My son recently turned six. He is many things, both good and bad, but an easy child is not one of them. Someone once asked me to describe him at a party and I was at a loss. I eventually settled on “complicated,” which got some laughs (he was only 2.5 at the time), but I could not find the words to sum him up using only a few basic character traits.

Labels are everywhere. Every disability you can imagine, every ability too. Every skill, every problem, everything we are—neatly named, categorized, and filed away.

Here’s one you may be unfamiliar with: Highly Sensitive. Yes, it’s an actual thing and, for us, this diagnosis…this discovery that there was a name for what we’d been experiencing—it was life-changing.