Lisa, this is so lovely. Thank you. We had a memorial service and celebration of life for a friend today, and your poem feels especially right and real today. And I hear you so well, sometimes the enormity of it all feels crushing and impossible to hold. I pray in those times it is us who are held.
I'm sorry for the loss of your friend! It all feels like too much, so often. I feel like letting others carry us when we don't have strength to have empathy is so important.
I had the joy of reading this earlier in the week, but this poem, as with all your poems, I can read again and again, finding new insights and revelations each time.
What a powerful and beautiful poem, Kaitlin! I am struck how feel and emapthy have followed each other in your prompts. Thank you for the images to ponder and absorb, and for lines like these:
"Empathy is a gift,
an opportunity to hold
kinship at the forefront,
to imagine the world through
our neighbor’s eyes."
What a beautiful description of empathy. And this marvelous ending:
Beautiful Larry, I feel your sorrow, this unspeakable sadness, your reflections on the twilight years of life...I know this pain, thanks for sharing it here.
Empathy- from the inside
--The second grade teacher who came to her kindergarten class every day to give the abused child a hug and tell her she was good;
--the 9th grade English teacher who called her from her isolation and invited her to be visible, in the class play;
--the french hostel owner who was undisturbed when you rang her doorbell at midnight and declared "We always have room for you"
-- when you got locked out, the elderly friar offering a place to sit, have a cup of coffee and share your truth....
-- the therapists and fellow survivors who never shuddered when you told them your experience;
-- the women who became your new family and your circle of support....
All lived empathy to me - when I was wounded, hurt, in pain -- their embrace of me gave me life and hope and enabled me to keep going .......
This is so beautiful 🙏
This is wonderful, Terry--full of honesty and hope. Thank you for sharing and for keeping going.
I see you hiding away in the corners
under dark fogs of unbearable sorrow.
I hear your inner wailing encased
within deep guttural longing.
I smell the fetidness of your chagrin
a bleeding heart in chasmic anguish.
I taste the bitterness of your dejection
the pungency of overwhelm and weariness.
I feel your pain as my own
I am here with you in yours.
.
Heart to Heart
Neuron to Neuron
Fingertip to fingertip.
.
Vulnerability meeting the raw edges.
Intimacy of real honest connection.
Devoted humbleness of staying put.
.
No bypass or circumvention.
No creating a silver lining.
No fake sympathy.
.
Only spacious holding.
Empathy.
For I see you…
I feel all of that.
spacious holding...wonderful words
So good. Thank you for sharing. Speaks to me
What a beautifully evocative poem, Julie. I hear and feel every word.
Gotta be frugal.
Empathy's an action word.
Don't run your well dry.
.
.
.
Action it is Chuck! I feel you!
A Word
A dream I had a few years ago:
At first, I only remembered a wisp,
a single word, really;
but as I let the word float through me,
more of the dream came to life.
We were inside a building.
The “we” were I and a small group of others
whom I could not identify, yet whom
I felt in my bones were all of one accord.
We were there
to prepare the space and ourselves
to be an oasis for frightened, hurting people.
There was furniture to be cleaned and rearranged;
welcome, open space to be created;
but the thing to which I kept coming back
was the cleaning of windows.
There was an unspoken understanding
that the people who were our focal point
and our desire to reach
would regularly be walking by the building,
and we wanted them to be able to see
what was inside, to see who was inside,
and to see that all of it and all of us
were there on purpose and with a purpose:
to help them see, find, and understand whatever it took
to relieve their anxiety and their suffering.
The first thing I remembered, beyond the word,
was that I was tasked with cleaning the windows
so that we could place stickers —
the kind that adhere by static electricity —
which would be visible from the outside.
The stickers contained that single word, in basic script:
“Empath”
Whatever else you do today,
and every day,
be sure to reach down
into your marrow,
find your empath,
and put it in the window,
because someone desperately needs
to see and experience it.
E M P A T H Y
Shame brought darkness, fear and blame,
my life imploding inwards,
banished me to a lonely, alien place.
Empathy believed my story, listened with love
flowing and spreading gently outwards,
steering me home.
To get to the truth about empathy
I have to first cut through the
bramble, peel back the layers
of all the competing meanings
I have inherited from others
.
For instance - I thought at first of
empathy as a bare porch light
drawing in moths
some dipping in and out
others swarming in mass
The light of my empathy
swinging to and fro
hopelessly doing it alone
.
But this isn’t quite right
I am not some passive vessel
to hold and feel and trudge through
others’ suffering without warning
.
I am a person
and in being a person
I want to see you
in whatever current crossroads
you are at
in whatever questions or sadness or joy
entangle you beneath the surface
.
Empathy is then a tuning fork
A way of listening in to the stories
that may be held out of sight
that may be locked away
that may be pounding on the door
A way of sensitizing myself so
I may finally, truly hear
and only then can we begin
'Sensitizing myself' 💜
Wonderful imagery — the porch light, moths, tuning fork. Lovely.
Thank you!
Really enjoying everyone's offerings so far today. This is all I could manage, and while I'm not sure about it, I guess I'll still share ...
You stand in front of me
And tell me who you are.
How can I possibly
Reply 'yes, but ...'?
There can be no but
If I truly see you -
Feel you -
Hold space for you.
When people show you
Who they are
Believe them.
And listen
Deeply.
To them;
And to you.
This is what discerning
Empaths do.
Love this, Sarah!!!
This hits home, Sara! I am so glad you followed your instinct to share it. Your poem begins so beautifully:
"You stand in front of me
And tell me who you are.
How can I possibly
Reply 'yes, but ...'?
There can be no but
If I truly see you -
Feel you -
Hold space for you."
How tender and lovely this poem is. Blessings to you.
