Sensitivity is a Super Power and You Have it by Jillian Walker - Part I

Right now, I would say that I am somewhere between part 5-8 of my journey. Some days I swing wildly between parts. Some days I'm firmly in one place. But I believe we are here to learn and to teach as much as we can. When my journey scares me, I try to remember that.

I want to share with you the journey of how I came to accept my sensitivity as a Superpower. Both my sister and I have been very sensitive since we were little girls. By the time I entered middle school, I learned that sensitivity was not viewed as a positive thing by the Ordinary World. 

Here's how I found out:

One day at lunch, my girlfriends staged an intervention and told me that the group no longer wanted to be my friend because I was "too sensitive." They went on to explain that I cried too much and was too emotional.

I was blindsided. I felt confused and abandoned. At 12 years old, I turned away from my emotional life. I concluded that it had to be a bad thing if these people who were my friends were telling me so. I also turned away from deep friendships with women, as I felt betrayed by what I thought was sisterhood. I felt that if anyone should understand what it was like to feel deeply, it should've been other girls. Yet, they were the very ones telling me that something was wrong with me.

I dealt with this trauma the way most kids do. Silently. I learned to navigate the Ordinary World the way girls are trained: I was "good." I did well in school. I used my natural charm and humor to have acceptable relationships. I shined in appropriate ways (through music and extra-curricular activities). What I didn't know, was that I was suppressing my superpower: my deep emotional life. I was refusing my call to adventure.

By high school, I was pretty disconnected from my body and its intelligence. I developed a chronic illness and I lived from the neck up. I didn't want much to do with feeling.

But here comes the exciting part of the journey. I went off to college, fell in love and moved to New York City. I had no idea that waiting for me here were an army of mentors; my own Obi Wan Kenbobis that would help me embrace my body again. They would teach me to listen to it deeply. They would teach me that accessing and constructively channeling my emotions made me even smarter, more interesting and more powerful.