You have a gift.

Normal is a lie. What a relief, right? As Jonathan Mooney (2013) says, “…the only normal people are people you don’t know very well” (47:59).

We need to be challenging normalcy. Why? Because normal is a lie, and yet this myth of normal is keeping so many of us locked into a belief that we are less than, that we are failures, that we are deficient. Especially those of us who are defined as cognitively or physically different. We need to be challenging the current pathology paradigm, which has always sought to isolate and pathologize every variance that veers too far from the fabricated standard of what is acceptable–mentally or physically–and what is not. If you think about it, our entire society, the whole Western Anglo-Saxon world and beyond, is built on an ideal of normal. And because of this, everyone, every single one of us, we lose. yes, even if you are so-called “normal”. Because what happens when you fit in to the normal bracket, you end up othering everyone else. This unknowingly perpetuates the stigma of normal/abnormal. But guess what? Not one single one of us is “normal”. Think about that. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t have some kind of struggle and it always comes back to what we are supposed to be living up to. Happy, healthy, successful, powerful. Even the people that the media props up as pinnacles of perfection, they show up years later with booze problems, sex addictions, abuse scandals, gambling debts. They confess to depression, to childhood trauma, to attempted suicide, to cancer, to heart disease, diabetes. The list goes on. Somehow we are always surprised by this. OMG, can you believe that so and so has such and such? They put a crack in the grand facade…yet we still keep clinging to the myth of normal.

I propose that we crack this facade right in the clunker. Why not embrace the truth: we are all unique. Regardless of brain type, blood type, gene type, each and every one of us is different. Rather than let this separate us further, I believe that acknowledging our quirks, our kinks, our weird, our geek, this will actually bring us closer. Because if we don’t have to be so normal and by extension perfect, that takes a lot of pressure off. Suddenly we don’t have to measure up to anyone. AND we are free to just be ourselves. This leads us to finding our gift!

If you are alive, then you have a gift. Are you someone with a unique brain that is cognitively different? Autistics, add’ers, dyslexics, I’m talking to you. You may not know what your gift is yet, but that is okay. But more likely, you do know, in fact, you may have been aware of your gift all along, but dismissing it, thinking oh no, that’s not good enough, not marketable enough. That’s not perfect enough, normal enough…? I say to you, nonsense! Society has done a great job making you believe that you are not worthy, because you are not normal. And as you may have guessed by now from the tone of this article, that is just not true. Normal is lie and you are beautiful. Shine that wild light, you glorious diamond. Shine it bright and big and may we begin to shift this societal paradigm towards one of Love, kindness, and inclusion. Remember: difference isn’t a deficit–in fact, difference is the norm.

Give Jonathan Mooney a listen and tell me what you think…