What can I say about Kirsten Anderberg? I discovered her mailing list when I was researching liquid soap, I think, about six months ago. I think it was an article about how using Dr Bronner's liquid soap to brush your teeth with is considered to be counter-culture in the USA. Is America really that conservative?
Anyway, I like her stuff, and I like her voice. I've just been waiting for an excuse to post something from her here. I don't need an excuse, but I'd like to add my own opinion on something rather than just post a link for the sake of it. This is my blog afterall...
This latest email from her struck a chord. I did more or less the same thing as her while I was growing up. It can be hard to feel that you fit in somewhere, and it can be even harder to feel that every part of you fits in the same place, particularly when those parts of you are quite diverse and not particularly well integrated anyway. How do you find a place that accepts your weirdness and lets you be yourself?
I was gutted when I realised that people don't really change as they grow older and there is no end to the cliquey behaviour and the endless dross.
I think the first step is realising that the place you are in restricts you. This was a hard step for me. The second step is deciding to do something about it. I can't think of many times in my life when I have made a conscious decision to change something about my life that I didn't like. For most people I know, what you get given in terms of friends and such is the material you start with and then you work with that to build a life. Walking away from that is almost unheard of. But that is what I did.
I don't know if it was even as simple and direct as that, or whether I can only piece it together in hindsight, but that is basically what happened. I lit the blue touchpaper of my life and stood well back while it exploded.
Now that I have picked up the pieces and fished the superglue out of the drawer I've cobbled together something that resembles the life I want to have. There are still some bits missing, and I have a bag of misshapen bits that don't fit anywhere (don't you always have bits left over when you do DIY?) but on the whole the thing looks OK. I'm quite surprised by that - since it has only really come together in the last few weeks - but it is quite a nice place to be.
Kirsten's email list is still going, as well as her website and I think she's on YouTube too, but if you like things delivered to your inbox, then you can subscribe to her email list here.
