CARPE DIEM
A passionate teacher by day/actress by night seizes her dream
Ithink from the time I was old enough to form any sort of thought, I was performing. I was a very expressive and emotional kid and I remember long summer days of going door to door performing songs for people on their porches and organizing lip-sync competitions with my friends. I remember standing on my bed each night singing the national anthem to my stuffed animals because in my little heart, one day, I would be called upon to sing at a Blue Jays game. As creative and full of life as I was, I struggled a lot as a kid. I went to eight or nine different schools, and therefore was always the new kid trying to find a friend. It was hard for me to fit in and navigate the social circles around me. I always felt “other.”
I couldn’t escape the feeling that everyone else knew something I didn’t, and that led me to spend a lot of time in my imagination, creating stories, playing make-believe. I began to shelter myself and my feelings, and slowly, as bullying started, my self-expression and free spirit began to diminish.
My teachers and parents put me in sports as a young girl as a way of helping me to focus and I guess, looking back, to give me a sense of belonging. I excelled in sports and found true joy. I spent the next 20 years competing throughout high school and university; being an athlete became who I was.
I went to teachers college and discovered a deep passion for teaching kids, and I eventually nestled comfortably into the
stability of my classroom, my life and the routine of a day job.
Around the age of 30, however, I experienced a deep personal funk. All the boxes were checked off for what I felt I needed to be happy in my life: a relationship, house, cars, a job. But I was deeply unhappy, at a spiritual level. I didn’t understand. I felt like I was being ungrateful for this wonderful life I had, and the guilt kept me awake at night.
I remember sitting in my car weeping in a grocery store parking lot for hours one night, the same question repeating over and over in my brain: “Kate, when you are 80 and looking back over your life, what will you regret not doing?” Acting. It was as clear as day and yet, I had no idea where this message was coming from.
With nothing but faith and a willingness to surrender to perhaps a message from above, I put myself in an acting class just three days later, and it changed everything for me. I was home. I felt seen. I felt alive. I felt like I belonged. I felt.
Acting brought a joy back into my heart. A freedom. It was an acknowledgment and a celebration of the creative and expressive spirit I was at heart. It was a place for me to be me. Fully.
As I dove deeper into acting, I started to realize that I had been living in-authentically for many years, trying to be someone who I thought I should be, silencing parts of myself, following a rule book that someone else had written. These realizations led me to leave my relationship and the life I had clung to, and begin the journey that brought to where I am today.
For the next five years, I took acting classes at night, did community theatre and the occasional small role in a movie, while teaching my students during the day. I was a passionate teacher by day and an actress with a dream by night.
One day, I was teaching my students about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. My kids were from all walks of life and experiences, and I was trying to empower them: I wanted them to understand how powerful dreams are and how we all have the ability to follow our hearts. We were brainstorming and making posters. The class was buzzing. One of my students came up to me and asked, “Miss Drummond, what’s your dream?” I told her that besides teaching, my dream had always been to be an actress. She just looked at me and said, “Then why aren’t you doing it?”
FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES
The moment had come. I knew I had to follow through on my own words, set an example for my students, and most importantly, I had to honour this part of myself that I had silenced for years.
My school board granted me a year off without pay. I sold all my belongings, rented out my house and moved with my dog to Toronto. I was a 35-year-old woman with a dream of being an actress. An agent told me I was “too old to dream of being a movie star, sweetheart,” but the artist in me was vibrant and alive, and there was nothing that was going to silence her ever again.
That was ten years ago. ■