Being perfect… it’s an act nobody can keep up forever, and Mikki doesn’t have to. It’s OK to be real, with mixed-up feelings and happy and sad days. It’s OK to have days when you don’t want to spend three hours straightening your hair and painting your nails, days when you’d rather slob out in skinny jeans than totter around in skyscraper heels. It’s OK if you get a ‘B’ or ‘C’ grade now and again, instead of all ‘A’s. It’s OK if you want to eat apple pie instead of salad, or help behind the scenes in the school play instead of stressing about whether you’ll land the lead role. It’s OK to fancy the quiet boy with the specs who sits in front of you in science rather than the flashy boy who captains the footy team, but never talks about anything except himself.

In a word, it’s OK to be YOU.

In fact, it’s essential… you’re the one person you cannot hide from, and if you try to be something you’re not you will make yourself unhappy pretty fast.

Helpbox

Read It…

• BeautyLicious by Lisa Clark (Macmillan) – my fave girly style bible
• Growing Up with Diabetes by Alicia McAuliffe
• Epilepsy: The Ultimate Teen Guide by Kathlyn Gay (Scarecrow Press)
• Do the Right Thing – A Teenager’s Guide to Surviving Any Social Situation by Jane Goldman (Piccadilly)
• How 2 B Happy by Jenny Alexander (A & C Black)

Websites:

• www.childline.org.uk – sections on how you look, peer pressure
• www.childrenfirst.nhs.uk – teen and kids’ sections with tons of info on health worries, families, feelings and more

Cathy’s Books… Published by Puffin

• GingerSnaps – being true to yourself, not allowing yourself to be pushed around

8. Dream On

Some of us are natural dreamers. We’re talented at it, we have a skill. We dream at home. We dream at school, when we should be concentrating on equilateral triangles and the life cycle of the frog. We could pass exams in dreaming, getting A grades and merits effortlessly. We just can’t help it.

Not everyone is a natural dreamer, but most of us start out that way. Our minds like telling stories or jumping off at tangents, painting pictures or creating crazy scenes. Dreaming is cool.

The biggest problem with dreaming is that a lot of the time, adults just don’t appreciate it. They are likely to get annoyed if you are dreaming when you should be eating your dinner or tidying your room or learning French vocabulary. (Dream = rêve, in case your teacher asks!)

Adults sometimes tell you that dreaming is a BAD thing. They will tell you that dreaming is a waste of time, a skive.

My message is… DON’T LISTEN!!!!

Dreaming is not bad. Dreaming is good, better than hot chocolate fudge cake in fact, and not many things in this life are better than that.

Dreaming is the most powerful kind of magic we have for making things happen. How? Well, you can dream up a story and then write it down, but that’s not really what I mean. I’m talking about dreams that focus on the future, dreams of things you’d like to be, things you’d like to achieve… a dream like that is special.