“Oh, please. He’s not dead,” Cordy replied, and then, butterfly-minded, poked our father with her heel and changed the subject.
– Eleanor Brown

I just finished reading The Weird Sisters for the second time in less than a year. Why? For the line above. For the adjective that is the namesake of my blog. In this quick, minor line, in one adjective, I found permission to be who I am. As I’ve written about ad nauseum, I’ve struggled for a long time with my identity. I tend to blow with the wind, immersing myself in interests, hobbies, subjects til I’ve learned as much as my attention span will permit, and then moving on to the next interest/hobby/subject. After making a couple of quilts, and recognizing I didn’t have the precision for quilting, or knitting a few hats and realizing I didn’t have the patience for knitting, or working in ecology labs and realizing I don’t have the analytical and mathematical mind for scientific research, or any number of other dabblings (soap-making, jewelry-making, photography, nutrition, organic living), I was feeling pretty bad about my inability to commit. I’d beat myself up that I couldn’t seem to stick with one thing long enough to become truly skilled, instead flitting from one new interest to another.

But when I read that line about Cordelia, my favorite of the three Shakespearian-named weird sisters – the bread-baking hippie wanderer, the loveable one, the one I wanted to hang out and laugh with, the one who flits – I think I may have actually gasped. Butterfly-minded! What an elegant descriptor! An adjective more sophisticated than “flighty,” more likable than “fickle,” more beautiful than “generalist.” An adjective calmer than “restless.” The perfect word to make someone who flits feel good and light and loveable for being so changeable.

This is excerpted from There’s Power in that Adjective, originally published November 15, 2012.