WRITER.

This post was inspired by a TED Talk by Stephen Noble called “Why You Need the Growth Mindset of a Weed.”

In this TED Talk, Noble spoke of how his mother got him into reading. At first he told his friends about what he was reading, but none of them were interested in reading, so he felt out of place. He even told his mom to tell his friends he was sleeping if they inquired after him while he was reading.

He asked his mom, why, if reading was such a good thing, he wasn’t seeing it in his community. And I love what his mom said in reply. She said it was that way because he was growing up a weed. Growing up different. Not quite fitting in, but not in a bad way. And it’s subjective. In a garden, a rose is a beloved flower; in a rainforest, a rose is a weed. Growing up a weed means growing up strong even if you feel like you don’t quite belong.

I grew up a weed. And if I had to say which weed, I would say I would be a dandelion – they are a favorite of mine, despite the abject hatred most homeowners feel for them.

I was a voracious reader. I couldn’t stop reading, sometimes even finishing several books in one day. Even though I tried to find spaces with others who were readers, such as a small library book club that eventually fizzled out, I was still the outlier. My mind was filled with stories and I felt like I didn’t really have anyone to share them with.

Just as much as I was a reader, I was a writer. I never left the house without notebook paper and an assortment of worn down pencils. I wrote in tiny letters to conserve space and even shoved in some vertical sentences to cram even more in. I can’t tell you how many times I would be writing in public and an adult would ask me “how is your homework going?” Being the shy person I was, I would mumble that I was “just writing for fun,” go back to my work, and hope they would go away.

I also had zero interest in cell phones and social media. Zilch. I got a Tracfone as a teenager that was mostly for emergencies and it ate texts and spit them out as out of order smaller texts. I almost never used it. My parents bought me an iPhone as a high school graduation present and it was used more, but barely. Social media played no part in my life until that same year, and I only got it to interact with my college peers.

Being a home schooler/cyber schooler was stigmatized among those in my social sphere when I was a kid. People acted like all I did all day was play outside and as if I had never discovered homework. (Isn’t all work homework if you homeschool? Kidding, Kidding.)

All this to say, I grew up a weed. I filled my life with healthy habits and hobbies, learned as much as I could, and felt…quite a bit out of place. But it made me who I am. And now that I have grown up and found communities where I belong, other weeds to conquer the garden with, I finally appreciate being a dandelion.