WISDOM
You’re a superhero
WHAT MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME
Who do you see when you look in the mirror? Your self-concept is a powerful influence, but if that impression is frozen in time, you may be re-enacting an old fable that does not serve you, writes Vee Sey
PHOTOGRAPHS: JOSIE GILBERT; GETTY IMAGES
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the… weakest of them all? If I had a bit part in a jumbled modern fairy tale, this would be the resigned question I might ask my younger self because that’s what I believed was true. I started life in an incubator, too darn piddly to breastfeed, and the runt of a litter of three. I had a robust sister on either side, so I toddled into my role as the troubled middle child too. Sensitive and prone to melancholy, I was afraid of the dark to the point of drinking the contents of my hot-water bottle while weeping at my own patheticness rather than heading for the bathroom tap, and a barking dog, even a teeny fluffy one, filled me with shrieking terror. I was the timid, trembling wimp, and my family told me so.