Grooming happens when a person in a position of power tries to declare a reality that isn’t true but that the subservient victim has no power to correct. The constructed reality is always about keeping the victim powerless and the groomer safe. When people speak about something being off, or the ick factor, or something creepy, it is usually because of something like this .

Do you remember when your story began? Not all dogs come when thay are called. Recall is like that. I know I was there. I studied embryology in my medical degree. The ectoderm, the mesoderm, the endoderm. But was I me before the ectoderm? We can learn so much about the brain and still not know a single thought that comes from it.

I learned about the heart in my medical degree. I didn’t discover anything about how a heart loves. I learned the muscle, chambers, blood supply, nodes and nerve stimulation. I learned to see electricity on an ECG. It was during a cardiothoracic rotation at Royal North Shore Hospital that my heart broke. Nothing prepared me for that. Was it my heart?

One of the most delicious things I do is watch my mother share treasures from her grandchildren with my children. These treasures are simply remembered moments that took her breath away or made her heart swell or simply brought a smile that marked a place in time. And she wrote them down, in her beautiful hand, practiced with pothooks, softly up and strongly down when she was in their place in time long ago.

We act as if a child is born into a pre-existing world, but for the child they are the world. The centre of their own universe. They live only in the present. They do not yet have the language to construct a past or a future. They trust naively for they have not yet been betrayed. They love naively for they have not yet been hurt.

'J.D.Vance came to Vermont for a get-away. Locals had other ideas'

The boy who lived in public housing comes to die on a corporately owned hill.