The Inbetweeners

Hello, First, I'm not quite sure what to call you, so I hope it's okay if, for the duration of this letter, I refer to you as HH. I would like to start by saying "thank you." I am who I am because of your Academies. When I was 10, I came back to my home country and immediately felt isolated from everyone around me. While they had stayed the same; I had not, in ways I could not hide. But the Academy gave me a home. The Academy gave me a place where I could be myself, and explore what that means. The Academy taught me to question what I was told and encouraged my innate curiosity. The Academy taught me to value others based on their  core  humanity, not on what they could contribute. At the Academy, I fell in love, I got hurt, I got in trouble, I cried; and despite it all, I  held  the place in a special part in my soul. This is not to say everything was perfect, but that it worked. I am a life-long learner because the Academy taught me how to harness this. I write thi...

I don't think of myself as an "angry person."  I can barely remember instances of pure unadulterated anger at a situation or a person. I struggle to maintain anger as an emotion - as it often turns into sadness. I set the threshold for my anger far too high (i.e. anger is only acceptable if someone I care about is hurt, or dies etc.) Above all else, I have never, ever, felt that I was allowed to be angry .  When my dad died, my anger was chastised and excised out of me, and replaced with fantastic petulance. When I was wronged, I was always reminded to be more empathetic and reserve judgement until I could speak to the other person. When I saw individuals using their class or race privilege in Africa, I was simply told it's not worth it. You could look at these anecdotes and think that the people around me were trying to teach me to let go of my anger and empathise with the recipient of that anger (an oft-ignored aspect of criminal justice, in my opinion). I don'...