Do you have electricity at home? How do you go to the doctor? You’re such a hippy. What a freak!
These are things people ask me when they heard I live in Argentina.
Hippy? I’m a hippy?
It will never cease to amaze to me the notions people have about the life I’ve lived. Yes, I’ve made choices that aren’t the norm. I gave up a job at MTV to go back to school to write. I sold everything I owned to travel without any idea of where I’d end up. And since leaving MTV, I haven’t held a job you’d call traditional.
But this doesn’t mean I’m completely unhinged. I haven’t gone off the rails to roam the world aimlessly. I have rules. They’re just my rules.
I’ll part my hair down the middle and disappear in a VW bus
In my pre-Lila life, I took a 9-month green medicine course at the Open Center in New York. I found an ad for it late one night at a diner. It was a lot of money. I signed up anyway. As part of the section on women’s healthcare and childbirth, we read Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery book.
In 1971, Ina May, her husband Stephen and a bunch of random followers got in a bus and drove across the US. Along the way, they pretty much eschewed all social norms. They had long hippy hair, parted down the middle. They birthed their own babies and finally made their way to Tennesee where they started a midwifery center.
Before reading the book, I had decided I didn’t want children. The stories I’d heard of pregnancy, labor and delivery horrified me. They were cold, impersonal and presented childbirth as something I didn’t want. Ina May’s book made me realize that having a baby doesn’t have to be a cold medical process. She showed me another way to see the world.
Ina May Gaskin shifted the way I saw the world which led to choices that changed my life in a thousand immeasurable often ill-advised ways.
I had a child. I decided I didn’t want to raise a child in NYC so I left. We didn’t have a plan. We figured it out as we went along, which meant I spent the first four years of my daughter’s life traveling, seeing the world, hanging out.
What does it mean to be a freak?
People have called me hardcore, crazy, irresponsible, selfish and yes, they call me a freak, too. I’ve also been called inspirational and brave.
I don’t see myself as any of those things. I’m just doing my best to live my life based on my core values and the information I have at the time.
I was often called freak in high school. I don’t remember why. Shortly after moving to Argentina, a mom I’d known in Brooklyn called me a freak for suggesting her ten-year-old child a nap because they had a late party.
Really? A freak for suggesting a child take a nap? I explained how Lila naps when I know she’ll be out late as often happens in Argentina. Absolutely unacceptable! Ten-year-olds don’t nap. It’s just not done, she lectured to me. “Just because you and your daughter are weirdos, doesn’t mean it’s what normal people do.”
When I told her I live in Argentina where people — adults and children alike — take a siesta in the afternoon, the sentiment changed. Oh, then it’s alright. This makes no sense at all.
Why is it ok for a ten-year-old to nap in Argentina and not in the United States? As long as it’s a norm and you fit in the norm, then it’s ok.
Nothing is normal until someone decides it is.
When we left Brooklyn in 2007, I knew very few people who sold everything and left to travel, with or without children. Now, I know many. I’ve met expats, bloggers and all kinds of people doing all kinds of weird, freaky, outlier things.
I met a mother, father, and son who live full time on a sailboat. They dock for supplies, but most of the time, it’s just the three of them on the water. Definitely not for me.
I know families who stayed in Brooklyn. Not for me either.
I wouldn’t live on a small island, even a tropical one. I’ve done it. Not again.
Instead, I chose to move to Argentina and make a life there. People can throw stones and call me weird, but I don’t really hear them because they don’t matter.
But when a young woman is cruelly mocked because she’s overweight, telling her heifers like her should be put down, Or when a parent is judged for a child’s behavior, assuming the worst of child and parent. Or when a person over a certain aged is deemed too old to tango?
It’s using normal as a weapon too hurt others. People who judge like this bend to the whims of common opinion, never seeing for themselves what they could truly accomplish.
These are the people who will break as old age arrives, hate themselves to death should they gain weight and falter under the weight of shame should a child not fall into the confines of normal. They’ll never know the pleasures of dancing with fate to find the path that suits them.
Different means you’ll never fully fit in anywhere.
When you make choices that veer away from the norm, it’s tough to find a community of people who are like you. This is particularly difficult for kids. Lila is not like any of her friends. Not in Argentina and not in Salta. It breaks a parent’s heart to watch your child try to fit in with the group but always be just a little bit off.
But difference isn’t a curse. It’s a way of seeing differently. It’s a new language. It means not everyone understands you, but it allows for an incredible level of freedom and empathy. When you’re different, it’s easier to be open to others who are different.
And you know what, just about everyone feels out of step at times. Even if they won’t admit it.
When I taught first-year composition at Stern College for Women, I required my students to keep a journal. It was meant to be a journal of reactions to the reading list, but invariably, the young women in my class shared their personal lives.
Almost every woman in the class confessed at some point that she felt as if she was not like anyone else in the class. I am different, each told me. None believed or wanted the same things as what she perceived the group norm wanted.
What a great shame it would be if they could never feel comfortable sharing and comparing their differences.
The story you have to tell, the one that makes you not-normal? I guarantee you are not the only one. Tell your story true, and it will resonate with others.
There’s so much more color and texture in life than just being normal.
Embrace difference! Hug your inner freak!
Travel quickly taught me to unhook from norms. Some cultures consider it disgusting to wear shoes in the house. Others deem eggs for breakfast a sacrilege. In another, the concept of being alone is not only alien, but it’s also to be actively avoided. Even time takes on a different meaning depending on where you live.
These are the things that make this world such a fascinating place. It’s an adventure. It’s the fire in which writers and artists are forged.
