Wendy K. Laidlaw

So I'm at 13.

I'm in what we call the crew, which is a local gang.

All the neighborhoods had gangs.

And if you're not in the gang, then you are the prey for all of the gangs.

Yeah.

And I wasn't introverted.

I was an extroverted kid, so I had to be part of things.

So I'm in this local gang.

And of course, we're experimenting with what you can do with various opportunities in life.

And some of them are pretty shady.

And I'm saying to my friends, we're not a gang.

We're Jason and the Argonauts, which is a story in the book.

And Jason and the Argonauts are setting off to find the missing golden fleece, which turns out to be the golden unifying element of culture that has gone missing.

And so I'm actually saying in my adolescent mind, partially understanding the formation of the gang is actually a misguided attempt to form a group that can go searching for truth and meaning and beauty.

And so, I mean, literally, I'm seeing the world around me differently.

And like I said, it took me 20 years really to realize that.

my calling was to live that kind of truth and that kind of path regardless of what other people might think.

I had a very curious mindset and I had intuition, which is misunderstood in cultures like America is particularly extroverted and sensate, material extroverted attention.

And so just like a lot of women have intuition and it gets disregarded or not understood for the power that it has.

Well, that was happening to me as a boy also.