Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything

by Alyson Stoner

At seven years old, it didn’t register that I was being groomed to be sold. I was no longer a child; I was a commodity.

To be encouraged to show up authentically, only to be deemed unfit to be seen, confirmed my true self was not enough. Not in this town.

Unintentionally, Mike’s Super Short Show squeezed out the final drops of childhood wonder I had left. Acting wasn’t an art, it was a business. Time wasn’t free, it was money. And the fire hose of positive reinforcement came from adults praising me for behaving like one of them.

My self-esteem was built around my ability to operate like a grown-up, or, more accurately, a fail-proof robot.

Unbeknownst to us, my own employers at Disney and Nickelodeon hired registered sex offenders who were my and my peers’ colleagues.

But even the most attentive parent couldn’t catch everything, especially when nobody told us what to look for.

What I miscalculated about leaping past mistakes to enlightenment was that disowning messy parts of myself didn’t mean they didn’t exist, nor had I “fixed” them. Avoiding uncomfortable thoughts and volatile feelings did not make them, or the deeper wounds accompanying them, disappear. They were just banished out of my direct awareness, lying dormant in the shadows. And I had a life’s worth of them festering.

still find it easier to take full responsibility for things instead of allowing others to be held accountable, because if I can blame myself, then I feel a false sense of control that I can solve the problem. As a kid, I did whatever felt safest, even if it meant taking on the weight of the world.”