Paola Yamel Lima will tell you she didn't invent herself. "I didn't invent this person," she says. "I was there." The circumstances just needed to get out of the way. For a long time, the circumstances did not get out of the way. She is a mother, a partner, the person who kept everything running – the chef, the driver, the emotional anchor. Eastern European parents who steered their kids toward law and medicine. A domestic life so complete it barely left room to notice what else was underneath. And then a relationship that worked to erase what remained. She describes it without drama: “I was almost deleted.” That's what a person with that kind of pathology does to a partner — someone so full of vibrancy and life, of course, they want to squash it. "I was raised to be pretty," she says. "Here we are."

When we talk about children and their future, we often speak in big, hopeful language, education, opportunity, potential. But the foundation for all of that is surprisingly simple. A child who is nourished can learn. A child who is hungry is carrying a weight no child should have to bear. I know this personally, not as an abstract policy conversation, but as lived experience.