the complexities of being a highly sensitive human

in the public eye no less, to add that into the mix

i’m sitting on the lake in coeur d’alene right now, overlooking the absolute most stunning view of the sun sparkling down on the water and reflecting light back up to the sky. atticus and jonathan are kayaking in the distance, our dock is swaying in the water, delilah is napping inside & i am on the patio drinking coffee—my second cup of coffee, while i edit photos and write here on substack instead of working on my book that’s due so soon (hehe, whoops).

i had & still have a post queued up called “how to voice note your future self” & subsequently manifest everything you’ve ever desired (that one’s coming, don’t worry!), but as i sat down to flesh it out… the only thing my heart actually wanted to spill today was about being a highly sensitive human in this loud & chaotic world. this post is writing itself through my fingers, i am simply the conduit, so let’s see what comes out.

whatever does come, don’t judge. because this one is from the soul and is flowing through without much thought or rhyme or reason or second guessing, but i believe it will land with all of my fellow highly sensitive people out there: the psychics, intuitives, black sheep of the family, ‘odd ones out,’ being different is our superpower kinda people. there’s a lot of us.

the inspiration for this one came from a conversation we had last night with our friends who we’re on this trip with. we have very different careers, and they had so many thoughtful and deep questions about the pros and cons of what i do for a living, especially while being so highly sensitive. i found myself spilling my heart out over dinner in a way i usually don’t get a chance to, i’m usually more guarded, and usually so worried that if i talk about the complexities (and challenges) of my job then i would sound ungrateful… because this is all i’ve ever wanted to do and i would never, ever want to change it.

the conversation was enlightening and got me thinking about so much, and it’s something i am going to try to capture in writing today. whether you get this from the standpoint of being an influencer, or you get it from the standpoint of being an HSP, or maybe just getting your feelings hurt easily or having OCD (all of the ruminating thoughts!), i hope/believe it will speak to you just a little—or at least give you a deeper insight into my heart and the hearts of our fellow highly sensitive’s out there.

so… here it goes. it’s complex to be super sensitive (emotionally, physically, spiritually, psychically) no matter what, but add in being in the public eye for 13+ years and living with a chronic illness and changing your brand drastically over those years (inviting in hate, skepticism, confusion, all the things—don’t forget, i was vegan & then not vegan anymore TWICE in a very public way, and the vegans will come for blood over that) and well… it’s a recipe for a loud mind, a very very loud mind at that.

my mind is loooouuuudd. and that has nothing to do with being an influencer or being in the public eye. that’s something i’ve lived with and known about myself since my earliest memories of being alive—in fact, when i was a kid i didn’t just go to sleep at night like everyone else; i lay awake daydreaming & reliving my day & making up elaborate stories & alternate realities in my head for hours and hours before drifting off to dream land… because the thing about us sensitive ones, is that we’re also the creative ones.

we came here from realms beyond (whatever you want to make of that, so be it) and our minds came to this earth to play and create and weave elaborately beautiful tapestries of stories and feelings and emotions and thoughts. i was the girl growing up who didn’t just know/remember everyone’s names and faces at my school… i knew the names of their siblings, their parents, i probably even knew their middle names and their birthdays and the town they were born in and if they were close with their grandparents and who they hung out with and i would listen to their conversations and soak in their complexities and observe observe observe until there was nothing left to observe & soak in—i knew it all, i reflected on it all, and i remember being consistently shocked to realize that other people did not in fact absorb the world in that same way.

as soon as i was old enough to write, i started writing this all down. i wrote 99 page chapter books in first grade with intricate details about people’s inner worlds, their families, their thoughts, their musings. i wrote a poem in second grade about jellyfish being ‘celestial moonbeams glimmering in a row, painting the coral as they glided on by’ and my teacher called my parents because she thought they’d written it for me. (spoiler: my parents don’t write and my dad doesn’t really even know how to spell properly lol—they were just like, that was her but we don’t know where she came from!)

as i grew up… this sensitivity and introspection bled into every area of my life. my friends were my world, people were my refuge. to be such a highly sensitive and introspective person to the point of getting lost in my own depths & inner realities, i needed that outer reflection to know & understand that i was even here on earth, if that makes sense. i actually remember a moment in elementary school where another girl and i were so lost in our dreamworld reality of play that we started thinking we had become invisible and didn’t in fact exist anymore 😂. we ran up to a boy who was a few grades older than us and asked if he could even see us, to which he replied, “...ummmm, yes…????? what are you talking about, you crazy people????” and we fell to the ground laughing with relief.

loving and caring so much about the people in my life is something that has stuck with me to this day—the people closest to my of course, my longtime friends, my acquaintances, even people i meet only once or twice. i care, i love, i observe, i ruminate… the list goes on. the older i get the more i’ve learned how to have boundaries and not let other people’s moods/how they feel about me/how i think they feel in any given moment/how they’re doing affect my life or my reality. but it’s still hard because it’s just innate in me. i have had to learn how to create peace within myself when outer peace isn’t necessarily the norm, and how to let go of people i thought i would have close to me forever. i have had to surrender, then surrender some more… and really learn that people come into our lives for a season, a reason, or a lesson. i’m still trying, but the more i let go… the more i focus within & call in the fact that i only want to attract friendships that are reciprocal & care as much as i do (even in their own ways)… the happier i am.

