It probably goes without saying that we've all known, at some point in our lives, what it feels like not to fit in. Sometimes, that experience is fleeting. Maybe we don't fit in at a particular social gathering or with a particular crowd: they're just not our kind of people. But sometimes, that feeling is more permanent, more entrenched in our psyche. We may not—nor have we ever—fit in with our families, our schoolmates when we were children, our colleagues, or communities. It's a feeling of being alien, of being ostracized, or being other. How did I get here? I don't belong here. And we may end up carrying that feeling around with us for a long time. No matter how hard we may have tried—and may still try—to be as we think we should be, or as others think we should be, we just...can't. There's a force inside of us that keeps rising up, time and again, howling and screaming, I just can't!

There is a chapter in Women Who Run With the Wolves in which Dr. Pinkola Estés talks about the struggle to fit in. She reinterprets the myth of the ugly duckling in such a way that—well, for any woman who's ever felt she just didn't measure up, or just couldn't measure up, no matter how hard she tried—is both incredibly touching and empowering (and also injected with just the right amount of humor).

I think those of us who've experienced what it feels like not to fit in, especially in our own families, have suffered. The quest to find our tribe, to undo all of the shoulds, to banish the inner Tyrant can take a very long time. And it's not without pain. No, it's not without a great deal of pain. It's The Tyrant, I think, who's the last to go. Who's the beast that needs to be put down. She's the one who carries on the work of dictating who and how we should be long after our parents and others have stopped. And she's great at inflicting punishment, at letting us know when we're not worthy, when we've screwed things up, when we haven't measured up…again.

But it's my experience that the more clearly we can see her, the more firmly we can look her in the eye, the better we can defy her. When I am able to see the shoulds in action, I can stand up and say, these aren't my rules! And I won't live by them or measure my worth by them anymore. I won't do what I'm supposed to do. I won't be well-behaved. And I won't be nice. Because that's already cost me too much. 

It is that kind of acting, that kind of ego-wish to belong at all costs, that knocks out the Wild Woman connection in the psyche. Then instead of a vital woman, you have a nice woman who is declawed. Then you have a well-behaved, well-meaning, nervous woman, panting to be good. No, it is better, more graceful, and far more soulful to just be what and as you are and let other creatures be what they are, too.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés

It is not only possible, but desirable to love and respect other people without subjecting ourselves to their rules (or subjecting them to ours). Love them as they are, but do not bend your will. Do not try to make yourself fit where you do not fit. That's a lesson that doesn't come without pain. Although, I think it ultimately frees us to love and be loved more completely. 

I also think it frees us to operate from a place of honesty in all of our relationships. To my mind, honesty, in this case, means free from the shoulds, which are disingenuous by nature. To be honest means to allow myself to be guided by intuition, by my true inner law. My intuition does not lead me to act against my best interests, against my values, and she doesn't ask me to lie. That is, she doesn't put me in a position of weakness, of smallness. She doesn't turn me into a self-effacing, nice woman. Only The Tyrant does that. My intuition asks me to do hard things instead, to summon courage when I think I have none, to keep moving, keep creating even when it seems there's no reason and no hope. To be someone I can be proud of, that's what she asks. And what more can any of us expect from ourselves than that?