Yeah. And mental illness.

I’m constantly amazed by my kid, the difference it has made. Her spirit. Her thought process.

I have a teenage girl who doesn’t hate her body, doesn’t use her body to get what she wants, doesn’t have any kind of body shame, she’s not fixated on her looks at all, she doesn’t think her body belongs to anyone. She’s comfortable in her own skin. Her body is an instrument, not an object.

Do you have any idea how rare and precious that is?

People notice. She’s a sheepdog. A sentinel. She’s shiny. Luminous in her awkward gangliness. Intelligent. Quiet. Strong. Hilarious. Confident. So confident.

They always ask. Right? Because the best way to achieve something is to copy the success of others.

And then they have criticized me over the years for having taken her out of school, mostly because she won’t be “socialized”.

Yes. That’s the point. Not all socialization is good socialization.

I don’t think it’s healthy to socialize kids the way we have been about bullying, aka “zero tolerance". I don’t think its healthy to socialize our kids to expect to be gunned down at any time or that their classmates will one day try to kill them. There’s a lot of socialization that happen in school that has not been good for us. We carry the burden of it the rest of our lives. I know, you more than most, knows that truth well.