In the film “Towelhead,” Summer Bishil plays 13-year-old Jasira, a Lebanese-American girl navigating through her adolescence, including challenges with identity, sexual awakening and self-esteem.

In our interview, Summer, who made the film at age 18, and is now 20, talks about a number of her perspectives on her work.

“Acting is a way for me to just kind of work through whatever I’m going through,” she commented. “You do it in front of a camera, and it’s an art, so it’s constructive. But it’s also therapeutic.”

Listen to podcast interview at Inner Talent Interviews.

“It is important to remember that just because something bad happens to you, it doesn’t mean you are bad. You are still entitled to every possible happiness in life.”

Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted and imprisoned in 2002, is now a 20-year-old music major at Brigham Young University.

A drifter named Brian David Mitchell kidnapped Elizabeth, then 14, at knifepoint from her bedroom. He and his wife Wanda Barzee held her captive for nine months.

Mitchell was a polygamist who believed it was his religious right to have more than one wife, even by force. In 2004, Mitchell and Barzee were found mentally incompetent to stand trial on charges including kidnapping and sexual assault.

In a new People magazine interview, Elizabeth Smart talks about what has helped her heal and grow from the experience:

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From news article, Los Angeles Times :

Photo: Evelyn Espinoza, 17, reacts as she is named winner of Merrill Lynch/NFTE Greater Los Angeles Regional Youth Business Plan Competition, by Garrett Gin, right, Director Communications and Public Affairs, Merrill Lynch & Co.

When she was 8 years old, Evelyn Espinoza sold bubble gum and other candy door-to-door in her Los Angeles neighborhood to earn money.

By sixth grade, her mom was buying the enterprising 12-year-old toys at a wholesale mart to resell at school.

Now 17, Espinoza is still hard at work. Her latest business venture, Hippie’s Candles, was named the winner last week of the Los Angeles regional business-plan competition, and a $1,750 prize, at the event sponsored by the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship and the Merrill Lynch Foundation.

“Entrepreneurship is excellent,” said Espinoza, who is in the NFTE entrepreneur-training class at Soledad Enrichment Action Girls Academy, a charter school in downtown Los Angeles.

“Money rules the society,” she said. “Everyone wants money, and it’s only right to learn how to make it in a legit way and to be your own boss.”

From news article Nationwide contest rewards young entrepreneurs, By Cyndia Zwahlen, Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2008.

Related section: The Inner Entrepreneur

From Now magazine [UK] :

Christina Ricci says she sought medical help in the past to help deal with an eating disorder.

‘I’ve had my own share of problems, including anorexia and depression,’ she confesses.

But the actress, 28, says she overcame her problems with the help of a psychiatrist.

‘These are things you can’t always deal with alone, so I went to therapy,’ she tells The Independent.

‘Sometimes people need to seek professional help. Along the way I discovered that you can choose to be happy.

‘If you choose to let go of your self-consciousness and insecurities about physical appearance, then you’ll get to a place where you are present to see the world and enjoy yourself.’ [nowmagazine.co.uk 14 May 2008]

Related Talent Development Resources pages:

Body image….Pg 2..Pg 3..Pg 4
Body image : books / sites
Depression…Pg 2..Pg 3..Pg 4…..
Depression : teen/young adult….
Depression : teen/young adult 2: articles books.
Depression articles……..
Depression relief products / programs……
Depression books

“I have never been a fan of learning in a classroom. Inside a laboratory or a garage, I always wanted to know more, but never inside a classroom.”

That quote is from Caltech physicist Caolionn O’Connell, PhD, from the site for the PBS program Einstein’s Big Idea.

Speaking of Einstein: he was expelled from school (in 1894) for “undermining the authority of his teachers and being a disruptive influence.” A teacher described him as “mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams.”

From my article Getting out of school alive.

Our self concept, recognition of our talents, appreciation for divergent thinking, respect for high sensitivity or other aspects of being exceptional — all of these can be guided and nurtured, or corroded and corrupted, by our school experiences.

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