Today, Kaitlin Smith, MSW, shares her vision of giftedness through the Gifted Interview. Thank you, Kaitlin! She is the founder of Our Wild Minds and Ph.D student in History of Science at Harvard. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
.IF I COULD CHOOSE, WOULD I STILL BE GIFTED?
I would definitely choose to be gifted because, otherwise, I would be a fundamentally different person in virtually every arena and I see my life as a gift!
.WHAT BEING GIFTED MEANS TO ME
To overflow with (wild) life.
.IF I HAD TO CHOOSE AN IMAGE OR A KEYWORD THAT SUMS UP WHAT GIFTEDNESS MEANS
A human body teeming with life.
.HOW LONG HAVE I KNOWN ABOUT IT?
I believe that I was first introduced to the concept of giftedness in elementary school around the time that I was accelerated, underwent testing, and ultimately began participating in Talented and Gifted programming.
.WHAT PHASES HAVE I GONE THROUGH SINCE MY DISCOVERY?
Since being accelerated, identified as gifted, and pulled out of my public school classroom to participate in the Talented and Gifted program, I found that I was more of a target for bullying behavior than before, though that is difficult to tease apart from other social factors relevant to my situation. I did not resume thinking about giftedness seriously until my mid-20s when I was facing explicit resistance from various people for just being myself (e.g., being “too intellectual” for many of my colleagues in the mental health field, too intellectually “weird” for many putatively intellectual people in academia, and too existential / generally intense for a number of close relations). Various challenging situations related to these themes prompted me to seek answers, first as a personal quest and later as one component of my broader professional mission.
.HOW DO I EXPLAIN IT TO SOMEONE WHO HAS NEVER HEARD OF IT?
While describing giftedness, I tend to lean heavily on Mary-Elaine Jacobsen’s definition of giftedness which emphasizes the presence of atypical levels of intensity, complexity, and drive across various areas of intelligence, including Howard Gardner’s (several) multiple intelligences.
.HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE (TO KNOW IT)
When I re-encountered this concept in young adulthood, it empowered me to cease the exhausting task of trying to derive satisfaction from professional situations, relationships, and ways of relating to myself that were doomed to fail because they required a denial of various basic truths about myself. Dispensing with all of this liberated untold amounts of energy which only increased as I took gradual action to align my life with that understanding (an ongoing process).
.WHAT IRRITATES ME WITH GIFTEDNESS
The negative connotations associated with giftedness as a concept and that often seem to limit productive discussion of the important, wide-ranging phenomenon that goes by this name.
.WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO EMPHASIZE ABOUT GIFTEDNESS
Giftedness can be conceptualized as a form of neurodivergence that gives rise to specific needs, challenges, and opportunities at the level of the individual. This helps to counteract the erroneous notion that when someone speaks of giftedness, the only way to understand it is as an assertion of superiority rather than need. Definitions of giftedness that decenter the academic experience in favor of a more holistic view of functioning helps to bring forth this multidimensional experience that encompasses difficulties and strengths at the level of the individual and the population.
.WHAT I PERSONALLY FIND TO BE THE MOST DIFFICULT
Needing to work with what resources and support I had to devise a professional structure conducive to authenticity, respect, and contentment without a clear map was quite challenging for many years and remains an ongoing process.
.WHAT I PERSONALLY LOVE
I don’t believe that I have ever been bored when left to my own devices. It consistently blows my mind when I encounter people who complain about being bored and needing other people or junk media to entertain them. Therefore, one of the things I love is the wellspring of curiosity that keeps me consciously engaged with the world as well as a rich inner life.
.MY WELLBEING TOOL OR PRACTICE THAT HELPS ME MOST
Adhering to a highly particular diet that reduces inflammation in my body without caving to social pressure. Severely limiting sugars and concentrated carbohydrates has been an especially helpful addition that had a near-instantaneous impact, significantly improving my baseline emotional state and ability to take massive action toward my goals. One of my mottos around food is “there is nothing that tastes better than feeling good.”
