We all got older, and we'd tell our children things like, 'Mommy used to be in a famous rock band,' but they didn't believe us. Part of the reason for our reunion was to show our children what we did to make the lives they have possible.
No child should be raised in a system. A system isn't a parent. Even the system knows this, which is why the Children and Family Services Division puts so much effort into finding permanent homes for the kids who are never going to be reunited with their birth parents.
In my first book, Under Fire, I wrote that I revered Ronald Reagan. That was a dozen years ago. I still feel that way. I think he changed the world for the better for my children and my children's children.
Governments do not have the answers - indeed, quite the reversal. A lot of times, they not only do not have the answers, but they themselves are the problem. If we are committed to helping our world's children, then we must begin to create solutions from the bottom up.
Children go with whatever makes them feel good - like if that's the color green or orange, they do that with their clothes. As I've grown older, everything reversed. My music, my personality - onstage those things became my colors.
My mother was a children's librarian. I remember when traditional stories were revised for modern audiences until they bore only a nodding acquaintance with the originals, but were released as 'authentic Indian stories' when they were, in fact, nothing of the kind.
Like many people, I had the powerful experience of being raised on Dr. Seuss, then becoming a parent and revisiting him with my own children. That multigenerational experience around his work is very meaningful.
I genuinely believe we have an opportunity to revolutionize how we educate our children.
It is at once the most overwhelmingly frustrating and exasperating task and the most joyous and rewarding experience to make human beings out of children.
I wanted to represent the brothas I have seen when I go to the rhythm section of Oakland, hearing brothas speak and tell me about their journeys. Men who have been to prison and found themselves, brothas who have made mistakes but are loving their wives and children, trying to protect them and educate them. These men do exist.
Now, we don't teach children in schools to be creative. We don't teach them to experiment. We want them to fill in the right answer, tick the right answer in the box.
Experiments show that children in unsupervised groups are capable of answering questions many years ahead of the material they're learning in school. In fact, they seem to enjoy the absence of adult supervision, and they are very confident of finding the right answer.
These years after my liberation were years of reconstruction, and I think I made the right decisions... I mean, I lost everything: my life; my father died; I didn't know anything about my children.
It's not so much that I ever declared: 'I will never have children.' I just never found the right man to settle down with, so it didn't happen.
I've realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.
My own, purely personal view is that reading, study, poetry, and scientific experiment might be more rewarding than a job or children, so I would never advise anyone against university if they're going for the right reasons.
Everything I do, I hope, is that I represent something, and I represent the right things to my children and give them the right sense of what they're capable of and the world as it should be seen.
Whether it's making a film or raising my children, personally I'm striving to do the right things and to learn.
I have often said that I think children's books are like poetry. Finding the exact right words to tell a story is something all writers, regardless of genre, are challenged to do, but it is in children's that the art of selection really becomes an art.
When all is said and done, the greatest satisfaction you'll have in this life as you grow old will be seeing your children grow in righteousness and faith and goodness as citizens of the society of which they are a part.
