“To feel deeply is to fall deeply, not to stumble back to sunlight’s superficiality, but to evolve in curious darkness, learning to shiver in the fullness of the moon.”
— From Beyond Identity
About the Book
By age 43, Peter Hunt had lived an adventurous life as a Naval Aviator, commercial pilot, and shipwreck diver, so when diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease he accepted the neurological disorder as simply a new challenge. There was a big difference however; Hunt’s previous tests had been by choice. Parkinson’s was not. But what if Parkinson’s disease was welcomed into life as an opportunity to grow? What if it was treated as a choice, not as a victim’s label? The result—fifteen years since diagnosis, Peter Hunt flatly states that “Parkinson’s is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” And he means it. Beyond Identity’s six-year collection of short stories, essays, and poems begins nine years after diagnosis, a time when Hunt’s Parkinson’s symptoms were at their worst. To examine his life at the most authentic level, Hunt scrapes away society’s definitions and assumptions so that he might explore the essence of his identity beyond the adversities of brain surgery, jarring physical changes, and depression. Humble and brutally candid, Beyond Identity’s 90 short works trace the outline of an inspired journey, edging ever forward with humanity’s most fundamental question—who am I?