.A MISREPRESENTATION THAT I WANT TO CALL INTO QUESTION
There are a host of issues of great importance to me related to the convergence of blackness and giftedness. One of these issues is the underidentification of Black gifted people in the United States, for example. Another is the racist and eugenicist context in which IQ tests emerged in our country and continue to be deployed in discourse (see the reference to S. J. Gould below for more information). In a society in which blackness has been constructed as the antithesis of genius, it can be very hard for a gifted Black person to navigate the world without evoking bafflement, disbelief, gaslighting, and any number of other reactions that imbue one’s gifted experience with trauma. These dynamics give rise not just to immense challenges for the gifted Black person with the neurotypical majority but with members of the gifted community, particularly when the individuals they encounter have not embarked upon a rigorous process of unlearning racism. Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to be an Antiracist offers a rich starting point for anyone who would like to explore this.
.WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO GIFTED PEOPLE
- If you’re still here (in this body), it’s never too late to take steps toward greater authenticity and fuller expression of your gifts.
- It’s not possible to ensure that every person on the planet gets you. What actually matters to you?
- You are the final authority on your inner experience.
.WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT CONCERNED
If you resonate with the concept of giftedness but are completely unconcerned about its role in your life, congratulations and feel free to return here if that changes! If you do not think of giftedness as something that has played a direct role in your life, consider how you might be able to put these ideas into practice within your spheres of influence (e.g., work, family, etc) to support someone who could benefit from an empathetic peer.
.WHAT I WOULD RECOMMEND TO SOMEONE WHO IS WONDERING
Explore some books, connect with a coach and/or online community space for gifted people, take what feels useful to you, and leave the rest.
.A BOOK TO READ ON THE SUBJECT
I’ve particularly enjoyed Mary-Elaine Jacobsen’s The Gifted Adult as well as Paula Prober’s Your Rainforest Mind.
.MY OPINION ABOUT THE IQ WAIS TEST
My opinion is that IQ tests, like the WAIS test, are potentially useful for quantifying certain capacities but that intelligence is far more vast and complex than what such assessments can capture (hence approaches such as Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory). Further, the use of IQ tests to advance oppressive social agendas is a longstanding problem that paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science Stephen Jay Gould addressed in his landmark book The Mismeasure of Man. Though the book was first published in 1981, it still offers a valuable entry point into this important subject for contemporary readers.
.IS IT A WASTE NOT TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE GIFTED?
First, I fundamentally disagree that any person’s life (including a gifted person’s life) can be a waste. I think that if a gifted person is able to operate in the world without any apparent difficulty related to the expression of their true nature, then they are immensely fortunate. Not knowing that one is gifted and struggling to come to terms with (and resolve) some of the underlying drivers of recurrent distress related to giftedness might make life much more challenging and less rewarding for them than if they had that information. It is worth noting, though, that there are many social contexts in which it is much more challenging to reconcile giftedness with available vehicles for social/professional expression. So while knowing that one is gifted might be helpful in such a case for affirming one’s inner reality, there are a host of other factors that determine one’s capacity to live authentically and rewardingly in the world that may not be resolved in the individual’s favor as a result of discovering their giftedness (and this juxtaposition could even invite deeper depression if someone sees their plight as unchangeable).
If we view the individual from the outside, however, I dislike the implication that it is the gifted person’s duty, especially once identified, to then make contributions of a certain magnitude in order to avoid “wasting” their gifts. I believe that gifted people ought to be accountable, first and foremost, to their own inner needs where making a highly visible “mark on the world” may or may not be a personal priority. For many people (including gifted people), merely surviving the challenges laid before them can be a miraculous feat and making personal progress in unassuming ways can be a quiet revolution of great meaning.
.WHEN I MEET ANOTHER GIFTED PERSON, DO I RECOGNIZE HIM.HER? BY WHAT?
I find this question a bit tough because manifestations of giftedness are so diverse but the gifted people that tend to inspire the strongest immediate recognition are people who communicate in ways that convey a depth of thought, feeling, and moral sensibility at once and who are clearly highly passionate about being alive.
.A WISH FOR THE FUTURE
To live in a world in which all beings receive the support and respect necessary to express their consciousness in ways that are meaningful to them.
.THE MISSING QUESTION, WHICH I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO ANSWER ON THE SUBJECT?
Who are some gifted people who inspire you?
Terrence Malick, Bill T. Jones, David Abram, Bayo Akomolafe, Sophie Strand, Jack Halberstam, Kevin Quashie, Donna Haraway.
