It is a well known urban myth that the French don't trust banks and store their money under their mattress. It's not that they are tight with money - they just don't trust anyone.
For the first five years of Luca's life, I desperately wanted to be a good mother and not to pass on this trauma and darkness that his father and I had experienced, but there's a danger of suffocating your kids, too.
Even as a small child, I wondered why the Dominican nuns who educated me were subservient to the Jesuit priests who educated my brothers.
I'm not sure that finding a husband at university made me any less of a feminist or an academic. I still soaked up Susan Faludi; I still read Doris Lessing. But I did it at the same time I met someone who I felt was my soulmate.
Nonviolence worked in Serbia, and it can work in other countries seeking their freedom.
I spent a good part of the nineties roaming the Earth writing about conflict. It was very grueling. I was beginning to find this way of life was, wow, addictive and deeply meaningful.
