SHARE: All you need is love.

By JAMILA RIZVI

My mum always likes to tell me that there is no substitute for a happy childhood. And she’s right.

Like me, the little girl in this video had a truly happy childhood. She was played with. She was read to. She was cared for. She was and still is, loved.

But there’s a difference between her and me…

The law doesn’t recognise her family as a family. Her family are invisible.

And how can that be? How is it possible that parents who teach their children to ride a bike without training wheels, who sit up with them all night when they’re scared of the snarling, spotty monster in the closet, who don’t sleep until that fever starts to abate, who listen to the terrible excuse for music that is made while studying for a grade 2 flute exam… aren’t considered a family in the same way mine is?

No matter how many people enter and exit through the revolving door of your life, the impact of those who raised you, always remains. I cannot comprehend that anyone who has had the luck and good fortune to have a happy childhood, could consider the family in this video as any less worthy than their own.

Words escape me, so I’ll steal someone else’s.

The Beatles were right: All you need is love.