A lady asked my mother that question a few years back.

She was remembering a girl who in high school wore a black star under her left eye, converse high-tops with her long skirts, who didn’t go to the football games much, and who was perversely attached to poetry and music. A girl who seemed by all measures totally out of step with the social plans and desires of many of her peers. A girl who seemed to be thinking about something else.

My mother, bless her, said that I was still very much myself. By that time, I had a PhD from Harvard, so that was an easy trump card to pull in the face of any sneering – but it wasn’t always like that.

When you’re a weird kid, you’re easy to dismiss and belittle. And the tricky thing is, even as you’re marching to your own drum, you’re conscious of that other drumbeat, the one that you’re not marching to with the other people who seem so sure of what they’re doing. You can do a lot of the dismissing and belittling yourself.

It’s mystifying. You just know what you love, what you value, and what you want to do. It doesn’t look like anyone else is happier, necessarily, but it does look like there is some collective agreement which you just don’t understand and can’t drag yourself to buy into. A beloved friend of mine calls this not getting the memo. As in, “I didn’t get the memo that everyone was supposed to wear X and act like Y.”

It’s awkward and ungainly. There is, though, a balancing joy. There you are, putting in your 10,000 hours as a reader or as a musician or as a stargazer or whatever you love – and you’re absorbed and happy as you do it. You’re growing, and there’s thrill in that. You look odd in some eyes – many eyes, really – but you’re becoming something. Almost secretly, you’re becoming yourself.

It takes decades for it all to come out in the wash. It takes decades to learn that no one really knew what they were doing, that many people just marched to that drum because its beat sounded the loudest or because they were scared not to. It takes decades to find out how much pain some of those people were in. There was abuse, abandonment, fear, complicity, addiction, and even violence. This can surprise you on one level but it’s also important to realize that on some level, you knew. You felt it in your bones and knew that you needed to be elsewhere, doing something else.

If you can survive your own weirdness, you may find out later that other people admired you during your misfit years. That’s a lovely gift. Yes, you were that swan hatched among the ducks, and for some reason, you never felt like a native speaker of the local dialect. But you were also a stubborn sign that announced the possibility of alternatives, of diversity, and because of that you possessed some vividness and color that caught an eye or two.

If this is you or was you, Dear Reader, I want to tell you now: I am your sister. We are family. You are part of a vibrant, diverse, wild gang of free souls.

Here are words you might have heard applied to us by other people:

Weirdo, freak, geek, nerd, nut-job, loony-toon, dope, dud, loser (and many others not fit to include here).

But here’s the word I want you to hear today:

Artist.

No, it doesn’t matter if you never pick up a paintbrush or you don’t play an instrument.

You’re an Artist because you choose for yourself what’s important, what it means, and you creatively engage with it – even when other people don’t see it or get it or sometimes even actively oppose you in that.

You’re an Artist because every single part of your life is a canvas for your unique soul to create upon. Instead of accepting the done-for-you template that is offered to you (sometimes with terrible emphasis), you opt to create your own life in your own way.

In my art space, I keep many pictures and sayings that inspire me. Today, my eye fell on two that sit right before me as I sit at my desk. The first is a quote by Erica Jong:

Once you decide not to be ashamed of who you are, almost anything is possible.

Those words free me a little bit more every single day.

Next to them sits the cover of a small book I wrote: “A grateful heart.” (If you don’t have this e-book and would like a copy, just drop me a line: kate@katechadbourne.com . A wee gift!).

It struck me this morning how much these words and ideas belong together – that total acceptance of yourself and that gratitude for ALL of it, including the times when you were seen as a weirdo.

In wholeness and gratitude, you are a supernova! You are well and truly FREE.

Is your daughter still strange?

Oh, lady.  More than ever. With all her heart and proudly so: Yes!