Today we’d like to introduce you to Amanda Broomell
Hi Amanda, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Do you believe in karma? Because it feels like I’m on a wild karmic journey. A healer friend once performed an Emotion Code session on me, which was meant to clear negative emotions that might be affecting my health and happiness. As she was working, she intuited that I was healing 156 lifetimes of failure and rejection. I mean, at least it wasn’t 157 lifetimes?! Cause that certainly would’ve pushed me over the edge. But jokes aside, that assessment felt beyond true; it felt like a calling.
As an actor basically since birth, I’ve become a woman of many names to suit my varied personas: Demanda, Plamanda, Princess Pine Barrens (for growing up in the woodland royalty of South Jersey). One of my very first pseudonyms was Sarah Bernhardt – the Meryl Streep of the 1800s – bestowed upon me by my parents for my melodramatic pleas to score cherry-flavored Lifesavers at the drugstore.
I channeled this persuasive talent into my first official acting gig at age 10: the pugnacious “Lucy” in the musical, “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” From there, I joined the drama club in high school, performed in all the school productions that would have me, and declared that I wouldn’t do any “work” in college. Instead, I’d become a professional actor.
I do see the irony of getting into the business that is most associated with failure and rejection. For every 100 job interviews, you may book ZERO – who willingly chooses to do that to themselves?
Perhaps someone whose karmic journey revolves around growth and self-actualization?
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
My childhood was not peaceful. I know my parents did the absolute best they could with the tools, resources and knowledge they had at the time. While I know they loved me to the core, I would not call that period in my life idyllic. The trauma I experienced, much of it outside the family unit, I recognize as generational trauma that I vowed would end with me; so I’ve spent the last three decades on a path to understanding why I am the way I am, and how to stop running from my fears – namely my acting career, which I can clearly see is the medicine for my “madness.”
When I am on stage, it feels transcendent. I feel the closest to God, Spirit, Universe, whatever you want to call it. I feel like I’m channeling a collective message to the people that I am performing for.
I feel most alive and full of wonder in those moments.
Yet, I’m still holding myself back from fully realizing my career. Sometimes, I’m overcome by an insatiable desire to act, and I’ll double-down on auditions, classes, workshops, anything I can find that feels fun and right. Other times, I’m ready to quit for good, and I crawl into my self-made blackhole and disappear for months. My commitment waivers. If I experience that much purpose and joy in performing, why do I have trouble fully committing to being seen and heard?
Friend, let me tell you, I have done every kind of therapy imaginable to answer that question: talk therapy, crystal therapy, aromatherapy, art therapy, massage therapy, craniosacral therapy, gravity colon hydrotherapy, equine-assisted therapy, electro-light therapy, LED therapy, chromotherapy, sound therapy, thermal bath therapy …
I once visited a witch doctor located off the G train in Brooklyn, who was the spitting image of Elvira with a bonafide Ph.D. She informed me that since I was pulled out of my mother’s womb with forceps, I came into the world with a deficit of oxygen in my blood. The solution, of course, was to travel over 4,000 miles to Budapest alone and bathe in the thermal hot springs for 3 hours a day for 30 days straight to activate the parasympathetic activity underneath my skin and reset the nucleus in my cells. Then, I’d be healed.
I was like, OK. I’m going to Budapest.
And so I did.
While I was there, I had an ancestral clearing with a man who had studied with John of God, a famous yet controversial healer in Brazil.
One session in, this guy blindsides me: he can’t help me anymore because I am too blocked.
[Insert rejection trigger here]
Pardon me, sir? What in John of God’s name do you mean I’m too blocked?!
I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars learning how to unblock myself. I couldn’t be THAT blocked. Right? Right?!?!
This time I fell off the edge.
I had a complete mental breakdown.
I called the friend who referred me to that healer, and she encouraged me to turn off my phone for 48 hours, and listen to my internal guides.
Desperate but skeptical, I followed her instructions. I had no access to Apple Maps on my phone, no contact with the outside world, no news, no Yelp, no friends, no family, and I was forced to trust my intuition to guide me through this city that felt so incredibly foreign to me.
I listened to the crystal-clear voice of “Spirit,” and by some miracle, I managed to instinctively discover all the places that Plamanda had written down in her travel to-do list, without even trying. This spiritual exercise was so opening and magical, I finally understood that the key to my freedom and joy was to cultivate the relationship with myself, as I am.
There’s nothing wrong with me.
There’s nothing to be healed.
