I was at my daughter’s mid-year drama performance last night, she’s 11, and most of the kids are young. Some of them are just starting drama, some of them have been doing it for a while.
There was this one young girl who was visibly terrified, who was there to do a miming performance.
I suspect she’d chosen mime because she was too nervous to speak and try to project her voice as well as do the acting at the same time.
She walked out into centre stage and then she froze. She couldn’t do what she wanted to do. You could see that this was something really hard for her to do. Tears started in my eyes at the realisation of how hard she was finding this, yet she was there and she was having a go.
The drama teacher came out to help her. She stood beside her and whispered to her, coaching her. She joined in on the performance, encouraging her to keep going even though it was hard.
Watching the two of them together as the young girl began her performance, brought the realisation that having someone cheering you on when you’re doing hard things can have such a profound impact on you.
It can bring you out of the freeze state where you’re so paralysed that you can’t do what you know you want to do.
Simply having someone beside you, cheering you on can help you get through those hard moments. They help remind you that you can do hard things.
You’re powerful and you can do hard things, but sometimes we need someone to help remind us of this.
Love,
Ky xo