The Cost of Unsupported Potential
How family becomes the first environment where our gifts either flourish or fade.
The homeless epidemic in Los Angeles is hard to ignore. I’ve been volunteering at soup kitchens since I lived in New York City. I even taught cooking classes at shelters, and I try to make time to do the same here in LA. While the other volunteers network with each other, I always make it a point to talk to the clients at the shelters. There was an overarching theme I kept hearing. Now, I know this perspective is just one of many, but I noticed a correlation between who you surround yourself with and how your foundation can make or break your success.
How many times have you heard people say someone had so much potential, that they were the most naturally gifted, the most creative, but they threw it all away, and now they’re homeless or on drugs? I used to hear that a lot about my father. I was told he was the most naturally gifted out of all his siblings, and one of the most popular. Both men and women loved having him around because he was the life of the party. He was charismatic and spoke several languages fluently. But they said he was more caught up in partying, womanizing, and drinking than in prioritizing his career. All his brothers (my uncles) were more academically focused and did really well in that arena. My dad, on the other hand, wasn’t the biggest school person, which I get. But I have to wonder: did anyone in the family ever ask to work with him? No. I’m sure there was some quiet competition among the siblings. But my dad wasn’t a bad person. He just wasn’t guided. Now, as an adult, I see how I was blessed with a lot of his gifts, and how a lack of support from family and others can allow you to fall by the wayside.
My mother never paid for me to be a part of any extracurricular activity, despite it being apparent that I was naturally gifted creatively. Once I had a glimpse of independence in high school, I signed up for every extracurricular activity I could find, both in school and out of it, and I always did exceptionally well. Meanwhile, in school, I was learning to lean into my logical side through business. The older I got, the more I’ve realized that I need more creativity in my life, and that a lot of these jobs are more draining than rejuvenating. So I started to ask myself: what if I’d had the support to be more creative, and had taken a leap of faith to focus on it instead? Would I be as drained as I am now, as an adult who constantly has to operate in masculine energy just to survive?
The more I’ve experienced life, though, and the more I’ve listened to other people’s experiences, the more I’ve had to ask: what if my dad wanted to do more? Whether it was his own business, or something creative, what if the people who enjoyed his company didn’t actually want to support him? Maybe even his own siblings didn’t want to support him professionally, since he wasn’t as academically focused as they were. I don’t want to say jealousy, but I started wondering whether familiarity can become its own blind spot. Sometimes the people closest to us see us so often that they stop seeing us at all. Other times, they benefit from who we are without ever encouraging us to become more. Whether that’s insecurity, fear, competition, or simply a lack of awareness, the result can be the same: talent goes unsupported.
Eva Longoria has talked in interviews about growing up feeling like the “ugly duckling” of her family, the only sibling with black hair, dark eyes, and darker skin. Her Mexican family nicknamed her “la prieta fea,” which translates to “the ugly dark one,” because her mother and sisters constantly told her she was the odd one out. But when you look at the whole family, it’s clear she was always beautiful. Now she’s known for her beauty, her intelligence, and her creativity.
It’s the same story with Britney Spears. She’ll always be the pop princess, but it’s telling to see how her own family has tried to downplay her contribution while also riding the success she built, and, at times, making her feel small in the process. In a recent interview, her sister Jamie Lynn Spears talked about growing up singing and acting as if it were simply “a family affair.” It absolutely was not. No one would have known who Jamie Lynn was if it weren’t for Britney. And Britney never really had the emotional support she needed. If she had, I don’t think she’d be in the situation she’s in today. Her family built their own success around hers, and I imagine her childhood wounds played a major role in the decisions that led her to this predicament as she grew up.
But look at Kim Kardashian and Beyoncé Knowles, and it’s the complete opposite. They had a strong family foundation that supported them all the way to their success. You might not agree with the direction Kim K started her career, but her mother supported her, and that success eventually became success for the whole family. It’s the same with Beyoncé: her mom and dad believed in her, and throughout all the trials and tribulations, they still supported her, which helped lead to her success. Ariana Grande’s mother and father supported her too. I could give many more examples of how some of the biggest stars had a strong support system behind them. But that same lack of familial support can also be someone’s biggest downfall.
What kept surfacing for me was that creativity isn’t just a skill. It’s something that requires an environment where it can be nurtured. The more I reflected on the people I’d met, the stories I’d heard, and the patterns I kept seeing, the more I started thinking about creativity from a spiritual perspective.
Here’s the Third Eye View perspective. Whether you call it God, Source, intuition, or simply human imagination, creativity feels like something we receive before we shape it. It’s tied to your feminine energy, and I mean that in terms of energy, not gender. This applies to all of humanity, not just to one sex. We live in a society where feminine energy gets correlated with gender, when really it’s tied to the energetic balance within a person. Your logical side, on the other hand, is tied to your masculine energy. Some people are naturally more creative, and some are naturally more logical. But being around someone whose energy differs from your own, someone more logical if you lean creative, or more creative if you lean logical, brings a balance that helps make you whole.That’s why creative people need logical people to help ground them, while logical people need creative people around them to help them tap into inspiration. When you’re leaning heavily into your creative, feminine energy, it takes logical, healthy masculine energy to bring balance. Of course, some people already carry a balance of both.
When you’re a creative person with a lot of gifts, you’re leaning more into your feminine energy, so you need support. You need to be able to receive, and to be emotionally receptive. But we live in a world where society shames anything tied to receiving. That’s where a lot of toxic masculinity comes in (I’m surprised I haven’t written about this topic yet): people withhold support as a way to control you, to hold authority over you. Toxic masculinity shows up when someone isn’t secure within themselves, and instead of helping you grow, they’d rather see you fail so you stay beneath them. Imagine being creatively talented, and instead of your family supporting you, they’d rather see you fail, or they prioritize strangers with half your talent, because they know that person won’t surpass them, or because they’d rather use you and then become you.
Back at the homeless shelter, some of the clients had stories of falling on rough times without any support behind them. Some were artists, and talking to them, you could tell they’d needed more guidance along the way. But they came from broken homes, or from families who were broken themselves, or they ended up with someone who didn’t want the best for them either, echoing their own upbringing. Sometimes you attract what you know, not always what you deserve.
Looking back, I don’t think success is simply about talent. I’ve met too many brilliant people for that to be true. Talent opens the door, but your familial foundation often determines whether you ever feel safe enough to walk through it.
Maybe that’s why I’ve become so intentional about the relationships I keep, whether they’re relatives or not. I’m looking for people who are willing to help cultivate my gifts, just as I want to cultivate theirs. Sometimes your relatives are there to lay the foundation for you to find your true family: your Soul Tribe.
Because potential isn’t wasted overnight. More often, it slowly disappears in environments where it was never nurtured or acknowledged to begin with. Sometimes your true family isn’t the people who share your blood. It’s the people who help you become who you already are.