As I read your post tonight, in my mind I could hear Harry Chapin singing "Flowers Are Red."

Like you I was an imaginative child who was "discouraged" from living in a world of "make-believe" -- which was exciting and richly populated, I promise you. It didn't completely break me of the habit. I just stopped letting other people have any clue what was ever going on with me -- in my imagination.

As an adult I've spent a lot of time getting back into the skin of that imaginative child -- and seeing the world again through her eyes. But the reclusiveness and introversion remain.

I, too, cheer your niece's self-confidence and bravery -- and hope she hangs onto those qualities all her life, because "there are so many colors in the rainbow / so many colors in the morning sun / so many colors in the flowers / and I see every one." Good for her.

from #theunmentionables