Gawky is a State of Mind

It might not be a bad one, either.

My early days of creating this site were truly awkward. I began with the worst names. The first was The GAD Owner’s Manual. Yes, the url was equally long and ridiculous. Ha!

I “graduated” to Blind Elephant. Haha! This was the type of imagery I used for Blind Elephant, the site for overthinkers.

Beautiful, but odd for a stress website?

My first days of writing were equally stilted. I remember sharing my early posts and wanting people to read them, yet being terrified they would.

“Look at this! Not too closely! Wait, yes, do look!”

It was all…gawky.

No such thing as a gawky elephant, but an elephant in the room is pretty awkward.

It reminds me of the message in a bottle bobbling off the coast of Oregon on our Beautiful Voyager Map. That message has these words of advice for future travelers:

“You gotta go through gawky to get to graceful.”

Gawky is an unavoidable part of the journey. Thinking you can skip over gawky is like thinking you can go from being a child to being an adult without living through perms and braces: it just isn't going to happen.

I can't pretend to have achieved graceful yet. I can, however, finally see it on the horizon.

Damn does it look appealing.

I can see why so many want people to skip gawky to get there.

And yet…Having lived gawky for a few years now, I’ll share what artists and comedians have known since time began:

If you can build the stamina, sharing the gawky is what transforms you.

“Fake it til you make it” never worked for me.

In part, this is because no one wants to do it. It takes strength and courage to get out there and reveal your true gawky self. But this is exactly why we need to do it.

I’m in the middle of Roxane Gay’s new book, Hunger, right now. It’s a pretty powerful testament to the power of revealing the awkward…the gawky…the unseemly…without apologies. The sheer strength of it is undeniable. This is the birthplace of true grace.

So bring on the gawky, everyone. Let’s see it, in all of its absurd, funny, awful, painful, true, beauty.

love, Meredith