C is for Community

“If you decide to confide in others, you’ll discover you’re not alone.”

I’ve had that line in my email signature for well over a decade. It describes why I write what I do, why people tell me I have an authentic voice. I write and I talk and I share so that I don’t feel alone. Parenting gifted and twice-exceptional kids can be so incredibly isolating. Unless you live it, you don’t get it. And even if you get it, you’re living it slightly differently.

But now I’m parenting a young adult and a teenager. After years of hammering into their heads that the internet is forever, privacy rules my sharing. Whereas I used to write about the challenges of parenting them, now I honor their stories by acknowledging that those are their stories, not mine. It’s much harder to confide in others, and that much easier to feel like you’re the only one in your boat. The fog of confusion prevents you from seeing others hanging on for dear life with you.

We humans need the comfort of community now more than ever. The world has gone crazy and more often than not I feel like I’m barely hanging on. Experience has taught me that I’m not alone in this, and the different communities to which I belong prove that true. As much as I need community, it’s also so hard to participate and be present with others; as I write this I’m hiding from the world because I’m just done with everyone and everything, including myself. I get about ten seconds into anything and I have to tap out for my own sanity,

All that said, without people in our lives who get it, life gets a lot harder. There are groups on Facebook (I co-admin this one) and GHF Learners has a spankin’ new online community (this has a lot of promise and I’m excited to help it grow). Somehow I’ve become an experienced parent (bwahahahahahahaaaa) who has seen things (truth, I have, and survived the experience) and I share and help others feel less alone.

Find and join an online community. Confide in others. You’re not alone.

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This is the next in my “whenever-I-remember” series, The ABCs of G2e. Posts on various aspects of gifted and twice-exceptional lives and learning. Why G2e? Because I’m lazy and writing out gifted and twice-exceptional a bazillion times makes me a little nuts…and it just flows better.