Actually, I wrote this post awhile ago, and never published it, but since Jo brought it up again...
If you love me, but you think you might not love me if I annoyed you, stop reading now. If you don't love me, or your love could never fail, by all means continue!
Does anyone else have a huge fear of admitting you are gifted? Who do you tell that to? I have a mostly ANONYMOUS blog and I am even worried about putting it up. I have been alluding to it on my blog lately, but not coming right out and saying it. I told my mom and she sounded skeptical!! :) She did agree emphatically that I was an independent and divergent thinker though. (What she used to call "sassy.") And I did remind her that I had read every book in the house by the time I was 10, including her college textbooks.
I just don't want to put anyone else down by implying that I'm better than them. It's taken me so long and so much work to FIT IN, that I don't want to use some word and put myself in another category. On the other hand, I'm proud of my abilities and I think I try to subtly show off sometimes, which I'm sure is annoying. On the other hand, I really do think everyone is gifted in the sense that everyone has amazing gifts! I wish there was a more value neutral label for the cluster of traits we currently call "gifted." On the other hand, why is it ok and not alienating for people to be gifted at sports in our society? I am proud that I learn almost anything, including sports, quickly. I like to call myself "apt." That sounds less pretentious than "gifted" to me. I am really glad to have found some other gifted people (and thank you for commenting on my blog!) and I am so glad to have found out that traits I just thought of as weakness are in the same cluster as the traits I'm proud of, like my extra sensitivity. I wonder what exactly is going on in our brains, probably chemically, possibly structurally? to have such a broad effect? Hmmm...
There I've just outed myself in more ways than one. What do you think? (Do I have to say a bunch of smart stuff now?)
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7 comments:
I always knew you were gifted. That's why I love being friends with you. I didn't know that you didn't consider yourself gifted yet.
I'm sorry I never told you...
It's wierd isn't it? If the majority could comprehend the pains and challenges of a gifted life, I'm sure that "gifted" would never be thought of as an elitist label. It would be more like, "She's gifted, poor dear."!
OK, here's the serious bit: Congratulations on coming out as a gifted adult. Know that your courage empowers us all. Feel the shift in the universe you have created; it ripples out, making it safer for everyone to become more of who they are. You are an amazing and inspiring voice!
Best,
Joanna
Oh Laura,
I got your email in my inbox today and it made me feel so cared for. Thank you, gifted woman.
Joanna,
Thanks! I am working towards accepting myself - what a new and enlightening way of thinking of it- that my accepting myself makes it safer for others to do so.
Until recently I've kept my web writing about giftedness separate from everything else. Right now I have two blogs--the one on Blogspot is mostly about giftedness, but more technical than most people are interested in. The other, on efx2, started out as a general blog, but I decided to add giftedness into the mix. I figure that some people may not be specifically looking for information about giftedness, but they might be glad to discover it in a place where they can also read other interesting stuff. Of course, the very first comment I got, on the post saying I would be writing about giftedness, was that I should use some other word because gifted is pretentious. Duh!
To get to the point (finally) I got tired of pretending to be two different people and worrying whether writing about giftedness would turn people off from anything else I wrote.
Thanks, for coming over, U.S. I just went to your blog and enjoyed your thought provoking posts. More and more I am putting myself in situations where I will be rewarded for being myself instead of punished. Wow. Sometimes when I am really real and I am accepted, I realize how much I was hiding before.
I really had that feeling when I went to the Unitarian Church in Utah and we all talked about our beliefs and I was honest and accepted. It was amazing.
Thanks, all for being supportive.
I like this post. I've just been reading about Intimacy and one of the main steps in achieving intimacy is learning to do self-disclosure. More often we tend to think of that as disclosing something negative about ourselves - but yeah, why not the positives too.
Hey, I just found your blog from your comment at my blog, and this post really touched me.
Why is it anyway, that when you're "gifted" you have to pretend to be "ordinary" or else people won't like you? And especially if you're female rather than male.
Oh, and the other thing that your post made me think of was The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron. If you haven't read her book, I'd recommend it. A lot of things made sense to me that didn't before. My partner, also a sensitive/gifted person, quit reading it, though. His complaint was something like, "This book is creepily specific in what it says about me." http://www.hsperson.com/
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