There’s nothing broken.
There’s nothing blocked.
The only block is the one I’m making up in my head.
That’s where performing and creativity truly come into play. Acting is a forum for exploring that relationship to myself; it offers a container to practice interweaving freedom, self-love and acceptance.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Nineteen-year-old Mandy, feeling fiery from her work at the Experimental Theatre Wing of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, submitted a proposal to the New York Fringe Festival for a modern-dance-driven one-woman show called “Feminem” because, at the time, she was obsessed with Eminem, and thought, oooooh, maybe there’s a way to turn this into a cleverly-crafted comment on feminism. She thought the theme was sooo avant-garde and sooo revolutionary. Now looking back on that proposal … shocker: Mandy did not get accepted into the festival.
But, a seed was planted and started to slowly, yet intentionally germinate over 20 years. I had a lot of ideas over those years, but nothing ever felt truly inspired; and of course, there was that not-so-tiny part of me that felt not good enough to share the darker parts of myself with others.
Then in 2018, grown-up Amanda participated in a personal development program that required us to commit to manifesting certain goals that we deeply desired to create, and one of my primary desires was to write that one-woman show.
At the beginning, my only intention was to write a show, no other pressure to perform it. I committed to a 9-month solo show writing masterclass led by Terrie Silverman of Creative Rites, who is a genius in helping artists find their voices. It felt so empowering to write down the stories of my past that I’d been working so diligently to forget. The safe space that Terrie held for us enabled me to bravely shine a light on and release the shame that I was pretending not to see.
I finally saw how misguided I was in only ever trying to see the bright side, never letting negativity dominate my mindset; I woke up to see this dangerous culture of positivity dominating the spiritual world. While seeing the bright side isn’t a bad thing, ONLY seeing and acknowledging that side is a detriment to personal growth because the truth is: life is both beautiful and harrowing, and real growth requires the courage to fully embrace both polarities.
Now I can see how “thinking positive” keeps us living in fantasy and doesn’t really allow us to blossom in a way that authentically serves us and other people. The truth, the whole truth, is the most confronting, and if we can embrace that and be appreciative of both the “good” and “bad” that has shaped us into who we are, then anything is possible. Freedom is truly ours.
During the masterclass writing process, I decided to tell the truth about some of those more harrowing moments in my life, and I never felt more liberated.
I wanted to share this very personal show I had written, so I found the courage to do a public reading of it on April 6, 2019, a date burned into my memory forever. I figured, all right, well, this is my first reading, and it’ll probably take me another year to develop and produce it. I’ve got time.
But at the end of the hour, the overwhelming feedback from the audience was, no, do it NOW, do NOT wait, your story needs to be heard.
However, it was too late. I had missed nearly every festival submission deadline for that year.
But I fought through the negative self-talk, the old pattern of finding any excuse not to share my story. I said to myself, you know what, I’m feeling this strong calling to move forward, why not just go for it?
And so I did.
With urgency and clarity and flow and ease, I ignored the deadlines, and submitted to the Hollywood Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, and United Solo in NYC. By some stroke of fate, I got accepted to all of them.
I performed at the Hollywood Fringe, sold out performances, won an award, and was nominated for another. I traveled to Edinburgh, having never been there before, not having a fanbase or a big PR company to support me. But I did it. I managed to pull my resources together and promote the heck out of the show.
Full audiences, rave reviews, and a London transfer – a producer picked up the show for a run at the Canal Cafe Theatre, a venue that helped to launch John Oliver’s career. The results were more than I ever could have imagined.
I “Mandifested” it.
Then I performed for a sold-out audience at Theatre Row in New York City, the birthplace of my acting career, and I was like, ohhh, THIS is my karma. “Always trust the timing, Plamanda,” was the overwhelming message from Ms. Spirit.
That tour was such an amazing whirlwind of momentum and focus … and, then, the pandemic hit, and everything got fuzzy again. I lost hold of my purpose and vision. Even though I was infinitely grateful that I had found the courage to make the show happen when I did – because it may have never happened if I had waited for it to be perfectly edited, directed and produced in 2020 – I was still feeling painfully lost.
What’s next?
I was deaf to the answer when it came to my career.
Instead, I spent 2020-2023 diving into the theme of my autobiographical solo show, “Mandy Picks a Husband”, and I set out to get me a husband.