This poem really got me-- what a beautiful picture of empathy that isn't destructive.
Here's my poem for today:
.
EMPATHY
"Don't just have sympathy--
have empathy.
Sympathy is feeling sorry.
Empathy is feeling what the other person feels
(which is obviously better)"--
.
And what I hear in this is
"Destroy yourself.
Annihilate your happiness
because someone is always sad,
someone is always suffering.
Have no line between yourself and them
and let the tsunami of fear and anger and pain bury you
until you can't catch breath.
Someone today is losing a child,
getting cancer,
being evicted
and if you do not feel their pain
as if it is your own pain
you are callous and hardhearted
and need to repent."
.
But what if I need to survive too?
What if I cannot bear the pain of the world
or even the pain of one friend?
Can it be enough to draw lines around myself
and be sorry, but not destroyed?
"I am sorry for your loss
but I cannot feel it fully because if I did
I would drown
and then I could not stand on the shore and throw you a lifeline."
I don't want you to feel my pain.
I just want you to hold me while I cry.
I feel this too....it can be so damn overwhelming.
It really can, especially for those of us who are naturally empathetic! I've been trying to give myself permission to step back.
Lisa, this is so lovely. Thank you. We had a memorial service and celebration of life for a friend today, and your poem feels especially right and real today. And I hear you so well, sometimes the enormity of it all feels crushing and impossible to hold. I pray in those times it is us who are held.
I'm sorry for the loss of your friend! It all feels like too much, so often. I feel like letting others carry us when we don't have strength to have empathy is so important.
Thank you Lisa. You are so thoughtful and caring. Blessings to you.
This is one I wrote last week, but it felt right for today.
.
There is an evergreen tree
in front of our home.
It is young.
In the two years we've lived here,
it has doubled in height.
.
I have wanted to remove it since
the day we moved in,
and every day that we wait to remove it,
I become more agitated,
because every day that we wait,
every moment,
there is the potential for
more life to move in,
before we cut it down.
Every day that we wait,
I watch birds flit
in and out of its branches,
and I wonder which of them
will no longer have a home
when we are finished.
Every day, I think,
"what right do I have
to uproot these beings
from their home?"
There have been enough
innocents displaced
from their homes
on the whims of others,
and the thought of
adding to that number
makes me feel like a monster.
.
And is it worse,
do you think,
that I will replace
the evergreen
with peach trees?
I had the joy of reading this earlier in the week, but this poem, as with all your poems, I can read again and again, finding new insights and revelations each time.
Empathy
How do I seek to understand you
unless I put aside our differences
and choose
to see myself
in your shoes.
If I say,
‘There’s a splinter
under my nail.’
Did you feel that?
It can be that easy.
Wow, AM! Just this!
The world can be too much.
We are overwhelmed.
Saturated.
Leaving less space to connect,
Less availability.
Minimal capacity to absorb,
To take in
Humanity
With all its pain and suffering.
Social distancing our empathy
Feels like a protective necessity
To keep on functioning.
How might we open to receive?
To take in
Humanity
With all its pain and suffering?
Closing the gaps
With our courageous empathy.
The world is too much
For just one of us.
But together, connected
As global communities…
Oh… the healing possibilities!
Courageous empathy - beautiful!
God who died on Skull Hill,
you proved that true power
isn’t control, but vulnerability
freely chosen.
Whoever heard of a God sacrificing Themselves to humans?
May I stand so deeply rooted in your power, Beloved,
that I never fear to share another’s suffering.
What a powerful and beautiful poem, Kaitlin! I am struck how feel and emapthy have followed each other in your prompts. Thank you for the images to ponder and absorb, and for lines like these:
"Empathy is a gift,
an opportunity to hold
kinship at the forefront,
to imagine the world through
our neighbor’s eyes."
What a beautiful description of empathy. And this marvelous ending:
"I want to put down the shame
and put on the shoes,
and slowly, quietly,
hands entwined,
candles lit in unity,
walk my neighbor home."
Thank you for walking us home.
I capitalize the word "OPPORTUNITY"
Empathy
The love
and understanding
born of
a shared
experience
So often
the unsought entry
into a club
one never wants to join
Sitting in the quiet of night after a memorial service today, this poem flowed from Kaitlin's prompt.
For Maggie
.
Purple, pink and yellow flowers brighten the chancel
as the sanctuary fills to overflowing.
A celebration of life, a time to remember,
to hold each other in our grief and pain,
to bring some understanding to the mystery.
.
Your small and slender form rings the silence
As the stories and songs fill the air.
Watching Nat’s back heave up and down,
Emily and Eliza’s solemn faces break into tears
my heart reaches out across the mourning: “I know.”
.
There is mention of the shadows that surrounded you
these past years of trial and trouble,
the sadness in your eyes deeper than any canyon I’ve traveled.
That day on the train tracks, I wonder
were you trying to get on the train
or begging to be let off, your journey here complete.
.
Countless lives changed in the crash of one small moment.
The losses of a lifetime rush through me,
panorama of faces yearning to say more.
Somewhere deep down I hear the unspoken voices,
carry the unspeakable sadness,
collect the tears that flow like rivers from grieving hearts.
.
As Twilight covers the landscape of a life,
There will be more tears, more losses, more wonderings.
In this present moment let us hold our hearts gently,
see who we are between the words
and find that quiet place,
where all we are to do is to listen
to care,
And to be open to all that remains.
Larry that was achingly beautiful.
Thank you Karri.
Beautiful Larry, I feel your sorrow, this unspeakable sadness, your reflections on the twilight years of life...I know this pain, thanks for sharing it here.
Thank you Julie, for your kind and empathetic spirit.
I'm grateful for you sharing this heaviness in your heart, friend.
Thank you A. You help to lighten that heaviness.