MY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY
Award-winning publicist and entrepreneur Jessica Huie MBE talks about the events and people that have guided her to follow her purpose and embrace her calling
Tell us about young Jessica, who grew up living on the 15th floor of a council tower block in London?
Young Jess was lonely in many ways, but I found lots of joy and endless possibilities in my own imagination. I was always creating, making my own radio shows on tape cassette back then. I was always the performer, the artist and also the voiceover and presenter.
I was always pitching ideas. I had this flashback recently of when I was about eight years old, and I’d seen Annie and decided I wanted to put on my own production of the show. I knocked on the headmaster’s door and asked him if I could create a production with the five-year-olds. I managed to persuade him to give them time when they could come out of class and rehearse, and I created this whole production complete with a dog – Annie’s dog. I loved having a vision and bringing the pieces together.
My home life was challenging. I had parents who loved us very much – aJamaican dad and English mum, who really hadn’t had the privilege and luxury of healing their own trauma. They were very much in survival mode, and we were deeply affected.
It took me a long time to acknowledge and move beyond the denial of that early years’ trauma and reclaim myself who’d been lost beneath that survival trait of people-pleasing, and dissociating from what I was feeling, in order to get through it.
You had your daughter, Monet, when you were just 17. How did that transform your life?
My beautiful daughter and I are so close, we grew up together. Part of my method of navigating those early years of motherhood was to try to control everything. I guess I felt on somelevel that I needed to take charge ofmy destiny.It was all on me. I opted very deliberately to become a mother at 17, without having any of the skills it requires. I sawit as my reason for being.
It came with so much shame. When I went on later to do work with Save the Children and teen mothers, I realised their experience was mine, all these years later. It’s a disconnection from your worth, from the possibilities we all have.
Once Monet came along, I realised very quickly I didn’t have any of the life skills for motherhood. It was a massive wake-up call, but also a catalyst into… either mediocrity and survival OR I was going to have to take some action.
This wonderful health visitor suggested I go back to college [Jessica had been expelled from school aged 15 with five GCSEs but went on to complete her A Levels and go to university]. That was her seeing something I hadn’t
