With Love To the Dreamers

“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘you cannot paint’, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” Vincent van Gogh

Here’s the thing, I have a very neurodivergent brain. And sometimes it gets the best of me. Sometimes that voice tells me all the things I cannot do. Luckily, I am not the only one in the history of humankind to experience this.

I am a dreamer. If there were a Dictionary of Wendy it would be filled with all my definitions of how I see, feel, and interpret the world, including words. Words are like feelings to me. 

And under Dreamer for sure would be this author’s picture. Enough said.

Being a dreamer is the thing that is most loved about me and also the most annoying. 

Most loved because I believe in dreams; that they are a gift to pursue to become who you are possible to be. As inalienable as your right to pursue happiness. I will inspire you to reach for them and fight for you to not give up on them.  This has been my life’s work. 

The annoying part? I struggle with the tasks and consistency to build a dream for myself. I’m not even sure that’s part of who I am. But my culture says it is, and so I feel compelled to try, over and over again.

Yet because there has been an incredible amount of breakthrough research into neurodivergency, I understand what to do now when the voices hit me down hard.

Van Gough already knew, if the voices say you can’t then you absolutely must.  If there is a mountain in the way, you absolutely must climb it because the Mountain is You. If there is an obstacle you absolutely must find your way around it because You are the Obstacle. Books and sayings like these help me shift out of the stuck places and give me an understanding beyond my inner experience. 

Life is hard for neurodivergents in this modern world. Especially when coupled with, as so many are, trauma on top of trauma. 

One school of thought that resonates with me is that there has always been about 20% of the population as Nds. As evolutionary necessary. We are the risk takers, the explorers, the think outside of the box problems solvers. The idea people, creatives, intuitives, healers and yes, the movers and shakers and changemakers. 

In our culture though you are rewarded for conforming. It can make one feel as if something is wrong with them as they cannot see the value in conforming. I remember thinking that when I was in 6th grade, barely 11 years old.

It takes a tremendous amount of fight, courage, energy to break away from the pack and say this isn’t for me, with no guarantee that you will find your place, let alone success, and only then receive the accolades for the greatness that was inside you all along.

Given this culture, probably only 20% of the 20% find their way there. With the right environment, tricks, hacks, and tools to overcome the deficiencies the same brain gifts you with. 

I’d prefer to live in a culture where the 20%, the neurodivergent, were seen as gifted, someone to be nurtured, supported and valued, as we need them to help us evolve. 

We are different, but we are different for a reason, a purpose. 

We are not meant to sit still, we are designed to explore.  We are not meant to be the architect of dreams and the builder. We are not meant to be the inventor and the manufacturer. The writer and the publisher. The artist and the motivated seller. The astronaut and the engineer. The innovator and the implementor. I think you get the idea. 

Two different talents, two different skills. Two different kinds of brains. 

And yet, here we are. Falling short on both ends because our culture has not caught up with our brains. Pressuring us to be normal on a good day and to be it all, always. 

Missing the signs of the creatives, the thought leaders, the innovators, and explorers, simply because they don’t, can’t, or won’t conform. Because they look lazy, or arrogant, or too sensitive. But these are exactly the signs that hold the cues to our own evolution, often to our own survival. 

Things in our culture are changing…slowly. As science influences understanding and understanding influences culture. 

In the meantime, when the voices can stop me from dreaming, from writing for example, because I cannot see how it will end, or where it belongs, or if it will be good enough. I’ve learned to accept that is not my job to know. My job is simply to create, to write, to connect. And trust that it will find its way and all those things along the way. 

I try to find grace for myself in knowing there is no perfection in trying to Be. All. The. Things. But an exquisite beauty is found in expressing my gift of helping you dream your dream into reality. And in doing so I have lived my dream. 

Nothing to build here. That would  be someone else’s dream. I am only an Architect, not a builder. And in Wendy’s Dictionary under Architect it would say Alchemist. 

With love, Wb