then that brings me to what i do for a living—i am an influencer. but not like the mysterious, chic, fashion-y kind of influencer. the kind who shares every detail of her inner world and turns her soul inside out to express and share and love and understand and be creative and connect. my brand has gone in soooo many directions over the years, from colorful food photography & recipes to writing novels & self-help books to hosting meditation platforms and running yoga retreats and doing health coaching and creating content for brands i love, to advocating for chronic illness & healing to dissecting what it means to be a friend (in my opinion) as a highly sensitive person and beyond… and THAT is a gift. because my brand can and has grown with me in so many different directions.

but within all gifts there are also some shadow sides, and the shadow to what i do is that to be on a public stage is to invite in a ton of unwanted opinions, many of which will come from some of the unhappiest people on this earth… who sit on their phones and computers and doom scroll until they find strangers online to project their insecurities and sadness onto. it’s really sad, and i have done enough inner work to know that it’s on me to lovingly release their judgment right back to them & know that the universe always has my back—that karma is real, that sending good energy out into the world & keeping my side of the street clean is the best thing i can do, and that continuing to find pure & wonderful souls to do life with (you know the ones) will be my reward for dealing with so much of the muck.

the biggest shadow of living a public life while sharing so much is that i have accidentally invited in so much judgment and hate—it’s almost too much to bear at times. there are people out there that believe that because i am so open, honest, vulnerable, & unfiltered about my healing journey… that i am ‘addicted to the sickness and the pain’ and that my sharing about it is ‘toxic’ and that i ‘play the victim’ by being open about my illness experience. yet there’s another faction of the internet that says that i act like my life is perfect and that i exude toxic positivity and don’t share the hard parts of my life (lol??). 😅

you can’t win with the internet—because people will always see what they want to see & ONLY what they want to see. they are incapable of seeing anything beyond what their own reality creates for them.

and perhaps that’s what i am realizing most about people, and the world, and navigating this world as a highly sensitive, complex, deeply feeling, easily hurt (it’s just the truth) person: all of our realities are so wildly different, and trying to shape someone else’s reality can never & WILL never work. in fact, the more we try to explain and defend our own reality when someone already sees something that doesn’t feel true to you about yourself… the more they will likely double down on that negative thing they see. because they’re living in their own reality, their own shadow, their own triggers, their own wounds.

i sometimes get envious of other content creators who have built a large online presence without sharing as intimately as i have—that they’re able to post pretty photos & build pretty brands without sharing the parts of themselves that invite in so much complexity, it’s like fodder for the internet haters and insecure people who live to project and dissect. but at the same time, i’ve tried that, i really have, and it doesn’t feel fulfilling to me. being authentic, deep, open, and unfiltered is the only way that does feel fulfilling to me… and it has also guided me to the people i am meant to connect with, you guys, millions of you all over the world. i would not change it even if i could AND i would not have experienced the successes that i have if i were busy trying to be like someone else.

we have to get busy being ourselves & only ourselves. that’s where true success, peace, and happiness comes.

and here’s the thing… and the truth of all truths. the life i just described above might sound niche and peculiar—and it might be some people’s nightmare to be in the public eye as such an HSP while it might also be other people’s dream—but either way, it’s my life and i love what it is, where i am now, where i’ve been, & where i’m going. it’s full of so much richness, depth, love & success because of being so highly sensitive & in spite of it all at the same time.

i believe that i was born to follow the breadcrumbs of my soul perhaps more than most, because if i don’t, i get extremely depressed & then everything stops working. i have to feel lit up, aligned, and these days—at peace, within and without, to be able to even function. maybe some of you can relate to this? and when i do that, extreme success comes. one of my yoga teachers once told me “you have the golden touch—everything you touch turns to gold.”

which is the hugest compliment and is only true & can only be true for any of us (all of us) when we are aligned.

above all, i am so glad to be the highly sensitive person that i am. i truly believe that we’re all souls who came to this earth to feel every single range of emotion, every shade of it, every up and down, every bit of love and sadness and heartbreak and magic that we can muster, because when we return to the soul realm… we don’t get to experience or feel any of that anymore—we’re simply stardust, living a different sort of existence, without the spectrum of emotions that is so unique to humans.

i am glad to be an old, old, old soul who feels like a grandmother among her grandchildren most of the time (even people my same age) because i know and feel that’s exactly what my soul blueprint is made of. it comes with a lot of things that can be hard… like chronic illness and perfectionism and internet hate bordering on aggressive cyber bullying but it also comes with this:

my brand is me, and i am my brand. i have the gift of taking you guys on the journey of my life, and that gets to be my job. i will do it and soak up every ounce of it until it maybe one day runs its course… but i hope it doesn't. i hope that this job (and all of you) continue to evolve with me in all of the most magical and aligned ways. i believe it to be true—and the last 13 years have been exactly that. an evolution & a bridge.

and THROUGH being in the public eye, i have had the gift of learning how to surrender to the relationships in my own life in better ways—allowing boundaries to take hold, allowing space where it’s needed, allowing things to not be so perfect and rainbow-y all the time and maintaining my own inner peace even when things with people i love are happening that are beyond my control.

& lastly, i am blessed with the best ever husband and kids AND parents who make me feel so safe, so seen, so heard, and so fulfilled—the rest is all able to just be noise. also, being a mother is the best thing that has ever happened to me in terms of caring less about what doesn’t matter & caring more about what does matter.

ok, signing off here… i could go on forever. this one was like a diary entry. i will post it without even double checking for spelling errors lol. please, please let me know your thoughts below. i want to hear who relates, on any level, i want to hear it all. <3