Who Decides What’s Normal?

When I first started on this journey, someone gave me a piece of advice. They told me it was probably better not to tell too many people about what I did because it could be embarrassing and people might think I was weird. At the time, I was stepping into a world that looked very different from the one I had known before. Reiki, energy, ceremony, drumming, firewalking, spirituality, connection to the land… And these weren't necessarily conversations I was used to around the dinner table. There was a part of me that wondered whether they were right. Maybe I should keep certain bits of myself tucked away. Maybe there were things that were acceptable to talk about and others that were better kept quiet.

But the further I've travelled along this path, the more I've found myself wondering... Who actually gets to decide what's normal? Apparently birthing a drum rather than a child is a little unusual. Walking barefoot across a bed of glowing coals probably isn't how most people choose to spend their weekends. I talk to Spirit. I work with energy. I sit in sacred space. I journey to other worlds with the beat of a drum. I study an ancient spiritual tradition and pay attention to the turning of the seasons in a way I never once imagined I would.

And yes, written down like that, I suppose I might sound a little weird. But I’m actually rather fond of weird. What even is normal anyway? We use the word as though there is some universally agreed version of how a human life should look. A certain way to live. A certain way to think. A certain set of things we're allowed to believe. A certain path we're expected to follow. Yet “normal” changes depending on where you live, when you were born, the culture you grew up in, the people around you and the beliefs you've inherited.

Things we consider completely ordinary today would have been utterly bewildering to our ancestors. And things that were woven naturally into their lives like ceremony, folklore, reverence for the land, gathering around fire, watching the skies, listening to the seasons, might now earn you the occasional raised eyebrow. So perhaps normal isn't quite as solid as we like to think it is! Maybe it's simply whatever enough people happen to be doing at the same time.

I wonder how often we edit ourselves to fit it. How many people have interests they don't talk about because their friends might laugh? How many people believe something quietly but would never dare say it aloud? How often do we make choices based not on what feels right for us, but on whether other people will understand them? And perhaps the saddest question of all... How much of ourselves do we leave unexplored because we're frightened somebody might think we're a bit strange?

I spent a lot of years trying to fit into versions of life that looked perfectly normal from the outside. These days, I'm far more interested in whether my life feels like mine. That doesn't mean everybody has to understand it. You don't have to believe what I believe. You don't have to feel what I feel when I stand beside a fire, hold a drum in my hands or step into sacred space. You certainly don't have to want to do any of it yourself.

Difference doesn't require agreement. It simply requires enough space for each of us to find our own way. And perhaps that's what I've come to realise since receiving that advice all those years ago. The things I was once told I might want to hide are now some of the things that bring the greatest meaning to my life. I'm so very glad I decided in the end not to hide them.

So this CHOOSEDAY, perhaps the question isn't whether you're normal.

Perhaps it's who decided what normal was in the first place, and why are we giving them so much power?