I’d never built a website before. The many days and weeks of floundering around as I researched, experimented, made mistakes, and crept forward occupied me and gave me a mission that filled the void where my job had been.

Over time, as the website went live and I shifted my focus to writing posts and e-books, I began to make contact with people who I connected with easily. They became my new colleagues.

Slowly, very slowly – often too slowly – the connections I made and the multitude of experiments I conducted using the website as a base began to steer my course. The website took on the role of mirror and path, showing me myself and showing me the way forward.

Bit by bit, I learned how to focus who I am and what I want for myself into services and products others value enough to pay for. Since the lay-off, I’ve been unwilling to put all my eggs in one basket again, preferring an income composed of lots of diverse sources, which feels more stable and within my control. This has taken longer to create, for me, than simply finding another job, and has had its rough patches – long ones, sometimes.

Over the past two years, I’ve done more than revive my income. I’ve come home, thanks to following the trail of Highly Sensitive Power. The spreadsheet where I track my income shows 16 different sources of income now. My colleagues have become my friends. And my path unwinds before me more clearly than ever.

Thank you for helping me. Your presence alone gave me fuel when I was stuck and stranded and needed power. Your emails and comments, the phone conversations we’ve had, the look in your eyes when we’ve met, and the connections we’ve made helped me see myself and love myself. I adore you.

What’s next? My current growth spurt has me grappling (for the first time in two years) with issues like having to choose between things I love because there’s only so much time in a day. If I love everything I’m doing, how do I choose which ones not to do, in order to sleep and stay balanced? Well, I’m figuring that out, in a floundering + learning sort of way.

In the process, I may not post articles here as often or as regularly as I have been, but I am still here, still curious, still creating, and still adoring you. Stay tuned.

~ ~ ~

If you or someone you know is interested is writing a guest post for Highly Sensitive Power, or if you consider yourself successfully sensitive, I invite you to check out the guidelines below and send me your creation, which I’ll consider for publication on Highly Sensitive Power. See the About page for my email address.

Guest Posts – About 400 words on the topic of Highly Sensitive Power (the website’s tagline, “empowering sensitivity through curiosity, creativity, and community” and the many posts in the blog give you an idea of the broad scope of interpretation possible); not previously published anywhere else. Feel free to run possible topics by me before you write.

Successfully Sensitive – Answer the following questions, in this order: In what way are you most successfully sensitive? What or who has inspired you to embrace your sensitivity? What are your eternal fascinations? What quest currently captivates you? What is your favourite kind of support to give? Aim for succinct answers to the questions, rather than long ones. Include a 100-word-max bio (including a link or two to you, if you want) and a photo.

Related reading: Successfully Sensitive | Samantha Reynolds, Avoid the Rush – Finish Last

Photos by Grace

]]> http://www.highlysensitivepower.com/2010/05/two-years-later/feed/ 4 http://www.highlysensitivepower.com/2010/04/ode-to-non-hsp-friends/ http://www.highlysensitivepower.com/2010/04/ode-to-non-hsp-friends/#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:01:32 +0000 Grace Kerina http://www.highlysensitivepower.com/?p=6697 My non-HSP friends help me in ways that make my life easier, like when …

1. They cut to the chase and instantly see two options I can choose from rather than the 3,327 options I had been grappling with. I’m so thankful then because I suddenly see how to take action.
2. They tease me about my sensitivities in ways that are very loving and accepting and, in the process, help me take myself less seriously. (Non-HSP: “Okay, since I’m ready to leave the house, that must mean it’ll take you ten more minutes of sock wrinkle abatement and whatnot. No problem. I’ll be reading in the living room. Honk the horn when you’re in the car with your hand on the key.”)
3. They understand and accept my tongue-in-cheek motto – “Adjustments Must Be Made” – and even say it out loud themselves when they’re trying to understand me. (“Are you going to be fiddling around with the pillows during the entire DVD, or what? Oh, right, ‘Adjustments Must Be Made.’ I’ll wait.”)
4. They ask me for help, knowing I see things in a way they don’t, then listen with an open mind.
5. They get things done quickly when time is of the essence and when I would have taken a long time so as to make quadruply sure I didn’t leave anything out or undone, on principle, rather than because it really mattered.
6. They help me in social situations, by holding my hand and doing the talking for both of us while I get my bearings, or checking up on me regularly, or introducing me to a quiet friend they think I’ll like.
7. They are the same as me. When I notice their sameness, our common traits, and the many ways we are alike, it reminds me that together we are a whole and healthy humanity, a combination of samenesses and differences that works. We are peas in the same human pod and I’m glad to be here with them. I’m glad we are a we.

Related reading: Specifics Trump Stereotypes, Book | Kinship with All Life

Flickr photo: together, by eflon

One of the earliest articles I wrote on Highly Sensitive Power was about HSP Gatherings. It’s now almost two years later and I’ll be attending one in a few months, right here on the little island in British Columbia where I live.

