Dawn O’Porter

And I think the right way to deal with something like that is to let kids be a part of the experience.

But I never want this to sound like I'm angry at anyone in my family because I'm really not.

Everything was made with the decision of what was right.

Totally, totally.

So it's no one's fault and it's all okay, but you can't help but go over how...

what the other approach would have been.

A hundred percent.

I don't think it's any, any coincidence that I went into a career, which is entirely based on attention seeking and validation from other people.

You know, along with food as a child, being on stage had a very similar, you know, effect on me.

It's like when I'm up on stage, I'm not thinking about that thing.

I am not.

no one else is thinking about that thing and I'm able to break away from this kind of this tragedy inside of me so so that was a huge part of my life there was no way I was ever going to give that up you know the feeling of I don't know I mean I consider myself I'm not an actress anymore I write books I consider myself to be an artist without my trauma I don't know if my art exists it's been the um you know the backbone to everything I've ever done it's

in a, in a horrible dark kind of way, it's been the material that's probably made me quite successful.

You know, it's, it's all stuff that makes you the person that you are, not that you may necessarily realize that until you're an adult, but, um, I would never, obviously I wish my mother had never died, but she did.

And therefore I had to build it into my life.

And I,

I turned it into art eventually.

all part of who you are and any tragedy any experience that you're going through will eventually become a story that you tell about yourself and when you're in the eye of the storm that's almost impossible to imagine but it's just true and you know I think to experience like hardcore trauma as a six-year-old is really brutal but to experience trauma at any age is really brutal at some point you just realize that you've built it into your DNA and it's a part of who you are

Well, I think that's more to do with my auntie than my mum, actually.

My auntie that raised me, I moved in with her when I was 10.