Breaking Free from Societal Expectations: A Story of Coming Home to Yourself

The smell of grilled chicken and weed smoke mingles with the distant thrum of guitar. The Allman Brothers Band is playing somewhere beyond the food stands, their sound carrying across the festival grounds where my parents’ booth sits, serving up burritos and BBQ to hungry concert-goers. I’m twelve, manning the cash box while my brother preps more chicken on a stick, both of us working with the practiced ease of kids born into this life.

This was my normal. Weekends spent trailing behind food booths at music festivals while my classmates played soccer or took dance lessons. But “normal” is a complicated word when you’re splitting your life between jam bands and a tiny Appalachian mountain town of 2,000 souls, where outsiders are viewed with suspicious eyes and too many absences from school are noted with disapproval.

The contrast was jarring. Monday through Friday I navigated the rigid expectations of small-town life. Many weekends and every summer transformed into a blur of familiar strangers, the sweet smoke of festival fires, and the endless rhythm of feeding crowds while Stevie Nicks or Phish provided the soundtrack. I learned early that life doesn’t always fit into neat boxes. Sometimes it spills over the edges, messy and complicated and real.

What people don’t understand about festival life is the relentless physical toll. While crowds danced and celebrated, we worked hundred-hour weeks, standing for 12-hour stretches, our bodies aching from constant motion. Sleep, when it came, meant squeezing into a cramped camper or tent, trying to rest while bass from nearby stages vibrated through your bones. The smell of grease permeated everything – clothes, skin, hair – a heavy, clinging reminder of work that never seemed to end. Even now, decades later, that smell triggers memories I’d rather forget.

I didn’t understand then why everything felt so overwhelming. Why the constant sensory assault of festival life with the endless noise, the pressing crowds, the chaotic energy that left me feeling raw and exposed. Why I couldn’t just adapt like everyone else seemed to. Why after a couple days of festival life left me in tears and with every nerve exposed. It would be years before I understood that being autistic meant my brain processed everything differently, that what others found exciting often left me overwhelmed and desperate for quiet. 

Our position in our small Appalachian town was complicated. We were the weird family, the ones who disappeared for weekends and entire summers, trailing smoke and stories up and down the East Coast. Yet my grandfather had been the high school principal – a position of respect in a town of 2,000 people. This strange duality meant we were both outsiders and somehow still connected to the town’s establishment. People gossiped, judged, yet couldn’t quite dismiss us entirely.

As I got older, the weekend trips evolved into longer absences. We stayed with my grandparents more often while my mom began traveling for longer stretches with my father, who had been doing the majority of shows. Summers became a blur of festivals, each one bleeding into the next. School was a constant negotiation – how many absences were too many, how to catch up on missed work, how to explain our lives to teachers who couldn’t quite understand our family’s choices.

Looking back, I can see how this double life shaped me. In our small mountain town, difference was something to be smoothed over, hidden away. But at the festivals, difference was currency. The more unique you were, the more you belonged. We served fried alligator alongside traditional BBQ, watched suit-wearing accountants dance barefoot in mud, and made lifelong friends with people we’d only see a few weekends a year. Every festival was a chance for reinvention, a new world.

The darkness crept in during my teenage years. Depression wrapped itself around me like a heavy blanket, born from years of trying to exist between worlds, of never quite belonging anywhere. The constant disruption, the lack of stability, the exhaustion of being different took its toll. I watched people die at festivals, saw cars and tents searched for drugs, witnessed the darker side of this free-spirited lifestyle, carried burdens too heavy for a child to understand.

In response, I tried desperately to conform. In our small, gossip-driven town, survival meant learning to mask who you really were. I became a master at people-pleasing, at making myself smaller, quieter, masking and trying to be more acceptable. When I moved out on my own, I attempted to follow the traditional script – regular job, normal schedule, conventional life. I failed miserably. You can’t force yourself to be something you’re not, no matter how hard you try.

But here’s the thing about scripts. They only work if you’re playing a part that fits. I didn’t understand then what I know now: that being autistic meant my brain was different from the start. All those years of feeling out of step, of being overwhelmed by the constant transitions, of struggling to fit in weren’t character flaws. They were just part of who I am. And I’m perfectly ok with that. More than ok…happy.

The journey to acceptance isn’t linear. Some days, the smell of grease still makes my stomach turn. The echo of bass-heavy music can still trigger memories of sleepless nights and aching feet. But I’ve learned to hold space for the duality of the experience: the magic and the trauma, the freedom and the fear, the uniqueness and the longing for normalcy. It took many years of space and healing to hold those opposing truths comfortably. Understanding my autism helped me make sense of why certain aspects of that life were so difficult, why the constant change and sensory overload left such deep marks.

It wasn’t until my thirties that I finally let go actually. Let go of trying to be normal. Let go of apologizing for my differences. Let go of the guilt about not loving every moment of my unconventional childhood. Something powerful happens when you stop fighting against your own nature and start working with it instead.

My brother and I took such different paths from our shared beginning. He embraced the lifestyle, turning festival food service into his profession, making his peace with the road. I became a therapist, finding my way to helping others navigate their own complex journeys though I’ve found my way to different work. Maybe we both learned to transform our experiences: him into a business, me into understanding. Two kids from the same festival stand, each finding our own way to make sense of our unconventional childhood.

Now, at 39, my hair is half-grey and I wear it proudly. I’m a proud forger of my own trail, my clothes are loud with color and pattern, and my life still doesn’t fit any conventional mold. I prefer being home now. Those years of constant movement left me with a deep appreciation for stillness. But the festival spirit never really leaves you. It lives in the way I see the world, in my openness to different ways of being, in my belief that community can form in the most unexpected places.

That twelve-year-old girl counting cash at the festival stand grew up to understand something important: there’s no single way to be in this world. Sometimes the very things that make us feel most different like our unusual childhoods, our divergent minds, our inability to fit neatly into society’s boxes, are actually our greatest gifts.

I may have grown up between worlds, but I finally understand that I don’t have to choose one. I can be both the festival kid and the homebody, the free spirit and the person who needs routine, the one who’s different and the one who belongs. All these seemingly contradictory pieces make up who I am, and for the first time in my life, that feels like enough.

The music of those festival days still plays in my memory. The Allman Brothers blending into Government Mule, Tom Petty’s voice carrying across crowded fields. It reminds me that life’s sweetest moments often come when we stop trying to follow someone else’s rhythm and finally dance to our own.

This is just one thread of a much larger tapestry. There are deeper stories buried beneath these memories, harder truths still waiting to be told. But for now, this piece of my history sits here, a reminder that our most difficult experiences often forge our strongest selves. Sometimes the very things that break us open are the things that ultimately set us free.

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Your story matters too. What parts of yourself have you hidden to fit in? Which pieces of your past have shaped you in ways you’re still understanding? If you’ve ever felt caught between worlds, struggled to belong, or fought to accept your own unique path? I’d love to hear your story. Share in the comments below, or if it feels safer, write it just for yourself. Sometimes naming our truth is the first step to owning it.

With gentle understanding, 

Katy