My entire youth was spent with an incredibly ill parent... I don't think you can grow up that way and not be marked by that experience.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Being a parent can make you a horrible person at times, because you're pushed to the limit constantly.
I hadn't been free from adult responsibilities since I was 12, and I needed to experience that. I really needed to just be a kid again.
Over a period of 11 months, I was constantly afraid that Youth Care would lock me up. It was all a frightening and traumatic experience. So often, these terrible memories come to me. I can't ignore them.
I was not developmentally disabled, but didn't mature at the same rate other kids did.
I have been a parent since I was 25. That's a large chunk of my adult life. Mother or father, it transforms you completely.
I was very protected growing up. My dad was very strict with me. I was the oldest of four kids, and there are three girls. So I kind of paved the way of what it was like to raise a teenage daughter.
My mother was very ill when I was 18. She had a brain operation and then a nervous breakdown. It's very strange when you see your parents, who have always been your pillars of strength, suddenly become vulnerable. You don't know whether to be angry that they are not strong or devastated.
I didn't have a normal childhood by any means. But it was what it was, and I appreciate what my parents did for me.
My father fell really chronically ill when I was 13 and that's when I phoned up an agent and started to act.
I didn't have a dysfunctional childhood or young adulthood, but I was somebody who was very much raised to do what other people told me to do as a person.