To readers and supporters of NOWHERE ELSE I WANT TO BE: A MEMOIR -
Way back in 2016, you supported the publication of my memoir about my life and work in a residence for homeless women living with AIDS.
I’m contacting you now because I’ve signed a contract with Cynren Press for my hybrid memoir, CRYBABY: REFLECTIONS ON LIFE AS A HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSON. It will be published in spring or summer 2027.
Below, you’ll find an excerpt from the Prologue of the book, but first I want to tell you that I’ll be creating a newsletter for CRYBABY and will add your name to it. If you don’t want to be on the mailing list for CRYBABY, simply respond to this message saying "No, thank you," and I’ll remove your name from my list. You can also unsubscribe once you begin receiving the newsletter.
I’ll send the newsletter once a month from now until closer to publication date, then it will be more like once a week.
Here’s an excerpt from the Prologue:
After several months of fielding questions about my writing, I learned not to lead with the phrase, “My book is about being a highly sensitive person.” That sentence, I promise you, is a conversation-killer. That sentence will get the questioner to move back as though I were a short-fused bomb mistaking them for a flame. No one ever said to me, oh, come on, that’s ridiculous, no one wants to hear about the life of a big baby. They don’t need to. I’m highly sensitive. I observe that tiny hesitation, that slight freezing of the questioner’s affect, the flicker of eyes searching for someone, anyone, else to talk to. I’m empathetic, I don’t want them to feel any more uncomfortable than I’ve already made them feel. I’m easily overwhelmed, I can’t bear to be the object of a joking or derisive diatribe on what wimps sensitive people are.
I stop talking, yet again silenced by this world in which my most formative and intimate characteristics are not just poorly understood but maligned.
“To many people, ‘sensitive’ is a dirty word. It sounds like a weak spot, a guilty admission, or worse, an insult. In common usage, sensitive can mean many things, and most of them are based in shame.”
[1] It can mean being unable to take a joke, or being easily offended. Often, we talk about being sensitive in apology for instances of so-called overreacting. Most men abhor and avoid being called sensitive. And when we say a topic is a sensitive one, we mean it may “offend, hurt, anger, and embarrass the listeners.”
[2]
The topic of sensitivity is, itself, a sensitive one.
[1] Jenn Granneman and Andre Solo,
SENSITIVE: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too Much World; Harmony, Feb 28, 2023; page 12
[2] Granneman and Solo, SENSITIVE page 12
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