The Role I Never Auditioned For- Natasha Bruce

[00:00:00] Hey guys, Corey Poirier here. Welcome to BluTalks and I hope you enjoy this video.

[00:00:29] Good afternoon Harvard, I'm happy to be here. And here I am. I've been performing my entire life. As a teenager I toured globally as a professional figure skater with Walt Disney on Ice. I played multiple characters, Minnie, Mickey, Daisy, Donald Duck, and I performed in many arenas around the world.

[00:00:59] I nailed the choreography night after night. When the lights hit the ice I knew exactly who I was supposed to be. Then I grew up and I swapped one costume for another. A badge, a uniform, and a gun. For over two decades I was a police officer on patrol. And just like on the ice I knew exactly what my role was.

[00:01:29] Show up, be strong, protect, feel nothing. But what nobody told me is that there would come a day and that role would cost me everything. And the last thing, the hardest thing that I would ever do was take

[00:01:52] that uniform off. For most of my life I performed roles that I believe other people wrote for me. This is the story of how I learned to write my own. I got into policing because I grew up in a family of law enforcement. And it seemed to be a natural fit. I loved helping people and being of service. I thought I landed my dream job. It took me five years to get into the police department.

[00:02:21] And I thought this would be a career I would have for at least 30. Good pension, retirement, an independent woman having her own big career. But not long in, I started to realize that something was off. I began to have really bad anxiety.

[00:02:45] I was very bad. My stomach began to feel very sick. And being at work started to feel very unsafe. Not the calls that I went to, the robberies, the assaults, the fun car chases, but inside at the

[00:03:06] police department. I was sexually harassed by my boss. When I told the mayor at that time, he said, there was no way he would do that. This had become my new normal. After my last maternity with my youngest

[00:03:34] child, during a training simulation, I was shoved hard into a cement wall. My head had hit concrete. 72 hours later, I was slurring my words. 72 hours later, I was slurring my words. That was my second on-duty concussion. And unfortunately, it was

[00:03:58] given to me by the institution that was supposed to be qualifying me to get back to work, back onto patrol, to a job I loved. I spent months in a head injury clinic, learning how to think, how to drive again, how to find words that I was searching for. And sometimes I still do to this day.

[00:04:26] Once I was back at work, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or post-traumatic stress injury on my lunch break when I was working at a desk job in hopes of returning back to my patrol job.

[00:04:40] When I came back to that desk job for the very last time I was working there, and I want to take you back

[00:04:57] to that Tuesday. I was sitting at my desk and in the corner of my desk, I noticed something. A black plastic rat with red eyes, a long black tail staring at me, just sitting there on the corner of my desk.

[00:05:22] I could feel the heat rise up from my chest, through my neck and into my face. My police training kicked in immediately. I whispered one word to myself, evidence. I took out my iPhone immediately. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

[00:05:47] I begged myself, do not cry. You do not show emotion in the police department. I took the photo, I straightened myself out, and I marched into that morning meeting room. I sat down at that meeting table, and it felt like every pair of eyes was staring at me. But I refused to

[00:06:10] give them any reaction. But inside my head, as the superior chief was talking, I was trying to control my face. Take deep breaths, wiggle your feet, fingers, toes. Just try to smile. Pretend you didn't see it. Tap your chest. I could feel myself starting to get dizzy.

[00:06:39] Just trying not to faint. But I made it through. The moment the meeting ended, I grabbed the sergeant on duty, and I asked him to come to my desk. He followed me, and I pointed to the rat. He said, That's a mouse. I looked at him, and I said, No, that is not a mouse. That's where I sit,

[00:07:08] and that is a rat. I know what a rat needs. He announced loudly enough for the whole patrol area to hear that I was not the only one that could sit at that desk. Then I watched him march up to the administration office to report my reaction before I could get there myself. That is what gaslighting

[00:07:31] and intimidation looks like in a police department. Two weeks later, I walked to my locker in the women's change room, and on a chair in front of the bench, in front of my locker, was a bullet. A live round facing upward. This was not an accident. This was a message. The person who put it there was the wife of the man

[00:07:55] who harassed me. She is part of the administration. That week, I was also told I could no longer wear my uniform, and then I would be put into fight training immediately. I did not have a chance to organize my

[00:08:15] child care. That was the day I finally took the uniform off for myself. I had had enough. The harassment didn't break me in one particular moment. It was, I believe, a campaign. Each incident message designed to

[00:08:42] push me out of the organization. So, out of sheer desperation and, quite frankly, any will to perform any longer, physically, mentally, I had to do what I needed to do. And it didn't feel like strength.

[00:09:04] It felt like sheer and utter surrender. But here is what I know now. Leaving a place that has decided you are worth less than you are is the first act of choosing yourself. Part of my

[00:09:32] therapy for PTSD was finding a supportive community, this was in COVID, where I could connect with other people. And my team suggested an acting class. So, that's what I did. An online acting class. And the first time I stepped into that character, I started to feel something that I hadn't felt in a very long

[00:10:01] time. I didn't feel frozen. I didn't feel like I had to run. I felt alive. Acting gave me something that that therapy alone could not. So, I took more acting classes. I did some short films. I took casting workshops.

[00:10:30] Everything kept me moving forward. Even rejection did not land the same way. In policing, it meant I wasn't strong enough, tough enough, compliant enough. And I didn't belong there. But enacting the rejection,

[00:10:55] it just meant not this time, try again. Keep trying. Each audition was a chance to show up as myself. Not a corrupt system, not systemic abuse. So, I kept going. Years of it. And then the call came. My agent called.

[00:11:22] A role in an Apple TV series. Stick. Season one, because season two is coming. With Timothy Olyphant, starring Owen Wilson. The plastic rat, the bullet. They may have meant to be my ending, but it was the beginning of something I

[00:11:43] could not have even imagined. I now get to coach actors, trained actors, talented actors, actors looking for their first booking. And here is what I get to teach them. Is that they are enough. Their identity, their uniqueness,

[00:12:05] just how they are, their life experience. That's not a technique. That's just a human one. Here's what I've learned from surviving something that was designed to make me disappear. Resilience is having the courage to feel it and finding out on the other side that it didn't destroy me.

[00:12:31] So, if you're sitting in this room carrying something heavy today, I really want you to hear this. You do not need to be fully healed to take that next step. You just need to stop performing for people

[00:12:46] who never deserve the show. Thank you. This podcast is a part of the C-Suite Radio Network.

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