FEB 2025 - Different

As a young child I played by myself. It took me a while to understand the concept of friend: someone with whom you could share thoughts and feelings or do stuff with or have sleepovers, or laugh at silly jokes . . . I realized I didn’t have any. Kids on the block avoided me, accusing me of being a goody-goody—never joining in activities I thought were wrong—like stealing, or spoiling their fun by pointing out consequences of their actions. I didn’t defend myself. It wasn’t about being good. My mother often beat me. For no reason. Why would I give her a reason? When kids on the block needed another person for a game, and they reluctantly asked me, I always said yes. When the game ended, I watched them leave. 

When I was eight, I persuaded my mother to let me travel to Manhattan by myself. Every Saturday I took a music or dance lesson, then had the rest of the day to wander around the city. I heard my mother defend her decision when she talked with friends: “Nancy’s not like other kids. She likes to do things by herself.” I didn’t know if this was true. I did know no other mother let her young daughter go off alone whether it was taking the train to the city, roller skating off the block, riding a bike on busy streets, or walking to a nearby park. My mother never told her friends the truth; she wanted me out of the house as much as I wanted to be out. 

At 14, I spent five weeks at a camp I’d attended the year before, still being made fun of by girls for not having my period, shunned by boys who didn’t want me playing softball with them. Doing my best to ignore them, as a work camper, I signed up to join a group who were going to develop a communication system between the swimming hole and dining room. The counselor and the boys who’d signed up tried to persuade me to leave. I was female—the only one. They couldn’t throw me out of the group and I refused to leave. As we did the work, stringing telephone wire, I ignored their jeers, making sure I worked as hard and as long as they did, using my lighter stance to climb higher up in trees. I did work they couldn’t do. 

As a teenager I didn’t like pop music, had no crushes on movie stars, and when I joined Young Progressives for America—a so-called subversive political organization—thinking I’d find kids like me with whom I could be friends, they made fun of my refusal to smoke pot and drink and have sex. At home, I listened to folk music. One song that spoke to me was a Black spiritual: “You have to walk that lonesome valley. You have to walk it by yourself. Ain’t nobody else can walk it for you. You have to walk it all alone.” It was as if the song was talking to me. 

I chose to attend a teacher’s college far from home, even though I yearned to study literature, because after graduating I’d be certified to teach physical education and dance and could support myself financially. I was ostracized by students for not wanting to go to bars, or drink or smoke or date. To get away from campus I joined an outing club at a nearby university and spent weekends hiking and camping with people I barely knew, sure that no one at school would notice I was missing.

Although I married, had a family, and led a meaningful professional life, I was repeatedly told: I was too sensitive, too serious, too intense. I walked my own path. I moved to a different beat. It took participating in a vision quest when I was 80, to feel I belonged—part of a group who valued and welcomed my presence.

What does it take for you to be who you are?

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FEBRUARY 2025 MONTHLY STORIES