Abigail Brown

About

A moment I have come to expect somewhere around the second month: someone describes something from their childhood and then, unprompted, says that they would be appalled if it happened to a child they knew. The double standard becomes audible in a single sentence. That is usually the turning point. Childhood wounds are almost always minimized by the adult carrying them, and the minimizing is far more resistant to argument than it is to that particular comparison. We let you make the comparison yourself rather than my making it for you. Hearing it in your own voice is what gives it any weight. This remains a craft I am working at, and learning to wait for that sentence rather than supplying it early has probably improved my work more than anything else I have changed. If your standards for yourself differ from your standards for everybody else, get in touch.