Whether giftedness itself is a burden depends entirely on whether you have experienced true understanding from others. Feeling grossly misunderstood your entire life is most definitely a burden. There may also be aspects of asynchrony and intensity that make life more challenging. I recently found a file of old journals. My senior year journal, shared only with my … [Read more...] about There’s No One Way to Be Gifted
community
Resolution Reframe
It was during the eight weeks of the SENG Parent group that I began to reflect on my experiences as a gifted child. I realized that I had let my gifted identity go underground, as many gifted girls do. This really gave me the tools to help my daughters think and talk about their giftedness. My New Year’s resolution is the same this year as it has been for much of my … [Read more...] about Resolution Reframe
The Gifted Journey: How My Definition of Gifted Has Changed Throughout My Life
I’ve seen the many ways that the word gifted can affect an individual, whether it’s a newfound sense of identity, a sense of relief, or, my favorite, a realization that there are other people out there like you. In seeing this over the last few years, I’ve learned that for many, the word gifted is a community. It is a place to call home. It is a safe space. It is a place to be … [Read more...] about The Gifted Journey: How My Definition of Gifted Has Changed Throughout My Life
Building an Online Gifted Learning Community
Online G3 has been a way to give not only my own daughter but also many students in the broader gifted community a means to find their own identities as gifted individuals in an active, diverse community that inspires friendship and support daily...Without this unique opportunity to give back to the gifted community, my own ties to my gifted identity would have never been so … [Read more...] about Building an Online Gifted Learning Community
Conversations of Sustenance
So many mentors have nurtured and sustained me—the gifted therapists, the systems thinkers and second order cyberneticians, the deep ecologists and naturalists, the school founders, the teens I have mentored who have become my peers in time, and the children who have trusted me and grace my life. I know I’m not unusual in going through much of my early life feeling like … [Read more...] about Conversations of Sustenance
The Long Winding Path of Giftedness
Suddenly, there was this community out there who knew my battles, who didn't make me feel like a parental failure because of my outlier son, and who understood that it was possible to have a preschooler who demanded scientifically accurate bedtime stories on the same day he got his head stuck in a friend’s banister. Late 1970s. Books, books, and more books. No one … [Read more...] about The Long Winding Path of Giftedness