My Grandmother's Gifts

If anyone had asked me a month ago what my grandmother was like, I would have said she was a mean and crazy bitch who made everyone’s life miserable. A couple of weeks ago, I had a Weirdness Gone Wild experience (look for it on a future posting) that, if I were a shrink, I would’ve had myself committed for being delusional. And I thought of my grandmother. She was diagnosed as being schizophrenic with multiple personalities and had several nervous breakdowns. And since it’s in the genes, I thought, and since she was crazy, maybe I am too…. And then I thought, or maybe she wasn’t.

Now I realize that she was, in fact, crazy but not the way my family thinks. The ‘gifts’ she had were not what the craziness was about. If she were a medium or a channel or a psychic at a time when no one knew much about, or accepted, these gifts, and living in a small East Texas town, she had no space to explore her experiences. She had no one to talk to… no one to share insights with. And, I’ve realized, that is enough to make you crazy.

I had another Weirdness Gone Wild experience yesterday that I don’t understand, and it’s that lack of understanding that’s making me crazy. It’s not the gift itself. So, my question is… how do you explore your gifts and not feel crazy?

During one of my grandmother’s nervous breakdowns, she antiqued her furniture burnt orange. Luckily, living in Austin, folks just think I’m a Longhorn fan. Think I’ll go paint some furniture….

Melissa