I am firmly of the belief that we are all unique and interesting humans who just need a little encouragement to be different. As someone who spent far too many years in Catholic school wearing a uniform and sitting quietly, I have never understood the inclination to fit in. For at fourteen when I burst onto the public school scene for the first time, I felt as if I were surrounded by unicorns. People with hot pink hair and nose rings and fuzzy skirts would be casually sitting in a physics classroom and I couldn’t help but fall in love. I began dressing in funky colors and patterns and wearing fun hats all of the time. I wasn’t popular by any means, but people liked my style. They gravitated towards me because I created an atmosphere that felt safe. I began speaking up and learned that I had a lot to say. I found the voice that years of conformity silenced and I let it shout.

Those early days of becoming my own person come to me now in hazy hues of innocence. They were the early days before the world got in. For once you get hurt, once you know loss, once you get spun around so violently that you don’t know up from down—that is when so many of us latch onto conformity as a means of survival. We just want stability. We just want to know love. No more risks, thank you very much.

But that is exactly when you need to take the risks. It is the most radical act of self love and healing that I have ever known to simply allow yourself to be your true, authentic, inner child. Wearing bright red sunglasses and an orange jumpsuit to the grocery store with those purple beaded earrings that your quirky friend made for you is the stuff that dreams are made of. It is the stuff that heals a broken heart. We move through a world everyday that wants to put us in a box. We feel pressured into buying this or that because everyone else has it. Our consumerist society literally survives off of making us feel so inadequate that we will buy anything that is trending just to feel a hint of satisfaction. But the real satisfaction, the real power play here, is to listening to your own heart.

Our hearts get molded pretty early on. We are taught from a young age that there are right and wrong ways to dress, talk, style our hair, and live our lives. We are not encouraged to be different because difference and change threaten the status quo that upholds so many of our institutions. But it’s a lie. It has always been a lie. Having the courage to forge your own path and be your own person, to sever your happiness from the approval of others, thAt is what will create a better world.

If we all felt safe enough to show the whole world that we like to write terrible science fiction or wear orange fur sweaters or cook extravagantly odd dishes in the middle of the night, I think we would nurture a lot of healing and a lot of love.

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