There's Room For Us All

(Photographer - Wendy Morrison)

No child wants to be labeled odd, strange or weird and if they are, it leaves its mark.            

I floundered through life and a school system that catered to the mainstream and in an effort to fit in,  I denied my wild and free artist its voice and tried to be cool...what I actually managed was to be less of a freak.

Many years and days of monotony later I found myself in a great deal of emotional pain and I KNEW I needed healing. Through the healing process I discovered I needed to fall in love again…

this time with myself. 

The first step in self love I was informed is self acceptance but how was I to accept all those characteristic oddities I had become so ashamed of? Accept that idiosyncratic way of “Being” I had worked so hard to bury? Oh, the stretching I had to do to allow myself to begin to believe that my being who I truly was, was not a mistake or a deformity of character but rather how God intended me to be.

(Photographer - Wendy Morrison)

But Oh The blessed freedom in that!

To no longer believe that God merely tolerated me. To be able to fathom that he or she delighted in me! How glorious to walk away from that, which had fenced me in for so long…my need for the approval of others. 

And magically folks started appearing in my life. Delightfully odd, strange and gloriously interesting folks that I affectionately and affirmatively refer to as my tribe.

I embrace these strange and wonderful folk. I give thanks for the occasions I have to celebrate their journeys, for the opportunities I have to co-create with them and I have made it my heart’s intention to find and welcome as many of my lost tribe into the folds of my heart as this journey through the world allows.