Hello, my beauties!

As seems to happen so often now that I have two children (how are two so much more lethal than one?!), I am once again ill—a cold this time.

With my brain working at much less than its optimal capacity (thanks to the poor-quality sleep and the head full of crud), I decided this week to revisit a previous post. Because several new subscribers have joined up in the past couple of weeks thanks to the Divine Biz JV Giveaway (welcome, new readers!), I thought this might also give them an opportunity to get to know me better than a channeled message or reading would.

This morning, a passage discussing exclusion, of not fitting in, in Brené Brown’s book I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t) reminded me of a post that I posted on a personal blog almost seven years ago, so I turned on the Wayback Machine (WABAC, that is) and found that post. I’m reproducing it here, edited and revised for brevity (a definite challenge for me), but if you’d like to see the original, please click here.

 

 

The Island of Misfit Toys

Tonight on Facebook, I was chatting with a friend’s significant other who has Asperger’s syndrome. He had started this conversation with me after seeing a few frustrated posts from me. Very sweetly, he’d wanted to make sure I was okay physically, emotionally, etc.

After reassuring him that I was, indeed, okay and just frustrated with the site, we got into a discussion of his anxieties with making small talk and being afraid of what to say, running out of things to say, and the like. As any of you who have known me for long know, I used to be pretty quiet and shy, and still can be (no, really), and I use that experience to help me better understand people. I learned as a kid that by being quiet and just listening, I heard a lot more things than I would by talking … especially when people forgot I was around.

As irony would have it, not long after we had discussed his worries, we were joking around, and then he said something. But the messenger service didn’t give me his message. In fact, I stopped hearing anything from him, so I assumed he had signed off to go to work, no worries.

Several minutes later, I got a big block of text from him. He was worried that his last comment had weirded me out, that I had just stopped speaking to him because he might have said something that I, for whatever reason, might not find appropriate. Having met me only a handful of times, he wasn’t aware, I suppose, that (1) there are very few things I find inappropriate in general conversation and (2) if I had found it inappropriate, I would have said so.

By the time his messages came through, he really had logged out to go to work. I felt sorry for him and hoped he wouldn’t worry further about upsetting me in some way. In fact, at the time, I was speaking to another friend, who also happens to have Asperger’s syndrome, so I mentioned this incident to him. This led to a conversation in which this friend explained his occasional fear when communicating with someone that said person might never speak to him again based on those communications. I sympathized, having occasionally felt such things before. But, I told him, I got over those feelings, figuring that if such people were going to get bent out of shape by who I was, they didn’t deserve me (or just weren’t ready to have me in their lives). You see, I grew up with parents who taught me well my own inherent value and who taught me that I was loved just the way I was.

Growing up a fat, quiet, smart girl wasn’t exactly easy. But my poppa told me, about the time I was eight (and probably many other times besides), that if people didn’t like me based on how I looked, that was their problem, not mine, and that most of them teased me because they felt insecure and because teasing me somehow made them feel more secure.

All while I was growing up, I knew that it was fine to be exactly who I was. I had a grandmother who reiterated that to me quite often: Don’t act not as smart as you are to try to fit in, and don’t worry if they don’t like you, because plenty of people like you just fine.

And I also stood up for others who were quiet, awkward, teased. Even if I didn’t necessarily know them or like them, I stood up for them, because everyone is worthwhile, no matter what the insecure kids on the playground said, and no one deserves to be teased if the teasing isn’t full of love. When people teased me, I just let it roll off my back—usually. I knew that if I rose to their baiting, they’d keep going, but that if I let it go, it wouldn’t be as fun for them anymore.

But I would step in for others. I got angrier about other people being teased than I did about being teased myself, because I could see how much the teasing hurt or confused them. So, when I saw other kids teased, I was the one who helped.

 

Only now do I realize that I was like the Island of Misfit Toys, a magnet for the “misfits,” some of the other kids who didn’t have many friends except maybe each other. I was friends with “weirdos” and loudmouths and painfully shy and awkward kids. They couldn’t bloom into “normalcy” or quietude or social grace, because they were teased and taunted and never given the chance. They were given a hard time by our schoolmates because, well, “kids are cruel.” Kids use that most basic part of the brain (and societal reinforcement) that tells them that same is good and different is bad, making us versus them. But too many kids never learn better from their parents. They aren’t taught to see past all that stupid superficial shit to the beauty that lies beneath in people’s hearts and souls. (Even worse, I think, is when kids get teased—or even abused—by their own parents for not being “normal.” They end up carrying deep hurt, feeling unloved, and pass on that pain, trying to make themselves feel better by making others feel worse, or simply by acting like their parents, in the way they think they should. The status quo.)

Once, in my high school chemistry class, a girl who sat at the same table with me told me that she had made fun of me in elementary school because I was quiet, which she had interpreted as me being stuck up. I told her that I had been quiet because I didn’t have much to say and that I hadn’t talked to her because she teased me, and I asked, “Why would I want to talk to you if you teased me without trying to talk to ME first?” She had no answer. It was clear that she hadn’t even considered the possibility before.

If people aren’t taught acceptance (and this was of quietness, for pity’s sake!), they don’t practice it. If we aren’t taught how to look beyond us/them and same/different, we’ll be forever stuck in that loop of cruelty.

 

As I told my friend of these things and of my fantastic parents, he got quiet. I knew he was reliving some unpleasant memories. Even in his thirties, he was dealing with pain inflicted by “innocent” ignorant teasing from his first decade or so of life. He’s stuck in that loop. He’s healing, and he knows he is, but the scarring is still there. True, his experiences have shaped him into who he is today, and he’s a fantastic person, but imagine how much more fantastic we all could be if we didn’t have to experience such things.

I don’t have any of those dark places in my soul left over from childhood, because I had amazing parents and extended family. They made me who I am today. Their example inspires me to be as amazing and warm and welcoming to other people. I was, still am, and forever will be the one who offers shelter from the storm. I give out hugs of comfort. I act like the mother with her rolling pin in hand, chasing off the neighborhood brats while drawing her loved ones to her, hugging and shielding those I love, and those who are beaten, battered, and bruised physically, emotionally.

I remind all of you that those terrible moments sucked, but they helped make you who you are today. You will be the givers of hope to the next generation—and to the other battered and bruised souls in the world. I welcome you all into my heart and to my island of misfits.

 

My Services

Do you want to know what message a particular spirit (for example, a spirit guide, angel, earth spirit, or deceased loved one) has for you? Contact me.

Interested in learning how the energies of the next twelve months will affect you? Purchase a personalized Year-Ahead Review.

Looking for healing? Check out my distance Reiki sessionsand my other readings.

 

Find Me Elsewhere on the Web

Facebook

YouTube

 

Want to know how I prepare for all of my energy work, perform readings, and have conversations with Spirit? Watch this video.