INTRODUCTION

At age sixteen, I did a lot of staring out of windows—filled with terror, worrying about who I was or what I was going to be. Was I good, clever, hip, decent, fun enough? Was the world going to end? (This was the 1980s, after all, and the cold war was no joke.) Was I going to make it? I wore a troubled brow.

As we get older, some of our teenage intensity will ease, but when in the maelstrom, we don’t know that. When we are young, we so rarely take the advice of grown-ups, but would you have taken advice from someone like you? From your older self perhaps?

My family have always been... see more