In my novels, there are certain themes and situations I have explored several times. Things like the outcasts versus the popular girls. What happens when something happens that turns your world upside down, like a car accident or a fire? Who do you become when you’re really put to the test? Why do great people often feel like they’re unworthy or unloved? Like they don’t fit in?

Like most writers, I draw from my own experiences with certain things, and the whole popular girl theme is definitely something that comes from my own life.

In today’s video, I’m sharing a pivotal moment from my childhood. Something that shaped who I am and my view of myself. Watch the video below or keep reading to hear the story that partially inspired me to write Harper’s story in Beautiful Demons.

Watch The Video

Not Pretty Enough

 

When I was in fifth grade, I was standing on the playground at recess when a group of the most popular girls in my class headed toward me. Just to give you a little background, I lived in the same town and went to school with pretty much the same exact people from Kindergarten through Graduation. There were less than a hundred people in my overall class, and at that time, there were maybe twenty-five people in my homeroom class that I saw and interacted with on a daily basis.

This group of girls—the “popular” girls—contained about eight of the most well-liked, everyone-wants-to-be-like-them girls in my class. And up until that moment, I believed they were my friends.

These girls marched over to me, their eyes all locked on my face as they crossed the playground. I remember how my stomach churned and knotted up when I saw them. I was terrified, because they looked so determined. No one was smiling.

When they finally reached me, the most popular girl in school put one hand on her hip and said, “We’ve decided you’re not pretty enough to be our friend anymore.”

Some of the girls in the back giggled, but my heart was completely broken. I was totally crushed.

I’d been told before that I wasn’t pretty. On the bus. By people very close to me who told me I couldn’t do local beauty pageants because I wasn’t pretty like the kinds of girls who won those things. Now, my only friends in school were standing in front of me as if they couldn’t care less about me, telling me that I was not pretty enough to be their friend.

I don’t know how much you know about small-town life or if you grew up in a town similar to mine or not, but I’ll tell you, that moment affected the rest of my fifth-grade experience. And if I’m being honest, the rest of my life in some ways.

For several months, almost no one spoke to me. My very first “boyfriend” came up to me that afternoon in class and placed a wooden necklace I’d made for him on my desk. He didn’t say a word, but I knew what he meant by it.

Every day at recess, I would walk to the far side of the playground and sit along the fence just shy of the road. I sat by myself, picking at the grass and watching the cars go by, counting down the minutes until the teachers would call us back in and my shame of being ostracized would be over.

This lasted for the rest of the year and into the summer. I wasn’t invited to any birthday parties. I didn’t talk to anyone at school except the teachers. I had never felt so alone in my life.

I’m not telling you this so that I can gain your sympathy. We all go through difficult times in our lives when we feel like we don’t “belong” or that we aren’t “good enough” in some way.

For the longest time, I truly believed that I was not a pretty girl. Even though time passed and people spoke to me again as the years rolled on; even though I made new friends who were amazing; even though I had other boyfriends…I still carried that feeling around inside of me of not being pretty or good enough.

I spent so much of my life trying to be who I was “supposed” to be, expected to be. Trying to be the Sarra someone else wanted me to be, constantly chasing that approval that would finally make me “good enough” or “pretty enough” to be accepted or loved.

Thinking about it now, it’s so ridiculous. I was terrified to be myself, because I thought being ME wasn’t good enough, but how backwards is that? I’m never going to be better at being anyone else but me, right? So instead of trying to be someone else, I should have been determined to be the very best ME I could.

Missed Opportunities

 

God, I can’t tell you how many opportunities I missed out on because of that moment and others like it. I have lived so much of my life in this crazy pattern of reaching for my dreams and then getting terrified that I didn’t deserve them and totally sabotaging my own success or spending all my time worrying what other people would think of my choices or my art.

I’ve held myself back, scared to show the real me or even BE the real, true me, because I didn’t think she was that great of a person.

And the thing is, it really wasn’t even so much about those girls. I don’t blame them or anything. They were just kids and we all say dumb things when we’re kids. They probably don’t even remember it now.

No, the person I need to forgive is me. Because I was the one who chose to believe THEM, instead of believing in myself.

It has taken me decades now to finally get to a place where I am truly happy being myself. Where I’m finally exploring the things I want and love. The person I want to be. About a year ago, something really clicked for me. And I realized, I’m done. I’m done living my life for anyone else or on anyone else’s terms.

If I want something, I’m going after it, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks.

You know, when I wrote Beautiful Demons, I didn’t even realize just how much Harper’s story was also my story. No, no one came up to her and told her she wasn’t pretty, but she still felt ostracized.

She was different. Unwanted. When she was moved to Peachville as a last resort, she prayed this would be the new start she was looking for. She prayed to be popular and well-liked. She wanted to keep her powers—and her magic—under control so that no one would realize she was different. So that she could be accepted.

I realize now, after nine novels and years of being inside Harper’s head, that I wrote Harper’s story because there was this part of me that wanted to be brave enough to just embrace myself.

The truth is that the very things that made some people reject Harper are the things that made her the most powerful. Without her special abilities and her unwavering belief that things could be different, she wouldn’t be the heroine of this story. There wouldn’t even be a story, really. She would just be another cheerleader, you know?

There’s been a part of me all this time that needed to watch someone else make that journey from hating herself and thinking she was incredibly unworthy to finally believing in herself enough to embrace her own power. Her own magic.

And maybe through writing that, I finally found the courage to live it.

I want to be the best version of myself because that person? She’s amazing. She’s powerful. She’s creative and geeky and she has so much potential.

And you know? She’s pretty, too. It’s taken me a long time to even be able to say that about myself without crying or feeling like an imposter, but over the last year I’ve come to realize something incredibly important about life.

We Are Who We Choose To Be

You… me…. We are not what anyone else says we are. We are exactly who we want to be. Who we CHOOSE to be.

Whatever you want in this life, no matter how big, you can have it. If you want to be beautiful, If you want to live on the ocean, if you want to be a bestselling author, if you want to someday sit in a movie theater and watch a story you wrote playing across the screen… whatever if it is, you can do it. Not because someone told you you can or that you’re good enough. But because you believe in yourself.

You are special and good. You are worthy and loved. You have certain gifts that no one else in the world has.

And so do I.

Do you, baby… You can’t go wrong. I promise :).