When you're a young child, you pick a totem animal, and you just identify with it to the point of wishing you were that animal.

As a young child, I was never a crier. I never cried to get my way, or even when I was in pain.

As a young child, I suffered all sorts of digestive problems and was constantly under the weather.

But it was my parents I longed for mostly. I wanted to be a little girl again and cuddle into them, wriggling in between them like I'd done in their bed when I was three or four, snug and warm in the safest place in the world.

Instead I had Hell.

There's only so much academic disruption that a young child can deal with before he just can't catch up.

What I learned as a young child continues to have a tremendous impact on my life today.