What was the first thing you knew about yourself from early on?
It’s not so much a question of, What did you want to be when you grew up, but what did you know you already were?
Maybe you knew you had to get out of this place, whether it was your family, culture, or home town.
Maybe you knew you were different in some very specific way or in some way you couldn’t yet articulate.
Perhaps you sensed the broad outlines of who you already were in ways that time would not alter.
At some early developmental point you realized that you a had a life and that it was all your own, and that it was already taking you in a specific direction because of things you already loved or were already reaching for.
What I knew early on occupied a negative space; not of who I would become but of who I was not and would never be: A mother. I would not have children. It wasn’t a decision made so much as a self acknowleged. Perhaps this was a reaction, pre-verbally internalized and formulated in response to the trap I saw my mother inhabiting. Perhaps I was a little proto-feminist who wanted to take a different path, but it was something I just knew, and I never wavered from that deep conviction, despite endless attempts to dissaude me.
In second grade I met my best friend for life while playing horses on the playground. We split off from the herd and made very our own herd of two, a tendency that became a lifelong habit. Lori also came from a large dysfunctional Irish family with an alcoholic father, but while I was the neglected youngest, she (curse the luck!) had the charge of three younger brothers, one still in diapers. She, too, vowed to never have children, and never did. She already knew that her adult future would be centered around animals (at that point, she saw herself owning a pet store). She went on to raise horses and train dogs and even became a choreographer who dances with dogs. It was much longer before I knew the outlines of my basic path, which was to somehow be of service.
Now I think about what kind of old person I want to become and already am.
When I retire, I will…………...
This image reminds me of young Lori and me
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