Growing up in Middlesbrough I was taught to be resilient and competitive. My teachers made us believe that just because kids were at private school up the road, it didn't mean they were better than us.

I remember early in my career people telling me I needed to change my accent, that I needed to sound more professional, more BBC perhaps, but I think if I wasn't from Middlesbrough I wouldn't have done as well as I have.

I always felt I had to prove my intelligence.

There are a lot of women who do a similar job to me who are paid a hell of a lot more... who are a lot posher than me.

Every year, some 65,000 high school students - many of them star students and leaders in their communities - are unable to go to college or get a good job because they have no legal status.

Some of my friends said I wouldn't have a future in football, as did some of my family, but I still believed in the potential I had. My mum would tell me I needed to get a proper job, but for me, I didn't want to be anything other than a footballer. That led to some tension and frustration between us.

The happiest years of my mother's life were spent in Washington, D.C. It was where she met my father, where John was born and where I spent my earliest years.

My family has always supported me a thousand percent. My sister once sold her jewelry so I could pay for gas money to get up to New York for a show. And that's amazing. But you get too much of that, you start depending on it.