Sable Monroe

There was a point in my life where everything felt split in two.

During the day, I was surviving.
School, work, long commutes, exhaustion.
I was in high school trying to hold down a job that would even take me, because my situation wasn’t exactly stable on paper.

And then outside of all that… I was dreaming.

I had a friend who used to sleep over sometimes, and somehow, we managed to carve out a little piece of normal teenage life. We would laugh, talk, and imagine a completely different future.

Backpacking across Europe.
Seeing the world.
Living freely.

Just… dreaming.

My mother used to say I was living in a dream world.

To her, what I wanted wasn’t realistic. She would shut it down quickly, like it didn’t even deserve space to exist. At the same time, she kept pushing college on me, but there was no real path for that either. No papers. No guidance. No plan.

So I always wondered… what exactly was I supposed to do with that?

To be fair, this wasn’t the first time I tried.

When I was about 15, I found a modeling school. I didn’t know anything about the industry back then. No Google, no real guidance, no way to tell the difference between a legitimate agency and something just taking people’s money.

I just knew I wanted in.

My mother couldn’t come with me to check it out, so she sent my stepfather instead. He went, looked around, and told her it seemed fine. That was enough for her.

So she paid for it.

Later on, when it became clear that the school wasn’t going to help me get actual work, she blamed me for it.

Like I was supposed to know.
Like I was supposed to understand an industry no one had taken the time to explain to me.

Looking back now, I can see how that experience probably shaped how she viewed the whole modeling world.

But what she didn’t understand is that modeling isn’t just about being pretty. It’s about fit.

Different agencies represent different looks. That’s not rejection. That’s alignment.

But at 15, I didn’t know any of that.

I didn’t have the language.
I didn’t have the guidance.
I didn’t have anyone willing to sit down and figure it out with me.

I wasn’t failing. I was unguided.

What stood out to me even back then was the difference in how dreams were treated in our house.

My younger brother wanted to play football.

His dream was unlikely… but it was nurtured.
Mine? Mine didn’t even get a chance.

Because at the same time, I had an actual opportunity.

An agency wanted to sign me.
Gain some weight. Clear up my skin. Come back.

I went home and told my mother.

And she said she didn’t want to invest the money to help me fix my skin, because they would probably say no anyway.

I didn’t get rejected by the modeling industry at 16 or 17.

I just didn’t have the knowledge or support to navigate it yet.

The only place I was shut down… was at home.

Looking back now, I know I had potential.

And the irony?
When I got older, I approached it differently.

In my 30s, I stepped into different areas of modeling on my own terms and proved to myself that I could make it work.

It was never unrealistic. It was just unsupported.

Sometimes people think dreams are crushed by the world.
But sometimes… they’re crushed at home first.

It wasn’t that dreams weren’t allowed in our house. It’s just that mine weren’t taken seriously.

And maybe that’s the part that stayed with me the longest.

Not the missed opportunity.
But the realization that when I needed belief the most… I didn’t have it.

 

If you’ve ever had a dream dismissed before it even had a chance, you’re not alone.