A girl of nine or ten, skinny, pale, dark-haired, lives with her single/divorced dad, a professional who creates beautiful structures--an architect or composer. He's a decent guy, he tries to raise her right, but he has one serious flaw: he makes good money yet he's horribly cheap.

It's her birthday. He calls her in affectionately, she wakes up and comes out warily, burned too many times. She finds her present is... a birthday card. No present at all! He's getting worse, not better.

He doesn't seem to be aware what message he gives her about HER worth. She knows he loves her, that's not in question, but he teaches her to do without--to deprive herself of toys, tools, things she needs. She KNOWS it's wrong, from how disappointed she feels, but all she's learning is how NOT to invest in herself. Observing her friends' parents helped her recognize the problem, but it's not enough to cure it.

Limited ambitions--ground in from birth.

IN THE MORNING

• The daughter resembled Piano-Playing Jane in Ann Faraday's The Dream Game, a girl whose creativity was exploited by parents so pushy that now, as an adult, she gets sick whenever she's asked to perform. I can identify--I get sick for the same reason. Going on strike.
• So the daughter = creativity as well as emotional life. BOTH stunted by the stinginess of a parental voice.
• Stingy man = on TV, Frasier bought his wife an anniversary present in a dime store.
• I've learned to love myself, but I'm still blind to how stunted my ambitions are, how little I invest in them.
• ACTION: don't stint on investing in my child self. But how? Music classes for one! But what else? How to invest in love, friends, a career, a calling? I don't even know how to begin. Stunted ambitions... like the daughter in the dream, facing the scale of the problem doesn't mean I have the power to change it. What can I do about it?

TWENTY YEARS LATER

What to do? Build the World Dream Bank! The strange thing is, I was already doing so, really--taking art and music and writing courses, learning how to capture dreams in pencil, ink, paint, clay, wood, pixels, prose, poetry, and song. But blinded by my dad's "don't spend on yourself, your needs & talents aren't serious", none of that registered. In my head I was still that neglected, belittled kid, scraping along on nothing, achieving nothing. As I never would.

Two years later I combed through my nothing--my non-achievement, my non-art--to launch the first thousand dreams of the World Dream Bank.

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