One of my favorite recent finds is The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, by global mental health and trauma expert, Gabor Mate, and his son Daniel Mate. This book, along with others, has really got me reconsidering our focus on “normal”. It is becoming clearer to me every day, that normal, doesn’t mean good, healthy, or natural. But what does it mean?

According to Miriam Webster, normal means “conforming to a type, standard… characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, routine.” And stemming from the Latin word, norma, which refers to a carpenter’s (or architect’s) T-square.