GSA Year 11 student, Issy, from The Ladies’ College Guernsey shares her tender and personal take on how girls and young women stand on the shoulders of women who go before them.
In my early childhood, my Mum would always tell me how lucky I was to be growing up now, with a voice like mine. I was a feisty little child, always picking an argument with my brother, or asking annoying questions to my Dad. I would gather my family and my dog to watch me perform my very own one-woman play.
My parents knew the outgoing charisma I had from an early age and decided to put me into drama lessons before I could even walk properly. I still do it today. It taught me not to mask myself and pretend to be a character that I was not, but to express myself within the character, and learn to sympathize and bring my own emotions to the role. It also taught me not to be afraid to step onto the stage and share my thoughts and feelings, however wacky they may be.
Neither of my parents are particularly dramatic, so I assume I inherited my love for the art through my grandma. Anyone who’s had the privilege to meet her would jump to say that she is wildly charismatic. She taught me many crafts when I was younger, including learning to crochet and knit, learning to spin wool, and a Japanese cord-weaving method called Kumihimo. When I would visit her for our weekly crafting afternoons, she would share stories of her childhood, growing up in the 1940s. She expressed how she and her twin would have loved to learn ballroom dancing or act upon a stage.
Most of all, my grandma would talk about her love for singing when she was younger, and today. She and her twin were the oldest of five girls in her family, and she would always recite stories of how she would sing her sisters to sleep. For her, it wasn’t a chore; it was something she simply enjoyed. Even today, whenever we meet her, she talks fondly about her evenings of singing in the pews at the town church.
Unfortunately, her passion for singing was restricted, as her father didn’t support her hobby, and pastimes like mine were seen differently for women in that day and age. My grandma pursued another interest instead as a career and left her love for performing in her childhood.
I believe that if she had grown up today, she could have thrived at singing by being offered one of the multiple opportunities I have been lucky enough to take up. It is stories like my grandma’s that encourage me to use my voice to the maximum, and to appreciate the hobbies that have allowed me to become the outspoken young woman that I am today.
Issy
Y11 pupil at The Ladies’ College Guernsey