Since I didn’t discover I was an HSP until I was over 50, I’ve got a lot of personal backstory that I’ve never revisited through the lens of personality type. Sometimes things drop suddenly from the overflowing attic of my past to unveil themselves in a new light.

The Words of Nature

Certain writers evoke transcendent experiences of the natural world. In my 20s, when I was introduced to Mary Oliver’s poetry, I began to think of them as nature ecstatics. Strangely, this is not necessarily what others noticed about their writing, but as for me, I could relate.

Mary Oliver wasn’t my first nature ecstatic – the first was probably Sara Teasdale. An author gave me a book of her poems for children when I was in elementary school. Soon after, I encountered Lucy Maude Montgomery (best known for her prose, but definitely a nature ecstatic). I found Yeats’ Lake Isle of Innisfree when I was in high school. Somehow, I made it all the way to my 30s before I heard of Rumi.

Much later, I came to understand I was an HSP. It didn’t take long to notice that all of my favorite, nature ecstatic poets were decidedly HSP-ish too. Or, as L.M. Montgomery would call them, kindred spirits. 

But I never read any poetry by Theodore Roethke, even though I lived for many years in a place where he had also lived for many years. However, I did sing one of his poems, more than 30 years ago, in a community choir. And as I put myself to bed one night, a long-forgotten line from that poem-set-to-music wafted through my mind, followed by another. I sat up, and looked up the rest of it. A nature ecstatic. And surely, an HSP.

HSP sensibility has been hovering in the wings of my mind all my life. I felt it each time I encountered it, yet I couldn’t quite piece together those separate experiences into a single picture until I understood my own nature.

Some people like to throw away the past to simplify their present: literally, by purging property, or in memory. But to me, that would be like cutting off my feet at the ankles while I was standing on them. Stitching together the fragments of my history into a continuous and unified pattern is such a relief. I finally feel whole.

The Waking

By Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.