"You'll never amount to anything."

For her entire life, that phrase, or a variation of it, haunted Sheila Sanders. She was born to a poor Southern family, a family that struggled to make ends meet, a family that wasn't particularly happy. Her parents married young, right out of college, and the romance cooled sooner rather than later, went out completely when their first and only child was born. To fill the unhappy hours, Melanie Sanders doted on her daughter. She showered young Sheila with the love, affection and attention that she lacked from her husband. She could have easily made her daughter spoiled, but their lack of access made that difficult. Rather than shower her daugheter with things, Melanie pushed her own goals and dreams onto her young daughter, entering her into pagents. Sheila was a beautiful young girl and she liked the attention her mother gave her when she performed well. But the idea that she would only ever be a pretty face, that she would never amount to anything, would take some of the shine out of her world.

When pagents failed to make Melanie feel important, and when Sheila began to lose because her heart wasn't in the endeavor anymore, if it ever had been, Melanie found a new way to use her daughter to feel fulfilled. Sheila began to model and to book small commercials of no consequence, generally playing the child that has a vapid but adorable look about them. The pate to acting was something that Melanie started her daughter on, something Melanie wanted for herself, but Shiela was the one who had to put in the time, who had to spend hours in front of a camera, in makeup and being told what to do and where to go by directors. It wasn't a childhood, but the older she got and the more she was aware of how little her parents liked one another, the more she became to want and need the work that she continued to steadily book.

But, as with many things, as she grew older, she began to lack a certain look that had gotten her such steady work as a child. And, they told her, unless she was willing to move to New York or LA and drastically alter her appearance, the work she had thrown herself into was going to continue to dry up. And dry up it did. Rather than dwell on her misfortune, Sheila threw herself into her school work, knowing now, more than ever, that she needed to get away from her family. When the modeling work and commericals stopped coming, she watched her mother grow more and more despondant. her parents fought more and their life became more toxic. The only path Sheila saw out was conning a boy into marrying her, or moving away. She would always chose the latter. Her grades, while they hadn't been the best when she had only been half paying attention to her school work, rebounded when she applied herself, and she began to realize that she could get out of her hometown after all.

After graduating high school, Sheila made her way, alone, to Boston. She set up her dorm at Boston University, alone, and started down the tricky path of freshman year, alone. Her family called, but they rarely caem to visit. She was alright with that, with the distance. She becamse herself during those four years at Boston University and the odd thing was, she became more of a history buff because she was allowed to choose what history was important to her. During college and interned at several museums and upon graduating she landed a paid internship with Harvard's museum of natural history. The rest, as they say, was just that. She was hired after her intern year as a curator and has worked her way up in the museum ever since.

After Sheila left Nashville and started to make her way in the world without the influence of her family around her, she grew to understand just how toxic they had been. She felt bad, almost, leaving her mother alone with her father when she knew just how badly they had come to despise one another, but she realized during those first few months away at college that it was not her job to make her mother happy. She had believed it to be for so long and it had, when she was a child, given her pleasure to know that she was the one to make her mother smile, but her mother had never accepted her for who she was and always wanted her to be something more. In Boston, she felt like she was among kindred spirits and she began to accept herself as good enough, just as she was.

facts

• shares a last name with shiera

• first name starts with the sh-sound

• family has a strong belief in reincarnation

• shop named rebirth, alluding to her ability to be reborn