Lidia Yuknavitch calls herself a misfit. In my eyes she’s a Perfect Reject.
I just saw the TED blog where Lidia Yuknavitch the author calls herself a misfit. She failed out of college a few times, had two failed marriages and lived homeless, under an overpass. She is the author of “The Chronology of Water“, “Dora“ and “The Small Backs of Children“.
“I love this word because it’s such a literal word,” she says. “It means a person who missed fitting in. A person who fits badly.”
During her TED talk she calls out to other misfits in the audience to tell their stories.
“There’s a myth in most cultures about following your dreams. It’s called the ‘hero’s journey.’ I prefer another myth to the side of that, or underneath it maybe. It’s called the ‘misfit’s myth,’” she says. “You may not know this yet, but you have the ability to reinvent yourself, endlessly. That’s your beauty.”
“You can be a drunk. You can be an abuse survivor. You can be an ex-con. You can be a homeless person,” she says. “You can lose all your money or your job or your husband or your wife or, the worst thing of all, a child. You can even lose your marbles.”
“You can be standing dead center in the middle all of your failure,” she says, “and still I’m only here to tell you: you are so beautiful and your story deserves to be heard. Because you, you rare and phenomenal misfit– you new species — are the only one in the room who can tell the story the way only you would.”