Letting Go.

First thing's first... how have you been? It's been a busy old couple of months for me! In summary, it has been spent working (childminding) and rehearsing - and then performing - a show. In amongst that, I popped back to Brighton for a couple of days, went to a George Ezra gig in the rain, became a godmother, went to lots of yoga classes, celebrated family birthdays, and spent time enjoying the sun with my pals.

Overall however, the biggest thing for me has definitely been the show. It was all that seemed to consume my waking thoughts (and my nightmares) for a good few weeks!
Through everything though, this seems to have been a running theme...

"God has already worked out what you're worried about"

As you will know if you've been reading Katie's Corner for a while, I am very good at worrying. I'd go as far to say I'm an expert in the field. In fact, if worry was an Olympic sport I reckon I'd be top of the podium every time. I am trying my best all the time to be less good at it and some recent events have shown me I may be going in the right direction...

A major part of this has been learning to recognise when situations are outside of my control. I have this attitude that if I want something to happen I need to do everything in my power to make it happen. This is an attribute which can be great sometimes - there are lots of achievements in my life which I can put down to this determination and hard work. However, sometimes it can be the worst way to go about things. When something in life is outside of my control yet I'm still desperately trying to make it happen - stress levels can start to shoot up. Something I've been working on recently is to spot when this is the case and to instead 'hand the situation over' to God and to trust that things will come together.

A key example of this was during the process of preparing for the show I was in: Kiss Me Kate. To be honest, even the fact that I was in this show was a miracle in itself. They say that 'when we make plans, God laughs' and that's certainly how it felt when I first got back from Uni. My main plan for the first part of the summer fell through but before I could start getting too stressed about it - I was offered the opportunity to play the leading lady in one of the best musicals ever written. Umm YES PLEASE. He knew there was a better offer ready for me. 

Despite this role being a huge blessing for me, it certainly came with its fair share of hurdles to get over! The main one being that fact that we had two actors drop out of the part of the leading man... The first one dropped out after just one rehearsal and the next fella to be cast pulled out before even turning up to one! I tried not to take it personally - but maybe they did catch sight of who they had to snog and were having none of it haha! Although I can hardly blame them... this hat was quite something!

As you can imagine, this was a stressful time for everyone involved. Would we find someone to play Fred in time for the show? Could the show even go ahead?

In true Katie style, I tried to do everything I could in order to calm myself down about the situation - mainly messaging all my male musical theatre friends to ask them the huge favour of stepping in. It got to the point, however, when I had to face up to the fact that this wasn't working. There was no more I could do. Whenever I begun to feel worry creep in I prayed. I prayed that God would have it under control and that the right person would be found. I trusted that God would not just hand me this opportunity and then leave me hanging. And, against the odds, it all came together in the nick on time.

In the end, our female director stepped in and learnt this incredibly challenging part in about 10 days. When I was first told that this was the plan, I didn't feel hugely optimistic about it. Not because I didn't believe she could do it but because Kiss Me Kate (based on Shakespeare's 'The Taming of the Shrew') has got to be one of the most sexist stories ever written. I worried that having a woman play the misogynistic male lead would take away from some of the more shocking and satirical elements of the play. 

I needn't have worried. 

If anything, Maddie's portrayal of Fred only highlighted these themes, the ridiculousness of a patriarchal society, and the comedic moments of Fred and Lilli (Kate)'s story. In the words of the first song in the show "One week, will it ever be right? Then out of the hat it's that big first night!"

To top everything off, the show received a fab review and Evie (who played Lois/Bianca) 'vlogged' the week - watch it here!

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This is just one example of the many times in life where I find myself trying to work out the balance between doing everything I can to make something work out or taking a step back and simply doing nothing.  This can be anything from waiting for a text back (story of my life lol) to applying for Uni accommodation... you have to do your bit but at the end of the day you cannot control what happens on the other end. For me, what I do in these 'do nothing' moments is pray but I know that a lot of you reading this won't share my faith. That is absolutely fine - this still applies to you! Learning to accept these moments will massively reduce anxiety in your life. 

I am by no means suggesting that I have this down; it's something I'm constantly aware of and need to continue working on. Let's support each other when we're stressing out by asking 'Is there anything more you can do to help this situation?' if the answer is no then it's time to calm down and stick on an episode of Queer Eye or something!

Thank you so much for reading. Please let me know your thoughts and if you have any #toptips to share.

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Love,

Katie xxx