Jacquelyn Strickland, the mastermind behind the HSP Retreat Gatherings, hosted a Gathering here on Gabriola Island a few years ago, which I didn’t attend, but wanted to. Though I didn’t move to Gabriola Island to save on lodging costs during the Gathering, I’m definitely now in the right place at the right time. I’m enjoying helping Jacquelyn pull the details together, including plans for a hike I’ll lead through and around Drumbeg Provincial Park, which is just along the shore from the little bay I live on.

People come from all over to attend HSP Gatherings — they’re not only for whoever’s in the area. June in the Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia is a prime vacation destination. Perhaps I’ll see you here then.

For more information, visit the June HSP Gathering info page on Jacquelyn’s website. Please let me or Jacquelyn know if you have any questions.

Photo taken from Drumbeg Provincial Park, Gabriola Island, BC, by Grace Kerina

Related reading: The Power of Community, HSP Gatherings

What’s it like to work with a highly sensitive professional? My own experiences have been marvellous and life-changing. The flurry of activity Jenna Avery and I are in the thick of as we bring The Sensitive Professionals Network further into the public eye offer a good example.

When Jenna and I work together, I relax into the process in a way that’s unique and that I often experience when I collaborate and work with other HSPs. The quality and depth of our collaboration continually please and amaze me. Here are some of the specific and positive qualities I’ve noticed as we’ve worked together:

• We listen to each other. No issue is too odd or too small or too hot to delve into. And when we’ve delved, the project and our relationship are better.
• We solicit each other’s opinions. We genuinely want to know what the other person thinks and we value our perspectives, even when they’re different, which they often are.
• We bend as needed. There’s blessedly little ego in the collaboration. We each have the ability and willingness to move aside and let the project be the star.
• When we disagree, no one has to win. We set the topic aside and gather more information. Or we wait. Or one of us simply lets go. There’s no winner and no loser. Only forward motion.
• We have lots and lots to say to each other. Any scheduled phone conversation can go into overtime, and often does, simply because there’s so much to share. The tangents are multitudinous and must be kept in check. It’s a great feeling to know there’s an infinity of richness to tap into when we get together.
• We learn from each other. Although we’re the same in some very foundational ways – through our shared high sensitivity – we’re very different in other ways and we’re both open to learning and teaching. I’m getting a great education through this collaboration.

Try it for yourself. Browse the directory listings on The Sensitive Professionals Network (SPN) website or consider listing yourself as available for connecting to other HSPs. We’ll soon start accepting new directory listings– we’ll announce it on the SPN website. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, you can receive our gift of the Success Checklist for Sensitive Professionals by taking our survey (the survey will close this Thursday, March 25, at 7 Eastern Time).

Related reading: Highly Sensitive Havens, Narrative Medicine

Flickr photo: Good Friends, by Juliana Coutinho

If you have your own business or have considered starting one (frankly, as a highly sensitive person, that’s a great way to go), you may have bumped into some challenges along the way about how to get the word out about the work you love.

Jenna Avery and I are in the process of creating a high-quality support network for sensitive professionals. We’d love to have your input via a short seven-question survey. As a thank-you, we’ll give you a free gift.

To start taking the survey, click on this link:

Begin Sensitive Professionals Survey [survey now closed]

Thank you!

With confidence in you,
Grace Kerina
Jenna Avery

Sensitive Professionals Network
www.sensitiveprofessionals.com
510-981-0697

Photo: Bench at Schoβ Gleinicke, by Grace Kerina

What’s it like to wear a bespoke suit, a suit custom-made to fit me and only me? I want a life like that. I want a plan, a pattern, a path that takes into consideration all the weird, unruly, shocking, steadfast little and big things that combine to shape me. But how?

“The word bespoke itself is derived from the verb to bespeak, to ‘speak for something,’ in the specialized meaning ‘to give order for it to be made.’”
~ Wikipedia entry for Bespoke

What plan speaks for me? Cookie-cutter solutions need not apply. If I can’t make it fit me, if I can’t make it mine, all mine, then forget it. I’ve scoured office supply stores, art supply stores, read books and websites by goal gurus and earnest cheerleaders of every stripe and found only an elite few who make the cut, including these two…

For the past two weeks I’ve been pulling together a strategic planner for 2010, guided by what artist and business school graduate (a combination that thrills me) Lisa Sonora Beam does for herself every year. Although I’m still creating my plan, the power inherent in the thoroughly self-customized system has already taken me so far further along my way than I’d imagined possible that I’m almost scared to continue. The zoom is palpable. For more about this intensely customizable system, see Lisa Sonora Beam’s “Goal Setting for Creatives: My 2010 Strategic Planner.”