Surprisingly, he was also out to get me. At the end of 2020, my high school boyfriend slipped into my Facebook DMs (as high school boyfriends tend to do) and professed his undying love for me. Our relationship didn’t end well back in the early 2000s, so I’m not sure why I thought it would go better now. But, it was a dose of certainty in a terrifyingly uncertain time. And people change! I changed … Plus, what a story if it worked out!
Even though I didn’t honestly believe he’d changed, there was a voice that said,
“This is closing a karmic loop. You have to do this. You have to let this energy go.”
After nine months, I could see that he was still enraptured by his alcohol addiction and pathological lying. It was now clear to me that we were not meant to be together. This time it felt final. I had set boundaries for myself this time around, no longer allowing the gaslighting and abuse that I had experienced again and again in so many prior toxic romantic partnerships. I started doing the hard work of examining how my own unhealthy behaviors, like codependence, had contributed to cycles of abuse.
I surrendered my attachment to having a romantic relationship. I was at peace with how I was reinventing the relationship with myself.
Then, about two years later, I was in New Mexico visiting a friend, and she gleefully demanded to check out my profile on some of the dating apps I was half-heartedly using at the time. With voracious curiosity, she swiped left, she swiped right, matching me with a number of different men, and then, connected me with someone who was 1,000% my type.
He was such a good match for me, and such a sweet guy, such a grown-up MAN, and beyond emotionally intelligent. I felt like, woo hoooooo, maybe things ARE possible for me! Maybe love and relationships aren’t a lost cause.
Maybe the secret to loving someone else is learning to love oneself, and did that mean I was loving myself … finally?!?!
This optimism about love made me think, okay, well, maybe my acting career isn’t a lost cause either. Maybe I can love myself in that arena as well.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I’m a 43-year-old mom to the sweetest 18-year-old cat. I rent my apartment. I lease my car. I’m unmarried. I freelance at a financial company.
I haven’t had the career “successes” that I dreamed of having at this point in my life, even though I went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and earned a BFA in Drama; I won the Outstanding Artist and Scholarship Award the year that I graduated. I attended Columbia University and earned my MFA in Acting.
I had big dreams and invested in those dreams, and they haven’t materialized the way I thought they would: a series regular on a hit sitcom, a big fancy house in the Hollywood Hills, my own multi-milly dollar production company.
But if I flip that script, I got to live in New York for 15 years, which was a dream. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for the past 10 years, which is a dream. Oh, and you know, I just released generations of guilt and shame and strengthened the bonds with everyone in my family. Maybe not a “dream” but it’s paving the way for me to realize my dreams.
And don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked on amazing projects …
Playing my all-time favorite character, “Cherie,” in “Bus Stop” at Little Fish Theatre in San Pedro was one of the highlights of my career. And I won a StageSceneLA award for “Star-Making Performance” in that role. Another dream Mandifested.
Working with the inimitable Tony Speciale on “Juliet” in “Romeo & Juliet” at Classic Stage Company in NYC … dream come true.
Performing standup comedy at Flappers Comedy Club with coaching by Lisa Sundstedt, creator of Pretty Funny Women – a performance fear I never thought I’d overcome in this lifetime.
Dancing in the core company of MONODRAMAS at the New York City Opera under the direction of Michael Counts, hailed as a “mad genius” by the New York Times … DREAM.
But those other milestone career successes I thought I might have realized by now? Those have not yet come to fruition, and I have to wonder, why?
The only explanation I have is karma.
Having that kind of success in my 20s or 30s would have brought on more trauma than I could carry. I was too insecure and impressionable, addicted to alcohol and emotional eating. There was no way I could’ve handled the pressures, the expectations.
And thank goddess … if acting had been my sole career back then, I honestly believe I would have died of alcohol poisoning or a drug overdose while trying to numb the pain of rejection and failure.
My path redirected me to spend the last two decades surrendering my self-destructive patterns, trusting my gut, my intuition, and my divine timing.
I was able to look inward, seek therapy, take care of my body, deepen my relationships, and truly, truly find emotional freedom.
Now, in my 40s, it feels possible to have many flavors of success without getting attached to one specific outcome, and to not be so obliterated by what people think of me. It feels possible to actually let my voice be heard without trying to please every casting director, producer, director, agent and media outlet in Hollywood.
It can feel so easy.
“Karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend.” ~Taylor Swift
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.amandabroomell.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandabroomell/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mandypicksahusband/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jozxN4jiSKs
Image Credits
Jody Christopherson – “Mandy Picks a Husband” production photos (2)
