This Little Girl is Me...

This little girl dreamed of presenting the weather, narrating a nature program?and sailing the high seas.?She followed her dad around asking constant questions about his career in construction?and when she dug up an iron pan in her own little patch of her parents garden she decided that one day she'd understand what it was, how it got there and how the world works.

If I could have whispered a piece of advice in her ear it would have been "there will be challenging days ahead, but they are put there to teach you something important and valuable, seek support when you need to and trust your gut instincts to keep you on the right path - you will get there, so long as you never give up!".

Going through school she applied to go to a local college to study engineering, only to have the interview cancelled in advance on her behalf by her mum who said she should study something more appropriate, that it was for boys and she would do 'no work' there outside the strict regime of her grammar school A level program.

Having seen a picture of a wind turbine in a local university prospectus she decided to apply for the environmental science course on the page beside it and travel to Spain to learn a language which wasn't available for her to learn in her school at the time...

So she did... and in the end she ended up teaching Spanish kids English in Spain (getting her TEFL certificate in many forms), teaching environmental/marine undergraduate students and architecture and engineering students right up to masters level.

This little girl has owned the roof over her head for over a decade, bought and sold?and moved across country all by her self during a health crisis.

She did so in direct negotiations with property investors, land owners and hustled hard with banks even when every single one (including her own a couple of times) told her 'no' to a mortgage and her local estate agents who told her what she was trying to do (move against the property prices at the lower end of the market whilst doing a PhD) was simply impossible!

On getting those keys this little girl renovated them and by doing so lived 'rent free' for years off her own talents, shrewd decision-making capabilities and creative interior design flare.

This little girl can dress up and look glamorous and dress in old clothes and get stuck into some serious renovation projects like replacing roof joists, stripping the dreaded 'wood-chip' wallpaper and repointing traditional stone walls and feel just as empowered and feminine all the while!

This little girl didn't wait for anyone to tell her it was okay, socially acceptable or even possible to do something she wanted to do. She simply started taking steps towards her goal, talked to people until she found the right ones to help her and kept moving forward.

Sometimes in this process she needed to walk away too, not from her dreams or her goals, but from people she knew weren't going to be the ones to help her achieve them, meaning she could invest more time in the ones who would?:)

This little girl like 30% of the population is a HSP (Highly Sensitive Person or an 'orchid' according to sensitivity research .com - you can see how you score over there) and so sat her driving test 9 times during her full time research masters working alongside and getting into debt to do it with no funding to help her do it. Does this say to you that she was an 8 time failure or a tenacious trier with a growth mindset who finally achieved her goal??

The next month while driving a minibus and teaching environmental field survey techniques she heard reference made to the 'girly' one as if she was somehow less of a scientist, but it didn't let it put her off as she knew she could be both and still be great!

Even when she had inappropriate comments and advances in those male-dominated environments whether working on an offshore coring expedition doing masters research,?hosting a large health/energy/education event or painting kids faces while working for a charity in a prison,?she learned how to be tough and yet gentle at the same time. To stay true to who she was and not let other 'toxic' people drag her down, developing boundaries of steel while maintaining a heart of gold.

This little girl has faced her fears, jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet?and?sailed?1000?nautical miles though the fjords of Norway in the Tall Ships Races as a crew member, mentor and caring compassionate leader for some brave and wonderful Belfast teenagers who made the voyage too, handing over the helm to the most deserving team member to direct the ship over the finish line...

Why am I telling you this? I think that it's important to share real life empowering stories of overcoming adversity, particularly during this challenging time as the young people of today are experiencing something altogether tougher than we all faced and I believe and it's up to us to open our hearts to them...

To encourage them to believe in themselves and drown out the noise of societal pressure, cultural norms and the toxic ideals of a divided or unequal society. We were put on this planet to work together to make things better... COOPERATION not COMPETITION, if life has taught this little girl anything, it is this...

#ThisLittleGirlIsMe

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