I have a daughter from a relationship I had in my late teens or early 20s. Because I felt it wasn't the kind of pukka behaviour my family or relatives would admit to, I denied it for many years.
My graduation was an amazing moment for my family, my community. In my early childhood, we lived on a subsidized income, with government assistance - at one point when I was growing up, my mother was making $14,000 a year. Now I had made it out of the hood, so to speak.
I was 20 when I was sentenced to death. My life had been on a one-way path to self-destruction for years. I donβt remember too much about my early life, but I think I had a happy childhood, growing up in Philadelphia in a loving family with five siblings.
Since I was very young, probably two or three, I had really good memorization skills. I would memorize stuff from TV and perform it for my family. I was the little performer for most of my early life. So eventually, my mom caught onto that and thought I might want to get into acting.
But for me, I thought you made a record, you got on a bus, went out and played your shows and made a lot of money. That was the way it was supposed to go down. But there's a lot more to it than that. There are a lot of early mornings, late nights, a lot of traveling, a lot of being away from home, being away from your family.
I didn't come from a wealthy family. My dad told us if we wanted spending money, we had to earn it. So I developed an early work ethic.
Many people do not understand that business investment is a critical prosperity-booster, leading to more jobs, higher wages, and stronger family income. Put another way, rising tax and regulatory burdens that penalize investors and businesses also punish middle-income wage earners.
I think it is only natural that people have anxiety about the economy because the economy is real. It is their job, their ability to service their mortgage and look after their family. And in the final analysis, nothing is more important than your capacity as a breadwinner or an earner to provide for those that rely on you.
While I was in university, my father became very ill and my father was unable to work. We needed to pay the bills, so in my 20s I became the sole income earner in my family.
My earnestness at the injustices I witnessed when I was writing 'Random Family' may have been my gravest reportorial offense during the early years of reporting. When I discuss the book with students, they often ask me how I could 'stand by' in the face of so much suffering; the egregiousness wasn't my powerlessness but my surprise.
It's not the easiest thing to have two actors in a family.
Every day, people serve their neighbors and our nation in many different ways, from helping a child learn and easing the loneliness of those without a family to defending our freedom overseas. It is in this spirit of dedication to others and to our country that I believe service should be broadly and deeply encouraged.
My dad was born in 1930 in Lithuania, located in Eastern Europe. He was 9 years old when the war started, and his family was sent to the Kovno ghetto. They were soon separated and sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
I definitely have a family. I have a boyfriend who has kids, and we do normal things every day, like get up and go to school. Eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I was born into the most remarkable and eccentric family I could possibly have hoped for.
Eccentricity has never been discouraged in our family.
Unfair servicing practices can worsen a family's already difficult economic situation, and the injury echoes from the family to the community and ultimately throughout the economy.
Diana became a superstar when she became a part of the Royal Family because she brought youth and glamour and fun into a staid and dusty institution, and at times she eclipsed the Prince of Wales. It was one of the early problems within their marriage.
A hostility to modernity is shared by ideologies that have nothing else in common - a nostalgia for moral clarity, small-town intimacy, family values, primitive communism, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, or harmonies with the rhythms of nature.
If you can capture the humanity of a family struggling in an economic crisis you can make a difference. You can raise awareness just of the simple humanity.
