Because I did not lose those ten years.

I spent them.

I spent them on five people who are, every one of them, brave and honest and entirely themselves, and who know exactly where they came from and have decided, with my help, that where you come from is not the same as what you’re worth.

I have thought a great deal about worth, raising these children, because the world tried so hard and so early to teach them a lie about it.

The lie is that a child’s value is something conferred — that it comes down from above, from a father’s recognition or a family’s acceptance or a name on a building, and that a child without those things is somehow lesser, a scandal, a parade of evidence, a problem in shoes.