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. Continue reading
I first heard of prosopagnosia about a dozen years ago, in a documentary about a woman who couldn’t recognize members of her own family, with whom she lived. I watched it for the same reasons anyone would – curiosity, and wondering what her very different life might be like.
Over the past few months, my life has been touched by death repeatedly. Cultural icons of my youth are dropping left and right, and I’ve learned a new hesitation to track down old friends and acquaintances. I’ve known elders who commented that everyone they knew was dead or dying, but I hadn’t expected to experience that in middle age. It has suddenly become difficult to ignore the inevitability of my own death, which I had fully expected to go on denying for another two or three decades, at minimum.
sensitive type 