At just 15 years old, Sadie Robertson was shoved into the public eye.
As the daughter of Willie Robertson, CEO of Duck Commander and star of Duck Dynasty, Sadie lived her teen years with everyone watching.
Through basketball practices, breakups, and high school dances, Duck Dynasty fans lived vicariously through her. She seemed to flow with the punches of reality TV. She said her teen years weren’t necessarily more difficult than a teen not on TV.
“Everyone goes through difficult things,” she told the Tampa Bay Times. “I don’t think I went through more or less. It’s just different because everything is magnified. Like everyone has breakups, but mine trend on Twitter.”
However, she seems to have adapted to the spotlight. She’s currently competing on Dancing With The Stars. She also wrote her first book, Live Original: How the Duck Commander Teen Keeps it Real and Stays True to Her Values.
Sadie Robertson says it wasn’t too difficult growing up as a star (source: The Billy Graham Library)
But she says she’s different than your typical Christian teen.
photo by @legitsadierob via instagram.com
People expect her to be great with technology, but that’s no really the case.
“People see me on Facebook and Twitter, but social media is so hard for me,” she said. “It’s not really a priority in my life, but people see me as that. Really, though, I try to be the same all the time as I am on television. If you met me and I was different, that would be weird.”
And now, at just 19, she travels around the world on her Live Original tour encouraging young people. On her current tour, she seeks to provide “an interactive night that touches on issues that impact teens and young adults – including social media, body image, depression & anxiety, and more.”
And her advice for teen girls is to just be authentic, “to be your original self.”
Sadie Robertson performing on “Dancing With The Stars” (source: ABC News)
“I really try to pour that into girls,” she said. “Nowadays, there is so much we can compare ourselves to. It’s important not to do that, to be confident in who you are.”
And she may be in the business of encouraging others for quite a while. She plans to go into some form of ministry at some point. But, right now, she has no plans of going to college.
“I just graduated high school in May, and I’ve been touring,” she said. “So I haven’t started any type of college yet. I’m thinking about some type of seminary school. Ministry is what I really want to do. It is my joy in life.”
She added that she doesn’t envision herself settling down young with a husband and children, as her grandpa says is common in their family. She’s taking her good ol’ time.
