I suppose my time as a government bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., prepared me for the world. I was a creature of emotional immediacy who was always ready to risk for the sake of others. Rules, regulations, red tape. These were so many blanks on a form I did not want to fill out. It was a job that paid good money and that was a living death for me. My skills, emotional and expressive, were merely liabilities, shameful things, not to be recognized or discussed.