From being a little girl in the projects, going through all of the mess that I was going through, to ending up at the Inauguration for the first African-American president, I'm speechless right now because I never thought I'd - I never ever - I couldn't even see that far. Even when I ended up in the music business, I couldn't see that.
I've had a lifelong love affair with makeup. When I was a little girl, I used to take my mother's makeup and paint all of my dolls' faces, and I even painted the dog's face!
Somehow I kept my head above water. I relied on the discipline, character, and strength that I had started to develop as that little girl in her first swimming pool.
The best money advice ever given me was from my father. When I was a little girl, he told me, 'Don't spend anything unless you have to.'
I remember acting in a school play about the melting pot when I was very little. There was a great big pot onstage. On the other side of the pot was a little girl who had dark hair, and she and I were representing the Italians. And I thought: Is that what an Italian looked like?
Extraordinarily, I was up in the cemetery in Derry City, and I had a red cape on with a fur hood as a little girl, when a gun battle broke out between the IRA and the British Army, and I got caught in the crossfire.
I never got to make that transition from little girl to young woman... and that really screws you up.
You know, I was chubby when I was a little girl. And I have all those issues everyone else has. But I try not to. And I've learned over the years that it's such a waste of time. And people like me whether I'm a little bit fatter or not.
The thing I was attracted to as a little girl was Kirk, Bones and Spock, and their utter loyalty. There's nothing more powerful than that.
What is free time? I'm a single mother. My free moments are filled with loving my little girl.