Embrace Your Weirdness
Do you love your weirdness? Do you embrace your weirdness? Are you around people who embrace your weirdness as you do them? Are you around people who light you up?
First you have to understand your weirdness, then you have to be comfortable in your skin. Once you do all of that, which I believe can take much of your life, you have to assess if you are around people who love you and your weirdness. Too often I think we try to hide our weirdness. We try to conform to what society says is okay and “normal.” Not really ever understanding what normal means and why it seems important to people that we are “normal.”
My mom had some great idiosyncrasies. Superstitions were the norm for her, in fact she probably should have been a man in major league baseball with all of her superstitions. My two favorites were not “splitting the pole,” and “needing to see a car on the road behind the house before she could go to bed.”
Mom, Aunt Kit and I were in Atlantic City a number of years ago and we were walking from lunch to the casino. We were coming up to a stairway of 3 stairs and a banister in the middle of it to ensure flow of traffic and to help those who needed to hold onto something. I was about to walk down one side of the banister, while the two 90 year olds were going to walk down the opposite side. My little 90 year old, 90 pound mother grabbed my arm and pulled me to her side of the banister, letting me know that I had to walk down the same side as them. I laughed and then of course did what Mom asked. When I was home and talking to two of my nieces about it, they immediately called it “splitting the pole” and of course you cannot do that, it brings bad luck. My mom’s weirdness rubbed off on my nieces.
Mom also used to stand at her kitchen sink looking out of the window facing the backyard, another home’s backyard and the street behind the house. She would not go to sleep until she knew she saw a car drive on that street. Some days she saw it in the morning ad was fine for the day. Some days it was 11pm and she was standing at that window because she had to see the car.
Both of these things are weird. She admitted that then, and I agree. However, nobody thought anything of it. My dad especially, embraced her weirdness, knew that she wouldn’t go to sleep unless she saw the car and would sometimes stand there and watch with her. They embraced each other’s weirdness, and they did light each other up. They were best friends, they were partners and they loved life together.
As I think about this in my life, I haven’t found the partner who embraces all of my weirdness and lights me up. I do have family and a lot of friends who I believe embrace my weirdness. The friends who no longer light me up, I have moved away from. One of us stopped calling the other. I either don’t see them at all anymore, or it is rare. Now I see that they were there for a season and maybe a reason but not for the long haul. They couldn’t embrace all of me, they drained my energy instead of making me feel filled up. The friends who I have had throughout my life, who I have ebbed and flowed with and had years of not seeing, still light me up and embrace my weirdness. Those friends are so in my life, and so important to me. And then of course, there are the friends who have embraced my weirdness all through my evolution. The weird young Suzy who had a temper, who loved to party, who worked hard, who over thought, who took things personally and who was fun to be with was embraced. The depressed and anxious Suzy was embraced. The Suzy who finally evolved into the giving, loving, compassionate person she always thought she was was embraced. The Suzy who moved into an entirely new space of love and service, of meditation and energy work, of her own business and no longer “corporate” was embraced.
Finding your people, who embrace your weirdness and light you up isn’t always easy. But once you do, you totally embrace your own weirdness, you understand who you are and who you could be. You build each other up not tear each other down. You let things go because it doesn’t matter in the scheme of things. You love each other no matter what, even if there are days you don’t like each other. You recognize the weirdness as the gift of the person, and you embrace them as you want to be embraced.
Do you love your weirdness?