My children are teaching me to love the housing estate I fled | Lynsey Hanley

When I left Chelmsley Wood, on the edge of Birmingham, it felt like an escape. Now I see it differently

Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you have to come from a place to belong there. Just because the place you grew up in lives inside you, it doesn’t mean you have to like it, or defend it, or define every other place against it. Birmingham, where I come from, inhabits my accent and underlies my compulsive self-deprecation, but apart from that, my Brummie-ness feels like an accident. (Even so, I’m obsessed with it.)

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from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2L1vHYz