As the daughter of a Puerto Rican pimp and his black prostitute living on the edge of Spanish Harlem in the 1960s, she never got her dream TV family. But that didn’t stop actress and comedian Lydia Nicole, from writing her own script for life, which now includes taking her message of hope across the nation in the form of a one-woman show.

Nicole, who has appeared in movies like “Indecent Proposal” and TV’s “The Roseanne Show” and “B.E.T. Comic View,” performed last night in the Union Theatre as part of the Latino Student Union’s Latino Awareness Week.

Measuring her life through TV shows like “All in the Family” and “The Donna Reed Show,” Nicole looked to Hollywood for stability as she prayed relentlessly for something “normal” in her life.

“I didn’t know what a family was other than what I saw on television,” she said. “Everything that was wrong, I had.”

Her mother, Nicole said, was brutally honest–to the point of repeatedly telling Nicole she was an “accident,” and should have been aborted.

Such honesty is a trait that Nicole willingly displayed for her audience last night.

“I’m biracial, or for those of you who fill out applications, you know me–I’m ‘other,'” she said. “I like to think of myself as a little café latte. Out here that makes me Mexican. In Miami it makes me Cuban and in Mississippi, it makes me dead.”

Clad in pink and tying purple ribbons in her hair during the performance, Nicole re-enacted scenes from her childhood, where her favorite place to get away from it all was the fire escape outside her apartment. Here she witnessed a fatal beating, countless drug deals, her mother’s friends “at work” and most importantly, learned to keep her mouth shut.

But though she longed for a “Brady Bunch” family life, Nicole never resented her parents for how they lived.

“I never judged my parents’ career choice,” she said. “I just saw it as what they did, not who they were.”

For Nicole, it was being introduced to Christianity through Catholic schooling and spending a summer with an Amish family that kept her going.

“I always heard God,” she said. “That was my anchor amidst all the language and the drama. We all get low. We all get depressed. What brings you back is you’ve got God tapping on you.”

And for her audiences, Nicole hopes that her success story will help others overcome the roadblocks in the way of their dreams.

“It doesn’t matter what your obstacles are, if you have the desire and the passion, you can do anything you want,” she said. “It’s not about your pedigree, your background or your culture. I didn’t know anyone famous besides drug dealers. But I positioned myself where I was and I had goals.”