More than anything, I needed to hear this today. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I really feel this. My own background is so mixed that pretty much every strand of it has been hunted out of Europe for nothing more than breathing... And yet... I look like a white woman with blonde and blue on all sides - I'm raising a child who will grow up with all that privilege you write of here. He's blonde and blue and Irish to boot. The world will lay treasure at his feet. And as his mother I _feel_ deep inside the belly of me that that is right and good. But I _know_ that that should happen for him regardless of race, creed, gender or ability. I know, from experience, that being stripped of a sense of entitlement will leave him with nothing other than a backpack full of issues to chase through with therapists and anyone else who'll sit still for more than ten minutes. Life is a tightrope. I haven't figured it out. I don't know how I stay upright most days..

The chakra descriptions look like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - I never thought of it like that before, but now that I see it, I'm realising that it's probably the other way around!

I wrote a piece just yesterday-ish, elsewhere, about being the view. This article resonated with me just now, so I thought I'd share..

I was day-dreaming as day-dreaming happens: 'So, I'll sell that script for squillionty-billion and then there'll be a floaty turreted castle with community gardens and workshop artspace free for all right up on top of a hill, la la la...' as I was walking around town with my boy. I looked off to the horizon and there was the very perfect hill to imagine my turrets and peach orchards and writer's retreats, but my imagination stumbled. I don't think of my imagination as being the stumbling kind. It's expansive and stretches itself often. But as I looked at the hill and thought of a thing, (yes, a luxurious thing), for myself, it stumbled. 'It'd have to be mostly underground,' it whispered, 'and fit in with the trees,' it mumbled. 'There are real sheep there that you're imaginary towers are intruding on.' So, instead of shying away and thinking of other things; instead of allowing myself to be thoroughly distracted by the pleasantries of reality, (which is indeed marvelously pleasant) I followed the discomfort. I picked up its thin red cord and traced it back to its source. I realised that I've felt this way before – going out to parties, going to gigs, playing gigs (!), stepping out in public, going to the school gates to pick up my son – the low-level nag of 'careful now,' and 'make sure you fit in,' was ever-present. The overwhelming 'don't be weird,' had been crushing me for years.

It's so common it's almost a cliché. Don't be weird, you have to fit in. Conforming and striving for individuality ends up being a tightrope we balance upon with the threat of … what? Public humiliation? The embarrassment of our families? Isolation? Being misunderstood? All of that. And as a teenager those things overwhelmed me, thoroughly. But, it appears that instead of getting over it, I subsumed it; made it a gauntlet I ran daily, quietly. So quietly I almost stopped hearing myself: 'go underground,' I whisper, 'fit in,' I mumble. 'You're imagination is intruding.'

It comes from the discomfiture of generations gone: a family heirloom passed down with crocheted blankets and the cracked porcelain tea service. I look down at my son, so beautiful in his expression of who he is, so guileless and clear in his right to simply be and I make the decision that this foot-binding of creativity goes no further. It ends here.

I strike my best superhero pose (Linda Carter's Wonder Woman, hands on hips and staring off into the distance, my illusory cape flapping behind me) and say, 'We don't need to blend into the view. We are the view!' To which my son responds, 'Yep. This stick would make a great dragon tail.'

I love this beautiful simple wonderful list. It's so helpful and grounding!