A highly-strung, anxious child, I progressively developed OCD tendencies, eating disorders, imposter syndrome, perfectionism and powerful feelings of inferiority. I had retreated into the safety of my bedroom in the years previous and had learned to shut out and shutdown, taking refuge in music.

I became a straight A student and on the Honour Roll, setting in motion a toxic pattern of outer achievement as the way in which I could feel significant.

Driven by this insecure environment and a driving need to understand, by the time I was 18 years old, I was obsessed with voraciously reading every book I could find on philosophy, psychology, revolutionary politics, religion, mysticism and the esoteric, underlining sentence after sentence, and looking for answers in astrology, numerology and the Tarot.

BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS opened the doors wide.

To show you what I was absorbing, here are the some of the books that became my teachers in those earlier years:

The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant; The Magus by John Fowles; The Occult by Colin Wilson; The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence; The Stranger by Albert Camus; The Outsider by Colin Wilson; Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs by Linda Goodman; works by Henry Miller; works by Anaïs Nin; Pluto: the Evolutionary Journey of the Soul by Jeffrey Green; Collected Essays by Gore Vidal; The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan; Writers and Revolution by Renee Winegarten; The Journal of Albion Moonlight by Kenneth Patchen; the poetry of William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jim Morrison, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Rainer Maria Rilke; The Anarchist Reader by George Woodcock; works by Aldous Huxley; The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes; works by George Orwell; the works of Allen Ginsburg; works by Fyodor Dostoevsky; works by Franz Kafka; works by Friedrich Nietzsche; works by Emile Zola; works by Alvin Toffler; The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir; works by Doris Lessing; works by Jean Paul Sartre; works by Ernest Hemingway; works by William S Burroughs; The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe; On the Road by Jack Kerouac; works by DH Lawrence; Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert; Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet; The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer; The Primal Scream. Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis by Arthur Janov; works by Nancy Friday; The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath; Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties by Noel Riley Fitch.

…because I certainly felt lost.

My favourite quote then (and still now) was by William Blake:

If the doors of perception were cleans’d everything would appear as it is, infinite

So I searched for clues everywhere. Even in music lyrics. I spilled my thoughts and aspirations into journals. I was angry, impatient and passionate, and became a singer in a New Wave/Punk band called 'Laughing Academy', playing bass guitar and writing the lyrics. I was enamored of all those who spoke of revolution, the mysteries and meaning of life, and freedom.

And I wanted to be a change-agent.

My constant refrain was: ‘there must be more’.

I was then able to see other things about my parents that would help me to answer the questions I had posed in that poetry class when I was 14….

I wondered how many times they cried privately to themselves, wondering how they were going to make it through their nightmare. Did my Father fall on his knees in the snow on his walks, feeling worthless, crying out to God to help him to find a way, to keep the roof over our heads and food on the table? How many times did he berate himself, blame himself, wish he was dead? How many times did my Mother pack her bags but when she saw our faces when my brother and I came back from school, smile and decide she couldn’t break up the family and she didn’t want my Father to end up in the gutter?

There were other elements beyond mere survival pulling them forward then, and many others in the decades that have transpired since: elements like forgiveness, belonging, acceptance, compassion, redemption, hope and Love.

Such elements pull us forward and connect us more deeply into wellbeing, joy, purposefulness and the mysteries of life, even in the midst of our most darkest moments. They enable us to feel the unique magnificence of our own existence, and as part of the whole that celebrates us.

In a deeper self-realization, I recognized that ALL of our crises come from lack of Love (both real and imaginined) and from erroneously believing we are separate from ourselves, one another and existence itself. It is a lonely place.

In this recognition, I came full circle on my poem as a 14yo and recognized Love as the real Revolution.

And for this, I’m grateful to my 14yo self and to my parents in particular. They have been my greatest catalysts.

I have been married twice and have a 27yo daughter. These magnificent individuals, too, have been major catalysts for extremely deep lessons and awarenesses regarding my toxic patterns and LOVE.

I have been blessed with mentors of all kinds, whether people, books, music, films, nature, animals.

For all these, I am deeply grateful and would not change a thing.

I remain, as ever, a work in progress.

LOVE is the greatest key, and to undergo a revolution in love is to be led to the deepest realizations of your worthiness, joy, success, contribution, and the actualization of your gifts.