I’ve been writing with a new friend named Jake. We were about an hour into our first session when he said to me, “So if there’s one thing I know about you it’s that you’ll always bring it back to youth.”

So on the money. I almost spit out my water.

I spent the majority of my childhood wishing I was older than I was. I used to bring my mom’s spare handbag to school along with the second set of car keys to play “college” at recess. I do think this is somewhat of a shared experience for girls. I see it in the ones I nanny today, knowing to keep my urges of telling them to bask in their innocence to myself. They won’t understand. A woman must mourn her innocence to realize it was something she ever had.

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