Is it just me, or have you felt like you can’t quite find your place in this world?  Maybe you struggle between what you have to do to make a living or sustain yourself and what you love to do and do instinctively well.   Maybe you relate much better to the music, styles, interests, and culture of another time or place?  The more I talk about this with others, the more I realize I am definitely not alone in this challenge.  Sadly, most of those who relate to me on this have also shared my struggle with self-esteem since we discovered early in life we didn’t fit in.

For me, this journey has led me to explore and deeply resonate with teachings and beliefs about reincarnation.  Many faith-based organizations and churches either don’t discuss this or they denounce it.  So for me, I didn’t begin to actually have feelings and memories that validated my reincarnation until I allowed myself to consider the possibility.  I was raised in churches that denounced it, but in adulthood I gave myself permission to openly reconsider possibilities.  Now, I have been shown several past lives, and even find that some of my closest friends and relatives  in this lifetime have been with me for a very, very long time as our souls reincarnate into different roles and experiences throughout time.  (A good book on this is Little Soul in the Sun by Neale Donald Walsh.)

When I began asking to be shown more about this, answers would come in dreams, meditations, and new found spiritual guides and teachers.  One thing I now know is that I lived in South America as a Native American Indian, and I discovered more of this during my recent trip to the Amazon in Peru.  I also know that I played drums then, and have discovered that I’m not too bad at it now, either!  Another friend instinctively knows a lot about a country she’s never visited or read about, and when she researches, she’s right.  The difference is that she is vividly describing it historically in another time.

Some healers spend their childhood discovering they are born with gifts they now fear to reveal because they don’t want to be labeled as crazy or feared as we have historically done in the past with witches and the like.  In adulthood, they become trained and certified in their natural, innate gifts to lend credibility to themselves, even though they were born knowing what to do.  Sadly, most were loners in childhood, as are many ‘old souls’ who can’t relate to others who have not been here a multitude of times before and don’t instinctively know all that they do.

My compulsion in writing this was to start a conversation about how normal it is to be different….in fact, everyone is.  Our truest beauty is in our uniqueness, and we are the only ones who can reject mainstream stereotyping and programming to decide that we are most beautiful when we let our own diverse and beautiful uniqueness shine.

Mainstream adult America has been programmed to have a certain level of education, job, house, marriage, family, bank balance, status, appearance, etc.  We can’t wait for the media and business to change the model we strive to emulate; we must change it.  When enough of us decide that being unique and authentic IS fitting in, the model will change.

I see how not honoring all of myself led me to gain weight, be unhappy and unhealthy, fear rejection, withdraw, and more.  I am in the process of changing that and allowing myself to fully be me, and do you know what?  I’m attracting others like me – the real me – and having the time of my life!  We attract what we put forth, so conformists attract conformists, and authenticity attracts authenticity.

Enough about me…the purpose of this was to start a conversation, so how do YOU feel about all of this?  Can you relate to feeling like you don’t fit in?  If so, how could you start to express more of your true self without fearing isolation?  If you have worked through this yourself, how do you allow yourself to be fully expressed in a culture that encourages cookie-cutter living?  Please comment below so we can end this isolation and loneliness to come together in our individuality!

With Love,

Sheryl