Yes, reader, I was a book quoter impostor, nice to meet you.

Life went forward and soon I became "one of those people" who would, read if only I could find the time. Forward some more and I found myself, married and moved from America to the United Kingdom and burned out from life. My first three years of life in England were turbulent but in all honesty wherever I've been had an element of turbulence and rocky footing.

However, it wasn't until September 2019 I sought out talk therapy to guide me through family trauma that crumbled my little bits of identity felt barely tied to me.

It was in therapy we looked at the few hobbies I currently had, and those I loved before. Reading came up and the fact I craved a road map to get me out of my darkness. My therapist gave me The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness by Dr. Steve Peters to read. Lights started to come on, and desire of ambition crept in. From one finished book, turned into two, three, four and now I am at twenty-seven with a goal of thirty to read for the year. With no plans on stopping, only growing.

I was a voracious reader as a child and I am voracious reader as an adult.