I struggle with self confidence.
My therapist says it’s because I was a child star*
*Child star can be a broad term, so I’ll help you out here. Think a mix of Amanda Bynes and Jojo Siwa, but without the future substance abuse/legal issues and lesbianism, respectively. Oh, and also a lot less famous.
(Just a girl with a perm, singing about a broken heart)
You would think someone whose face was plastered on a Space Center Houston NASA billboard on Highway 6 when she was 8 years old would have soaring confidence. Offensively, grossly obnoxious confidence. But let me tell you, that extreme level of fame isn’t all its cracked up to be down the road, guys.
(Trudy has photos of this from every angle, if anyone needs to see it from a different perspective.)
To help you understand, maybe I should delve into the singing days of my child star era; when I used to sing onstage at the Texas Opry Jamboree in Magnolia, Texas, every Friday and Saturday night from age 6 until 16. There was no vest too sequin-y, no perm too curly, no cowboy hat too tall for this Texas crooner. I even recorded a cassette tape entitled, “Hayley Frank: Just Kickin’ Back.” It featured 10 tracks, such as Patty Loveless’ “Blame it on Your Heart,” Hank’s “Hey Good Lookin’” and a song called “Old Cold Tater,” which, looking back, maybe should’ve stayed on the cutting room floor. The cassette jacket featured a photo of me just kickin’ back, looking relaxed, famous and talented. (With a perm, of course.)
I was also a competitive clogger for years (and I had ZERO appreciation for that insane level of calorie burn at the time. Youth is wasted on the young, damnit.) In between my singing performances, I would don a huge petticoat, cumber bun, bowtie and vest (vests were a big part of my life back then) and clog my heart out to bangers like Cotton Eyed Joe or Turkey in the Straw. I even traveled across the country to clogging conventions and convened with thousands of other avid cloggers, bonding over the fact that we had a job to do, and that was to entertain the masses with our heel clicks, pivots and double-step-rock-steps.
Then there were the commercials. There were many, but the stand-out performance was my role in the “Smoking Kills” campaign, where I summoned every sad, stoic bone in my body and gave an Emmy-award-winning gaze as several black hearses rolled down the street (…presumably holding the bodies of ex-smokers. BUT it was INFERRED. It made you THINK, guys. That’s the sign of all great art. A commercial before its time, really.)
Next up (we are honestly just getting started here), there were the pageants. The bathing suit portion was stressful and the live interview questions gave me ulcers and we might’ve gone into debt funding the bedazzled ball gowns necessary for the competition, but I did it all for the world peace, damnit! My parents still have one of my crowns in their attic and my kids want to play dress up with it, but I’m not ready to relinquish my crown just yet (#PageantProblemz.)
We can’t forget the very impactful, in-person meet and greets/autograph signings. I signed on with a local TV station, UPN 20, to be a “UPN Kid,” which just meant I traveled around to places like Six Flags AstroWorld, Houston Rockets Basketball events, county fairs and local malls to “meet and greet” all our adoring fans and sign headshots of myself for 4-year-olds who had literally no idea who I was.
I did print work for the JC Penny catalogue. I modeled clothes through a modeling agency who made it their mission to visit every makeshift mall runway in the greater Houston area. I danced and sang in Walmart parking lots, shoving my talents down the throats of people who were just trying to get their laundry detergent and Doritos to their car. And somewhere in between all of that, I played piano and guitar.
When I moved to Nashville, the dream didn’t die. I sang on stage at Tootsies, started writing country songs and got a job at Posh in Hillsboro Village to make some money while I worked on becoming discovered. And I still don’t think this even scratches the surface of the entirety of my childhood.
And now, I am a 35 year old stay-at-home mom, with no billboards and no applause and no headshots and, worst of all, NO VESTS.
I’m just a washed-up child star with no vests, you guys.
So, circling back to my therapist’s theory: maybe, just maybe, this is why I struggle with my confidence.
ALL OF THIS TO SAY, the other day it hit me that while I may lack confidence in so many areas, there is one area where I do feel confident: being a mom.
Let me clarify that statement. I am not confident that I am the best mom and that I am doing everything right. I actually rarely know what the hell I’m doing when it comes to important parenting things like setting limits, establishing routines, or practicing sight words. (Sight words will be the death of me.) In fact, here is a little convo snippet between me and my kids to prove my point…
Talley: Mom, why do you say “Oh God” all the time?
Me: Talley, I don’t say that.
Talley: Yes, you do, Mom.
Scout, chiming in: You do, Mom. And you also say “Oh shit” all the time, too.
Me: *stares out the window philosophically, takes a sip of wine vigorously.*
I should also let it be known that Scout repeatedly got in trouble last school year for tripping boys on the playground and stepping on their shoelaces so they would fall. (I was horrified, Barton was the most proud he’s ever been in his life.)
I don’t get on the floor and play Barbies with them when they ask, I’m entirely too liberal with screen time, they subsist almost exclusively on frozen chicken nuggets, and no one flosses enough (or ever?) in this house. So I’m not at all trying to toot any horns about my parenting expertise.
Yet, still, the only thing I’m solidly confident in, is being a mom.
And by that I mean keeping them safe, keeping them laughing, keeping them LOVED.
I never dreamed I would be a mom of three small children. A decade ago, I thought people with three children were certifiably insane. (I think I may have been right?) I didn’t think I was capable of running a big household, of keeping everyone afloat, of being the glue for a trio of little souls.
But here I am, (painfully) carrying three kids in my body, (painfully) shoving them out of my body, (painfully) feeding them from my body, (anyone else sensing a theme here?), and now joyfully raising them. And the other day, feeling super self-conscious after walking away from a conversation with other moms (Why did I say that? Why am I the most boring person alive? Does anyone even want to talk to me? Well probably not, because of my raging adult acne…) I had a vivid, unmistakable thought flash across my brain. “The only thing I feel consistently confident in is being a mom.”
Steadfastly, unflinchingly confident.
No offense to the dads out there who do a lot of the “mom work” I’m about to describe; I know full well there are men who are more than capable of it and probably do a much better job than I do. But when I step back and look at the load I have to carry every day, the “mom gut” decisions I have to make for these little people, the prescriptions I have to fill, the extra-curricular activities I have to get them to (and cheer them on in!), the boo-boos I have to magically make better, the life skills I have to help them learn, the millions of questions I have to answer for them constantly, the little bodies I have to carry up and down the stairs when they’re tired, the play-dates and carpool obligations I’m entrusted with, the smiles and giggles I’m responsible for putting on their little faces when they’re sad, and the list goes on… When I step back and look at all of these things, I truly never feel more confident.
I fail every single day when it comes to parenting, but for some beautiful reason it’s still the most confident role I’ve ever held. Maybe it’s because I know that no matter how many times I lose my temper at them or let them skip brushing their teeth or say “Oh shit,” that they still feel loved and safe with me. I am the person that they trust, they run to, they can let their guard down with, that they laugh the hardest with. I am the person they associate with “home.” And there’s no clogging trophy that can inspire that much confidence in me.
(Well, I guess that depends on how big the trophy is… so don’t hold me to that statement.)