The Joy of Being Different - Allow Your True Self to Emerge

The Blueprint
How much of your life have you spent trying to fit in? It seems that just as we pop out of our mother’s vagina shouting, “I’m here!!!”, Nurse Normal quickly shoves the doctor aside and stamps our tiny foreheads with the blueprint of how our future selves are to behave, look, and live so we will fit in.

It Takes a Long Time to Grow Young
I struggled in both school and then as a new mother to be “normal”. Attempting to place my square pegs into those round holes was impossible. I just didn’t fit the mould.

I had fallen into the trap of believing conformity meant acceptance, which would translate into happiness. But that never happened. Despite my best efforts, I was not happy, and I wasn’t accepted. When you try to be something you’re not, you lose your authenticity and, in my case, it showed. Deep down, I knew it was hopeless.

Over time, I came to understand what ‘different’ truly meant. That difference was something special, and if given the chance to grow, it could become something much greater than ‘normal’.

“…Yet it struck me that being a woman was akin to a performance, with its cues and lines that had to be learned. I knew how I was supposed to act and what I was supposed to say, I just wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to.” – The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods

My Role Model
In hindsight, I should have known my attempts at fitting the mould were never meant to be. My mother, Elizabeth, was a reject from normalcy and was happy to be so.

She was eclectic, maybe even a bit eccentric, but that was just who she was. As her daughter, I sometimes found this a bit embarrassing. Having a mother who was an anomaly was a bit daunting.

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