Action and Worldview are the two most basic elements underlying all of story. Without action nothing happens, and without worldview nothing happens for a reason. They are the things that bind all other elements of story. The positive and negative terminals through which the waves of our story pass. Worldview is expressed through action, which is the characterization of personality.

We watch Alice experience major shifts in her worldview which change the actions in our story. Alice didn't learn how to be a bad-ass in this show, she learned how to love herself, and the world around her. She's been our protagonist the whole time, but it's not until Alice makes the world bear witness to her true self that she becomes our hero.

If she never got that opportunity through loving, safe, and nurturing connections, especially to herself, to grow and be supported, then she never would have seen those things in herself, as something attainable, that could be in her life. There was no room for who she could potentially be because there was never a safe place to fail because even when she was alone she wasn't safe.  

As in life, our story is not limited to just one, or few elements. It is a wiggly, complex-whole, of which there are distinct features, but not separate parts. All the wiggly patterns of which amount to be something greater than themselves

Through five major relationships, to Cleo, Mack, Danny, Evelyn and herself, Alice learns the five freedoms that all people should have. –

The freedom to want what you want and say it.

The freedom to feel what you feel and say it.

The freedom to think what you think and say it.

The freedom to see and hear what is here and now, rather than how it could, would, should, or ought to be.

The freedom to play oneself as a character of the world. To not be held in rigid personal and social roles, to take risks on your own behalf, instead of always playing it safe.