Who Am I? Who are You?

Who Am I? Who are You?

Often called a dreamer, one who tests as INFP on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator Test (MBTI) is idealistic, highly imaginative, creative, and compassionate, but tends to be disorganized. Yup, that’s me, to a T.

Based on the work of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a mother-daughter duo interested in the personality modality studies of Carl Jung, the Myers Briggs test is used worldwide to delineate sixteen distinct personality types, using the disparate key factors Extrovert (E)/Introvert (I); Observer (S)/Intuition (N); Thinking (T)/Feeling (F); Judging (J)/Perception (P).

Once upon a time, I tested as an ENFP (extroverted, intuitive, feeler, perceiver) rather than INFP (introverted, intuitive, feeler, perceiver). But then life happened.

Doing a deep dive on oneself is rife with land mines. Family trauma. Dysfunction. Judging. Abuse. No wonder I’ve retreated from the front lines. It’s safer here on my own, in one of the rarest of all personality types (4%), along with Joan of Arc, Albert Einstein, Guatama Buddha, A.A. Milne, C.S. Lewis, William Shakespeare, Winona Ryder, Jude Law, and John Lennon, to name a few other INFPs. 

Now, I’m comfortable on my own, quietly writing, listening to music, gardening, reading. I enjoy a social gathering every now and again, and still love traveling, but I’d rather not be the instigator. I’ve gone deeper into myself, one might say. Although I have morphed from an extrovert to an introvert, the other three elements of my persona have not changed over the decades. I’m still intuitive (N), “questioning, wondering, and connecting the dots in the ‘bigger picture.’” (www.16personalities.com). I’m also still a feeler (F), kind, compassionate, caring, warm, focusing on the wellbeing of others, the environment, and animals. And I’m definitely a perceiver (P), figuring out life along the way and preferring to see the glass half full and life rife with possibility.

All of these traits have helped me in my writing career, looking at the big picture, inhabiting the lives of my characters with compassion, and not adhering to a strict outline, but rather letting the story develop organically. 

Interestingly, I do Myers-Briggs tests on all my characters to understand them better.

Eliza Waite, the protagonist of my eponymous 2016 debut novel, is an ISTJ (introverted, observant, thinker, judger), one who prefers an orderly life and is rattled when all does not go according to plan. Knowing this helped inform how Eliza would react to difficult circumstances, especially upon the death of her young son. 

Ada Weeks, the protagonist of my second novel (2020), Answer Creek, is an ISTP (introverted, observant, thinker, perceiver), one who improvises with what life hands her. And did it hand her a bad deal—as a fictional member of the infamous Donner Party, she is forced to endure the unthinkable in the winter of 1846-47.

Not surprisingly, Ruby Fortune, the heroine of my third, and newest, novel, Hardland is an extrovert, an ESFP (extroverted, observant, feeler, perceiver). Once the darling of the rodeo circuit, she is a shoot-from-the-hip heroine who never backs down from adventure or conflict. And has a mouth to prove it.

Once the Girl Wonder of the Wild West circuit, twenty-six-year-old Ruby Fortune is forced to make a split-second choice: murder her abusive husband or continue to live with bruises that never heal. One bullet is all it takes. Now the tough, quick-witted owner of a roadhouse north of Tucson, Ruby lives with the consequences of her checkered choices. Bursting with suspense, Hardland offers up an uncommon American cowgirl who spits at expectations as she provides for herself and her sons in one of the roughest towns in the American West.

Is Ruby my alter ego? No. Although we both share a history of domestic abuse (most of the scenes in the novel that depict abuse are first-hand experiences), Ruby is a fully-fleshed character who stands on her own, who, like me, is now free of decades-old guilt and shame, and no longer a victim, but a proud survivor. 

Recently, a friend posted the following meme on social media: 

You gotta resurrect the deep pain within you and give it a place to live that’s not within your body. Let it live in art. Let it live in writing. Let it live in music. Let it be devoured by building brighter connections. Your body is not a coffin for pain to be buried in. Put it somewhere else.

 —Ehime Ora

That’s what I did. Getting it all out on paper helped me to heal and out of the ashes came a truly unique character who’s making her mark and winning awards and touching lives. What do you do with your pain? Do you stuff it? Let it fester? I encourage you to take to heart these words and get your pain out creatively. It doesn’t have to be good. No one needs to see it, even. Like the popular rage therapy to counteract trauma, put your anger to canvas, to paper, to music. It can be healing. 

And if you haven’t taken the Myers Briggs Type Indicator Test, give it try. You might be surprised to learn more about how you tick, and what makes you, you.

—

A native New Yorker, Ashley E. Sweeney is the author of three novels and the winner of the prestigious Nancy Pearl Book Award. Sweeney’s fourth novel, based on the life of her great-grandmother who came alone to the U.S. from Ireland in the late 19th century at age thirteen, will publish on Oct. 1, 2024 through She Writes Press. She lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest and Tucson.   

HARDLAND

“One of the top standalone Westerns in 2022.” 

—True West magazine 

Arizona Territory, 1899. Ruby Fortune faces an untenable choice: murder her abusive husband or continue to live with bruises that never heal. One bullet is all it takes. Once known as “Girl Wonder” on the Wild West circuit, Ruby is now a single mother of four boys in her hometown of Jericho, an end-of-the-world mining town north of Tucson. Here, Ruby opens a roadside inn to make ends meet. Drifters, grifters, con men, and prostitutes plow through the hotel’s doors, and their escapades pepper the local newspaper like buckshot. An affair with an African American miner puts Ruby’s life and livelihood at risk, but she can’t let him go. Not until a trio of disparate characters—her dead husband’s sister, a vindictive shopkeeper, and the local mine owner she once swindled—threaten to ruin her does Ruby face the consequences of her choices; but as usual, she does what she needs to in order to provide for herself and her sons.

Set against the breathtaking beauty of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and bursting with Wild West imagery, history, suspense, and adventure, Hardland serves up a tough, fast-talking, shoot-from-the-hip heroine who goes to every length to survive and carve out a life for herself and her sons in one of the harshest places in the American West.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing