“You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason you are behaving like the best friend.”

-The Holiday

Hi.

I’m Chelsea, a little fish in a big pond following an even bigger dream.

I’ve decided it’s time to blog some of this journey so far and where I think it could go, and that might be interesting, because things in my life never quite go as I plan, whats the line; Man makes plans and God laughs? Yeah, that’s pretty accurate.

Last week I stood in an audition room. A panel of seven barely looking at me, their eyes focused on what I imagine were most-likely lists of other blue-eyed, brunette, singers with lines through their names. The pianist starts to play and I get through what I think is an amazing 16 bars of music before a director pops his hand up to interrupt and says, “That’s enough, thank you.” I stand there for a moment, surprised. I really thought this was my gig. I’m here, auditioning to understudy an amazing Broadway performer with over 30 other women that look and sound exactly like me and waiting for a director to think I’m good enough. My agent thought I was good enough for this gig, and the one before that, and the one before that.

This is so typically me. Too long I have been a bystander rather than the leading lady in my own life, and I think my story so far is pretty exciting. It’s now my turn to take charge of that as the Prima Donna I truly am and share it with the world.

I was born in ’94 to the hottest woman to be born in ’75 (yeah, she was a teen mum, I did the maths for you). Her and I were two peas in a pod, tighter than a fat kid in Speedo’s, inseparable. We had our little place in good old Upper Hutt, I always tell people I grew up in Wellington to make myself sound posh, but it was Upper Hutt.

My mum has always demonstrated to me that there is so much beauty in being a strong woman. She is everything I aspire to be; brave, fearless, honest, poised and so loving. My mum is a warrior and that is what helped me survived so many things to come in the future of this story that I may have never gotten through. I’ve never had to stand and wait for her to put up her hand to tell me whether or not I was good enough.

Together we would overcome some pretty traumatic and also amazing events; suicide, mental illness, sexual abuse, chronic illness, teen pregnancy, our hopes and dreams being shattered and ultimately those hopes and dreams being restored. So here I am, telling you my version of it all and hoping you can love the miracles of my journey too!

So, while I sit here on my shredded, faux leather couch with barely enough room for one booty, in a noisy little apartment in Sydney listening to planes flying overhead, taking people to marvelous new places, I am excited to think of the places I too can go as I reflect over the past 23 years and think about the next ones.

So buckle in because you are reading the beginnings of a roller coaster blog filled with so much drama, even Michael Bay couldn’t blow up enough buildings to top it.

Chelsea xx

“Always be the leading lady in your own life.”

-Audrey Hepburn