The problem is, for many young people, we never saw our parents play. We grew up in broken and blended households. Our parents are often two strangers who can barely look at each other. We associate relationships with trauma, turmoil, disloyalty, deceit, and suspicion. Relationships were always serious, strained, never relaxed enough, never safe enough, to play. You can’t play when you’re searching for threats.

— Freya India in N.S. Lyons, The Self and the Soul: A Dialogue with Freya India , The Upheaval, 2024