Yes Rebecca, a brilliant article. It had me tearing up. I had similar early waiter years and worked as a house painter to pay for my time in the studio while raising my kids and foster kids, and step kids, One thing with little kids I noticed is that somewhere around 2-4 years old is when the emotional body is developing and their emotions are so overwhelming for them. They get over excited and then crash into devastation immediately afterwards. So I spent a lot of time with the young ones helping to help them regulate themselves (or try to) and help them notice when they were getting over stimulated and what the natural consequence was of that - to crash out - and help them learn how to manage that not suppress it. The sensitivity level is off the charts at that time. My solution was to give them 'magic hugs'. When they got overwhelmed emotionally and couldn't hardly breathe I would hold them and absorb their emotions and just breathe with them against my chest till they could rhythmically recover themselves. That always worked. 'Let's slow down and chill out for a minute.' Like you say, sensitivity is an artist's superpower especially when you can keep the heart clear, the mind calm and the intuition open. And like you say, that makes us dangerous. Artists and intellectuals are among the first on the list to suppress in establishing an authoritarian regime that is always build on lies. The problem for them is, once the art community get's their feathers ruffled, we have a vast tool box to deal with it without falling, ourselves into barbarity.

I wondered too, why you took the Steakhouse job. Counter intuitive there. But maybe you were the Great Harmony's eyes on the ground before the collapse. Clearly you were a threat of seeing, of witness to those grifters and they could feel it. My youngest daughter is like that, very sensitive, and with a very strong ethical core. That makes her dangerous in the workplace. She also thought maybe there was some thing wrong and different about her but she eventually embraced herself. My older two kids are super sensitive too. And my grandson Henry! He is a marvel at 6 years old.