childhood

These are the posts that go back to the beginning, to the years that formed me before I had any say in the matter. Childhood is where most of our deepest assumptions get installed, the good ones and the bad ones alike, and a lot of my adult life has been spent sorting out which was which.

I did not have a simple childhood. There were fears I was taught, prejudices I was handed, and difficulties at home and at school that pushed me deep inside myself for a long time. There were also moments of discovery and a few people who showed me, by simply being themselves, that much of what I had been told about the world was wrong.

The posts here look back at that time honestly, without nostalgia and without melodrama. I write about it because childhood is where so much of who we become gets decided, and understanding it is part of understanding everything that came after.