My Mother’s Hobbies and Gifts

Doesn’t my mother in this photo look like she stepped out of Mad Men?

Yesterday I gave a workshop to parents about homeschooling children are unusually precocious, sensitive, intense, and creative (or otherwise gifted). In these workshops, I always spend some time introducing parents to Kazimierz Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration as one way to enrich their understanding of giftedness. The theory includes five different kinds of overexcitabilities or intensities:

• Intellectual Intensity
• Emotional Intensity
• Imaginational Intensity
• Sensual Intensity
• Psychomotor Intensity

Dabrowski proposed that some people have some or all of these intensities in varying combinations, and that their presence and the resulting negative emotions and self-reflection offer potential for personal growth.

One of the most rewarding things for me in talking to parents about these ideas is not only seeing the “aha” look on their faces when they understand their children in a new way, but also the dawning realization that they, as adults, have these intensities, as well.

When I began to understand the complexities of giftedness—that it’s not just about being good at school—I began to understand many of the people in my life differently, including my mother.

When I was growing up, I never saw the extent of my mother’s intensities, because they were quiet intensities. The intellectual intensity on my father’s side of the family is obvious. Because my mother’s intensities were mainly emotional, imaginational, and sensual, I admit that I didn’t see them until I became familiar with Dabrowski and, to my regret, until after her death in 1998 from multiple myeloma, when she was age of 56.

Now I see how her hobbies reflected her intensities, how she turned many of those hobbies into an artistic career, and how her intensities allowed her to grow as a person.

She began as a hobby seamstress (I am sure she made the dress she is wearing in the photo above), who in time sewed professionally for family, friends, and strangers, including making wedding dresses and men’s suits.

She began as an excellent cook and baker, who then began her own cake decorating business, providing everything from custom birthday cakes to elaborate wedding cakes for the entire neighborhood.

She began as a hobby quilter who, in the years before her death, became a professional long-arm quilter (my father built a room onto the house for her long-arm quilting machine—see how big they are here). She designed quilting patterns, took orders from across the United States, and published a newsletter, Creative Outlining, which she wrote and distributed to a loyal readership… all from a farm house in the seventh poorest county of the United States. Were she alive today, I know she would have a popular quilting blog. The quilt above is one she designed and made for me and my husband as a wedding gift.

Finally, and most important, I see now how her intensities allowed her to grow from a girl whose ambitions were thwarted by personal circumstances beyond her control, to a woman who faced her most negative emotions and used them to become the person she wanted to be. Sal Mendaglio explains this aspect of Dabroski’s theory in Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration (edited by Sal Mendaglio, published by Great Potential Press, 2008):

“[A]n individual examines his or her essence and makes existential choices that emphasize those aspects of essence that are ‘more myself’ and inhibit those aspects that are ‘less myself.’ In this way, individuals achieve personality and become integrated at a higher level of human functioning; they become truly human.”

My mom once told me that her life really began when she turned forty, and now I understand a bit better what she meant.

What intensities might you not be seeing in your loved ones? Or in yourself?

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Related posts:

• Has Your Intensity Collapsed?
• Is Your Intensity Out of Control?
• My Mid-Life Brain on Twitter