totally off balance. And, usually, I wasn’t particularly good at the business of "passing" anyway. Turning to my own company offered me the solace and comfort so sorely absent in the society of my peers.

I suspect that my being mostly a loner was partly how I came into the world. It was also partly how I survived the inadequate and often hostile mothering that I received as a little one. And, after those early conscious experiences of not fitting in with my peers, I became even more committed to and absorbed in being my own best company. Of course, the more time I spent with myself separate from my peers, the wider the gap became between us. I was old-for-my-age, wondering and feeling about things that were of little concern to my peers. The more I wondered, the more out-of-sync I became.

My abiding fascination with inner landscapes started in those years and flourished as I read my way across the library shelves. I identified with and lived in the worlds I read about or listened to on the radio. Everything evoked vivid visuals in my mind’s eye and intense empathy in my emotional being. I traveled far and wide, back in time and across many geographies as I explored fairy tales from around the world and the myths and legends of so many other cultures. Inspired, I wrote poems and stories of my own. Drew pictures and created my own fantasy worlds. In summers in the mountains, I played in imaginary worlds in amongst the trees and tall grasses. And, I watched and listened intently (and secretly) to the adult world around me, always more fascinated with that world than the world of my peers.

For a brief two-year period in high school, I was part of a cohort of Honor Society students that did a lot of theater and musical projects together. It was a fleeting season of seeming to be part of a group of peers. We were rather a fringe-y group–what would be called nerds these days. And, as might be expected, I teetered at the fringe of the fringe.

In my early middle thirties I once again hung out for a bit with–and seemed part of–yet another small fringe-y cohort. In that season the group was one of social activist feminists-coming-out-as-political-lesbians.

But for those two periods in my life, I’ve rarely "fit-in" with the norms of my age peers, my professional peers or my cultural/socio-economic peers. My differentness has always seemed to be one of the most significant defining aspects of my being-in-the-world. In my lower middle class aspiring–actually working class–family this was often a cause for some consternation, dubious commentary and unhappily perplexed questioning.

I was sexually active, then living on my own, then living with a man, then married but keeping my own name and planning not to have children, then living in an open marriage, then having a woman lover, then dropping out of a very successful private practice in therapy and even this quasi-normal life to live in a van traveling to and around the west coast. All this at ages and in historical times when "nice Jewish girls" of my class just didn’t do any of this.

Then I began the journey of consciously dedicating myself to recovering from a lifetime of overachieving. Committing myself to self-nurture, life in the slow lane and lots of timeless resting. Choosing over and over again for the riches of empty time rather than the riches of high income. All this in a culture that seems to measure our value by how busy we are and how much money we make at our busy-ness.

In the course of this journey I came to own the intensity of my hunger for solitude. To honor my deep and profound inclination/need to have only myself as my "significant other." To honor that my truest nature calls for a primary relationship with myself rather than with another person. This in a culture that’s so unremittingly geared to a "two by two" existence as its "gold standard."

Through all these years of being on the fringes of my culture, of following my own inner urgings rather than doing what was expected of me, I’ve had both very wonderful and excruciatingly challenging times. The wonderfulness has always come from and with the sense that I was living in real harmony with my very own self. Standing solidly in–and acting from–the truths at the very center of my being.

The excruciatingly challenging times have invariably come at moments of inner upheaval or transition. In these times the ground under me seems to grow unstable and shaky. I’m no longer the who I’ve been and not yet clear about whom I’m becoming. The truths at my center are not solid. Until fairly recently, I’ve repeatedly been swept up in agonizing self-doubting and self-criticism at such transitioning times. The stinging voice of the inner-critic can still, even these days, rise to the surface when I’m on such shaky ground.

When I’m at peace with myself and my "ways," it’s become quite easy to feel okay about my differentness, my out-of-pattern choices, my oddnesses. I no longer have the need (as I did earlier in my life) to see my differentness as "superior" in order to feel okay about it. But, when I’m transitioning, hanging out in the "between-place" and feeling disoriented or unclear, the door is opened to feelings of uneasiness about my differentness. Most often, the inner critic’s questioning is–and has always been–about whether I choose the ways I do because I "can’t handle" real life. Or, about whether the "truth" is that I’m "too damaged/too screwed up/too vested in being different for its own sake" to handle living "like a normal person."

Yet, these days I’m more likely to recognize that voice/those nasty questions as a signal that I need to attend to the parts of me who are frightened by the bigness or uncertainty of the changing taking place. When I recognize this, I’m able not to get caught up in going for the whole awful ride that the critic used to take me on. Instead, I take the time to gather the little scared parts to me and to work to help them feel more safe with the shakiness of the transitional time.

I remind myself that it doesn’t matter "why" I choose what I do, only that I keep on choosing what feels right to me. And, I remind myself that when I’m in these turning or transitioning times I always feel confused and shaky about my choices. Always feel more vulnerable to my own or others’ "outside eyes" challenges about my choices. I remind my frightened, uneasy self that there’s nothing "wrong" with us or with our choices. I remind myself it’s okay to be different EVEN in those times when being different is feeling shaky, scary, hard and challenging.

I move more slowly and gently than usual in the middle of the shaky times. And, sometimes, I need to be very, very careful about where or around whom I’m putting myself in these extremely vulnerable, un-jelled times. I stay away from situations and people who might intentionally (out of fear) or inadvertently (out of caring) press me to choose the "comfort" of conventional choices.

Always, as I move more fully into the next me-that-I-am-becoming, the shakiness quiets down. I again come to feel centered, solid and comfortable with all of the who(s) that I am.

Living in a world where difference, diversity and living from one’s own personal ethic are always viewed with suspicion, it becomes incredible important to keep reminding ourselves that difference, being different, choosing differently than the "herd" is always an acceptable option. That being different is merely that–not being better or being worse than. That being different can be hard "out-there." But, that being different is a completely okay way to be, if it’s OUR own natural way to be.

So when things get really hard, when we’re feeling the intense pressure to "be like everyone else," to not honor all of who we each are–it’s especially important to remind ourselves that it IS okay to be different. No matter what ANYBODY (including our own inner critical voice) says. That it’s not only okay but actually essential for us each to be all of who we are, to live from the center of our very own truth. No one else carries that thread into the tapestry of all life. And, if we don’t honor it and carry it with integrity and commitment, it will forever be lost from the whole.

The words of e.e. cummings speak to the intensity and ongoingness of that commitment: "Being nobody but yourself–in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else–means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight, and never stop fighting."
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When it gets hard, remember to lovingly remind yourself that it really IS okay to be different,

P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!

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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.

If you'd like a deck of your very own to support you in your journey, click here to download Order Form.

Please feel free to e-mail me at rposin@hotmail.com. to share your reflections and responses to any or all of what you find here . I'd really like to hear what touches and nourishes you!