What did you want to be when you were little and why aren’t you?

This was the question at the start of an event I was in with some fellow female entrepreneurs and has stuck with me.

The answers were fascinating but what was most telling, and also sad, were the numbers of ladies that had been told, in one short line, by a parent or teacher that ‘you can’t do that’ (for a variety of different reasons).

And that was it. That was all it took for these ladies to do what we are taught to do and take the advice of their parents and teachers. If you tell me I can’t do it then I can’t and that’s the end of it.

The more I talk to people the more I realise how lucky I am in the parents and teachers I have had. No one has ever told me I couldn’t do anything. That probably why my sisters and I are actor/writer, body builder and painter and decorator!

So what did I reply to the question about what I wanted to be when I grew up?

I have a vivid memory in Reception of being given a tobacco tin full of cards of drawings of different professions. I picked a nurse.

I was four.

My mum was a nurse and I had no idea what other jobs existed.

Again, I was four!

What about you?

What did you want to be when you were little and are you?

This image is one of the first images my daughter drew of me and it brought a tear to my eye as it is exactly how I want my children to see me.