Cara Delevingne - a new found respect!

When you have balance in your life, work becomes an entirely different experience. There is a passion that moves you to a whole new level of fulfilment and gratitude, and that's when you can do your best... for yourself and for others.

Cara Delevingne

For me, there is something quite emotional about someone in the public eye opening up about their personal struggles with mental health. I don't know if this is because I see elements of their situation in my own life or because its a truly brave and selfless act, after all they're throwing themselves to the mercy of the gutter, tabloid press or because invariably their stories are often very sad. This week I read a fabulous interview with Cara Delevingne who truly bared her sole, something she's done before however, what I didn't know was, after originally describing her battles with her demons she decided to try and do something about it, let me come to that after I've shared a few highlights from the interview.

Cara talks about the depression she suffered as a teenager leaving her feeling alienated and suicidal.

Cara spoke to Net-A-Porter magazine about how she was often mistaken for a boy when she was younger. “If I wore the clothes I liked, with my short hair, everyone would think that I was a boy. I hated it. Even though I looked like a boy and acted like a boy, I wasn’t a boy,”.

“And when people said [to my parents], ‘Oh, your son is so handsome,’ I would think, how dare you say that! Like, why was I seen as a boy?”

She added: “I always felt pretty weird and different as a kid, and that feeling was something I didn’t understand, or know how to express ... It wasn’t like I was an alien, but I definitely knew there was something weird going on.”

Delevingne has been open in the past about her struggles with mental illness – she had a breakdown aged 15 and was taken out of school – but spoke in greater depth about how the privileged environment she grew up in had not always been so understanding of her depression. “So many of my friends would say, ‘How can you feel like that?’ and, ‘But you’re so lucky,’ and I’d be like, I know, trust me, I know. I know I’m the luckiest girl in the world, I understand all of these things, and I wish I could appreciate it. There is just something dark within me I cannot seem to shake.”

She described how she had been a “late developer”, which had left her vulnerable to the cruelties of other teenagers, who had called her frigid and flat-chested.

“I felt alienated and alone, because I was like: what’s wrong with me? I always wanted people to love me, so I never got angry with them; I turned my anger on to myself. Instead of using [my] sword and shield [to protect myself], I just put my shield up and stabbed myself.

“I hated myself for being depressed, I hated feeling depressed, I hated feeling,” she recalls. “I was very good at disassociating from emotion completely. And all the time I was second-guessing myself, saying something and then hating myself for saying it. I didn’t understand what was happening apart from the fact that I didn’t want to be alive anymore.”

Having been open about her reservations about modelling as a career, Delevingne said that her move into acting had given her more of a sense of purpose, and made her happier within herself than she had ever been.

“Being a teenager can feel like you’re on a rollercoaster to hell, that’s what it honestly felt like to me – but you can get through it,” she added. “Time moves on, feelings pass, it does get better.”

But here's the thing, the thing she did to try and help adolescents get off the rollercoaster to he'll - with no formal writing or journalistic training she wrote a book, a book that has subsequently been applauded by mental health experts as a potential lifeline to many with the same demons.

The plot line is beautifully and succinctly described on the back cover of the novel;

Red, Leo, Rose, and Naomi are misfits. Red has an alcoholic mother and a father who's never around. Leo's brother has been in prison for years and is about to come back home. Rose turns to boys and alcohol to numb the pain from her past. Naomi's punk-rock-princess persona gives her freedom she can't find anywhere else. Everyone has a reason not to go home, but the four high schoolers have formed a family of their own through their band, Mirror, Mirror--the only place they can truly be themselves.

When Naomi mysteriously vanishes and then is found unconscious, her friends are shaken, confused, and scared. Could it have been an accident--or did someone deliberately try to hurt Naomi? Did a stranger do this, or, worse, someone she was close to? How well do they really know their bandmate--and one another? If Naomi wakes up from her coma, what will she have to say?

To understand what happened to Naomi, Red, Leo, and Rose must ultimately overcome their own dark secrets and fears. When they look in the mirror, whom do they see?

Whilst aimed at the young adult population, I thought I'd give it a go and downloaded it onto my kindle, what a beautifully written, intelligent, bitter sweet, emotionally charged, cliff hanger of a book, I LOVED it and…… it spoke to me! All I would say is; if you have demons or you have a mid/late teen struggling take a look at some of the amazing reviews on Amazon, many talking about how it spoke to their kids and how it's opened up the mother/father daughter, even son, dialogue - job done!

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