As I began work on this website, our web designer asked about colors and themes. Colors were easy. I just looked around our home at the colors we live with.

Themes were much more challenging. What is a theme, anyway? A central idea that brings unity. Themes, it seems to me, aren’t assigned. They emerge.

So, I began looking for a theme in the body of work I have as a creative writer, all that I have written since I finished MFA school in 2001.

Ideas came, and as many writers do, I opened a new document on my computer. But to name that file, only one idea came, and that’s all I needed: Sensitive Life.

I added “That” which I think of as a word of emphasis.

Domain name available. Theme emerged: “That Sensitive Life.”

But what about the website?

I want to both have a voice as a writer, and help others find their words, their themes. I’ve been doing both of these forever, helping entrepreneurs and businesses and corporations and charitable organizations find their words. My creative writing informs these activities, and helps me express my own super sensitivity.

I asked my husband. A completely appropriate next step, because we met at that MFA school. He writes too. Language is vitally interesting to both of us.

He said he gladly would contribute to a website entitled “That Sensitive Life.”

So here we go.

In 1996, I bought a copy of the first edition of Elaine Aron’s “Highly Sensitive Person” book in an actual bookstore. I passed her test, read the book and saw myself.

Through the years I’ve tried to learn—and this continues to unfold—how to cultivate a life that allows me to thrive as a highly sensitive individual.

I imagine that building a website is a little like building a house. Many decisions must be made along the way—decisions that require us to project ourselves into a new living arrangement. Please join us here as we live, study, articulate and celebrate That Sensitive Life.

—Cathy Capozzoli