Reply To: Soft Readings: I

[Juan E. Sandoval]

Elizabeth Gilbert

Spoiler

Margin of Error
Most likely: TeSi llll Seelie
Less likely: TeSi (of other developments), FeSi
Unlikely: Anything Else
Shade: Elizabeth Gilbert is far too challenging a personality for me to analyze properly in a summary, but I'm gonna try. Fae and others, if you know her better than me (quite likely) you can tell me how this applies or doesn't - but this is how it looks to me.
Gilbert appears to me to belong to a shade of TeSi women that channel Ne+Fi and become find-your-own-happiness/essence advocates, after having faced the dissatisfaction of the one-sided Te-lead approach later in their life.
As the Wikipedia page tells me: "At 34 years old, Elizabeth Gilbert was educated, had a home, a husband, and a successful career as a writer. She was, however, unhappy in her marriage and initiated a divorce." -- This pattern of Te-lead-career-woman-suddenly-realizes-she's-successful-yet-unhappy seems to be relatively common.
Gilbert then goes on an Fi/Ne expedition to "find herself" and it appears to me that her memoirs "Eat, Pray Love" is in the same exact class of books as TeSi Martha Beck's "Finding your north star", TeSi Terri Orbuch's "Finding Love Again", TeSi Brene Brown's "The Power of Vulnerability" etc. A complete collage by TeSi seelie woman can be found below, taken from this thread.

The motifs of "take care of yourself" / "be self-empowered" / "listen to your heart" / "find your inner joy again" are very Fi in essence, but executed through the pragmatism of Te. Gilbert is a writer and yet in an interview she describes herself as not being a "creative" writer; not the kind that conjures up things on-the-fly. Instead she's more of an Si documentor of things, including her own life. In this interview we see her express her Si love of narrative & 18th century literature, her encyclopedic tendencies, as well as feminist advocacy -- which seems to be a common theme among Te-lead women.
She's an example of a Te-lead women with development in her lower functions, and one who has gone successfully through individuation. She's a "whole" self.
Vultologically... JeSi is fairly clear from the start, but she's not an easy case when it comes to her emotive expression. Due to seelieness and an integration of Fi, she has some emotiveness interlaced into her Te, so that it doesn't appear snappy. The nuance of this goes beyond the timespan I have to explain what I see, but just briefly:
1:41

^ Te Head Shake + Te Taut Square Cheeks + Fi  Asymmetrical Mouth (..at the end of the GIF.. up-right)
We can see that despite her politeness and softness, her mouth animation showcases an Fi/Te wobbling pattern and its default square tension, and her movements still have a plateau emphasis even though much of the snippiness is gone. She has a lot of Fi unbridled radiation which causes this more lubricated emotiveness, ..but this is different than Fe's coordination.
2:50

^ Je Gesticulation + Fi Snarling + Te Taut Square Cheeks

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