Are You A Misfit?

I am a proud misfit. 

I am a vegetarian born in Philadelphia who orders cheesesteaks without the steak. 

I am a serious pacifist who insists on relocating spiders but fell in love with ice hockey.

I am an almost 60-year-old woman who has never birthed a child. 

This fact alone keeps me on the outside of "normal" society and raised serious eyebrows when I worked in public education. 

People make all kinds of assumptions about why I was childless as if it was any of their business.

When I worked as a scientist, I was deemed "too artistic."

As an artist, people tell me I'm too logical.

I'm also one of those people who says out loud what other people are only willing to think. 

My mantra is "if I'm pissing someone off, I'm doing something right."

And because I dare to do it as a woman, I am often wildly unpopular in systems focused on maintaining the status quo. 

A former boss labeled me a rebel. I laughed at the thought. But then I often say I never got in trouble in school until I became a teacher. 

Another boss introduced me at a conference of over 100 attendees as a "dangerous combination of brains and creativity." 

Challenge accepted. I'm proud to be a danger to dysfunction and inequity.

My closest friends are also fellow "misfits," at least by polite society's standards - tattooed teachers, cowboy drag queens, men who make jewelry, women who wield power tools, theater geeks, holistic healers, childless cat (dog, lizard, llama, chicken, pig) parents.

But I don't see us as misfits. I see us as scouts, explorers, way-showers, those willing to create a new path along which others can travel.

If you, too, are seen as a misfit, know this: whatever has earned you this label is actually your superpower.

So embrace it. Amplify it. Hang out with fellow misfits, disrupt the status quo and create whole new beautiful worlds.