Dear friend,

There is an article from some years back by Dan Rather called, Why America Needs More Empathy. It touched me deeply when I first read it, and I happened to stumble upon it again recently. It feels so relevant and alive for me right now because he reminded me of what my parents taught me about helping other people.

• We lived at the top of a big hill in Olympia, Washington. When it snowed, we’d hear spinning tires well into the night. My father would grab his coat and gloves, tell us to do the same, and we’d run outside and push cars up the hill. We did this over and over and over for 30 years.
• My parents’ best friends, Johnnie and Gerdie, lived a few blocks from us. Johnnie got paid on the fifteenth of each month, and my Dad got paid the first of each month. They borrowed money from each other every month for decades whenever money was tight, until finally, both had enough money coming in to support their families.
• Many families in our neighborhood readily shared fruits and vegetables from our gardens, trees, and berry bushes throughout the summer. My brothers fished and we always shared what they caught. 

This all seemed so normal to me growing up. 

I felt more empathy for others who were struggling because I could recognize their struggle as my own, and because I had a sense of being in it with them. 

I heard Marshall Rosenberg once say: "If somebody else in the world is starving, then my need for food is not being met."  This resonates so deeply for me now… and I find that in writing this, I feel sad. I’m hungry to live in a world where empathy for one another is the norm — where we can keep our hearts open when faced with someone else’s (or our own) struggles rather than hardening ourselves in support of protection and ease.

Sometimes, other people’s pain is hard to stay open to. Do you find that as well? It’s so tempting to turn away from it out of habit. But when we do that, we miss the richness and depth of connection that is possible when we’re fully present to pain — and we miss the opportunity to recognize that their pain is a part of us, too.

So this month, my focus is on EMPATHY — for myself and for others — opening to living in deep empathic connection where it’s easiest and where it’s hardest. In doing this, I strive to infuse my life and the greater world with compassion.

Are you hungry for this, too? If so, please join me…

Sending love,
Mary

p.s. If you’d like to read the article by Dan Rather, click here.