One of the zoomy surprises to burst forth from my 2010 Strategic Planner process is that a friend offered to sponsor my fees for an e-course that seems perfectly designed to help me further custom-make my life: Susannah Conway’s Unravelling: Ways of Seeing My Self, which combines photography, journaling, comrades, Susannah’s strong heart, and the promise of deep self-connection.

The primary goal of both systems is to put me in touch with myself in a way that encourages invention, supports forgiveness and acceptance, and fills the silence with my voice, even if I choose to be quiet. What could be more fittingly comfortable than that?

Related reading: Book | The Creative Entrepreneur, by Lisa Sonora Beam

Flickr photo: (untitled), by bird_flew

1. Make a new friend.
2. Spend time together.
3. Be your true self, especially when it’s difficult.
4. Disagree.
5. Let them go.
6. Figure out how to soothe yourself.
7. Welcome them back.
8. Willingly fall further into friendship’s gooey centre.
9. Copy what you envy.
10. Forget who’s who.
11. Draw a line.
12. Notice recurring border skirmishes.
13. Learn about yourself.
14. Draw a different line, one that includes all of you.
15. Do your best, even if it’s not enough.
16. Take a break.
17. Notice what changes.
18. Ruthlessly work to take back any unkindness.
19. Hold your friend’s hands until they’re warm again.
20. Decide to love yourself best by forgiving, even if you’re not sure how.
21. Remember all the good things. (There were lots.)
22. Accrue private jokes.
23. Count up the years.
24. Catalogue the stories and talk about them in code.
25. Accept the whole friend, including what bugs you about them.
26. Realize that you wouldn’t be you without your friend.
27. Praise the change you got from them.
28. Praise the change you resisted.
29. Get to know your friend’s friends.
30. Make a new friend.

Related reading: Pep Talk | Flip, Book | How to Live with an Idiot

Flickr photo: Old friends, by kevindooley

Dear Gracie,

I’m heading into triple digits in a few months and that’s got me thinking about you, back there at the halfway mark. Don’t worry. No need to roll your eyes in anticipation of receiving Precious Life Lessons from your aged future self. Rather the opposite, in fact.

I’d like to ask you a favour. Will you think about me every now and then, back there in 2010? I’m entering my second century still going strong – and I want you intact and with me. So just hang on. I can’t do this without you.

You create me as you rub your hand across your face, as you turn over in bed to get more comfortable. You accrue me as you fold each wish into yourself with your breath. I can’t be here unless you’re there.

The most basic life lesson, anyway, is so simple it’s silly. The only thing absolutely required for anything you want in this life is to keep living. Just hang on. Come hell or high water, fortunes won or lost, loves ditto … as the short view stretches further and further into the long view, please keep on dreaming of your future. Of me.

Meet me. Assume you’ll live another 50 years. Act accordingly.

With love and gratitude,
Gracie

Related reading: Love’s Slope, A Forgiving Tale

Flickr photo: Beautiful old lady from Darap (Sikkim) village, by Sukanto Debnath

My dear friend and fellow highly sensitive person Carrie McCarthy has just relaunched her Style Statement website to deliver more great information about being all you, all the time. I love Carrie’s unending, enthusiastic confidence that everyone is capable of homing in on what’s meaningful and beautiful and personal. Her message is to figure out how to love the whole package. Hmmm … sounds a lot like my message and my wishes for highly sensitive people in particular.

Besides information about the Style Statement service and book, the new website offers stories, video clips, articles, and more. (And some beautiful photos.)

Thanks to Carrie, too, for mentioning me in her recent post, “5 Loves | Smart, Lovely People.”

Related reading: Interview | Carrie McCarthy

Photo by Evan Kheraj.

Saving the world is good. (Duh.) But we can’t do it if we’re dead.

Or lying on the floor in a puddle of half-checked to-do lists. Or transfixed by the three-digit number of unread emails. Or brow-beating ourselves for being in debt or fat or lonely or dorky.

The first world to make sustainable is my own. Your own. Our own little bit of the whole. This is not about whether or not you recycle. Sustainability is about living your life in a way that gives you sustenance. Sustenance nourishes us to flourish.

If you’re reading this, you’ve automatically got a great head start. After all, if you’re alive, you’ve been sustainable for years and years now. Good job. So how sustainable are you?

When the ecosystem of your life provides you with ongoing, constant nourishment, you’re grounded. (See? It is about the Earth after all.) When grounded, you’re a renewable resource.

Figure out what works in the microcosm of you. If unread emails pile up, unsubscribe. Or do a Delete All once a month. If you’re lonely, ask everyone you know to introduce you to someone you might like. Do whatever it takes to prioritize self-love. Do whatever it takes to breathe life into the places where you’re dying.

Own your world. Take responsibility for the state of the world of you. Be the benevolent dictator of all you survey, inside and out. Be the epicenter. Be stable. Be durable. It’s the only way to help the world.

Related reading: Book | Fitting in is Overrated, Pep Talk | Choose

Flickr photo: will fails as atlas, by meigooni