When Is It A Good Time To Be An Empath?

For an empath, probably all of the time, but lately, being an empath has become almost debilitating.

There are some empaths who struggle to be in public places because they constantly absorb other people's energies and that is paralyzing for them. For me, for the most part, I am able to manage those interactions so that I can function socially. Of course, then I need to retreat, clear out, and recharge and then I can go back out and face the world again.

For as long as I can remember, I feel other people's experiences. I can hear a story and it's not just relating that affects me, it's as if I am in that person's shoes. I think it's why I don't care for violent or sad movies (truth be told, I don't watch many movies anyway), or movies with animals or children. Despite them being fiction, the possibility of another's suffering hits me hard and deep.

On top of this, I have a blunt sense of right and wrong, often much to the chagrin of others. Over the years, I've been working to integrate a gray area in this duality, but I am a fierce defender of those upon whom an injustice has been inflicted.

Back in the early 90s, I chased a claim of sexual harassment toward a young woman in my office all the way up to corporate counsel of one of the largest accounting firms in the world because it wouldn't stop and I was not going to let her leave her job because of it. I filed a complaint with the supervisor of a Department of Labor auditor who sat in front of me and told me my records were wrong because there was no way a woman named Alicia Anderson living in that neighborhood was white. I spoke up for the young couple who were visibly disturbed by service they received but didn't have the tools to rectify the situation. I got on the phone with an office in Wyoming who mistreated an Eastern Indian woman on my team most certainly because of her name and accent. I called animal control and worked with the sheriff to be sure a herd of horses rapidly losing weight would either get the quality hay and water they needed or they'd be surrendered. I can make a crying baby stop almost instantly, just by looking at her or him with understanding. And I smile, at anyone.

Being a social justice fighter isn't just about right and wrong, it's about feeling another's suffering and doing what I can to bring about relief. I am capable, competent, resourceful, and quick to act. You'd want me on your team if compassion and justice were your mission.

I walked to school in the 70's in Boston. If you don't know about school busing, it's worth a dive into a few books or a listen to a podcast. I walked past buses with black kids behind the windows and I heard what white adults would say to these kids. I'd seen people spit as they walked by. At kids. KIDS! Like me! Every n-word, every curled lipped pejorative, every huff of disgust was slung at me too. I saw no difference between those kids on the bus and myself. I listened to family members talk with disgust about black kids "coming in" and my heart hurt. My stomach cramped. My head swirled with the question, how can you hate someone you don't know? If you hated them, you hated me. I distanced myself from my family for some time because I didn't know how to deal with that.

Expressing compassion is part of an empath's life. Over the years, I have learned to feel compassion not just for those who are hurting, but for those who do the hurting. I have been able to still love family who say some really racist and hurtful things. I would say friends as well, but I choose my friends. I can separate love from agreement. I can love someone and not agree with their beliefs. I can have compassion for the hurt they have deep inside that would cause them to hate others and deny current events.

But something is happening. Over the past two years, the global injustices, persecutions, separations, discriminations, murders, court decisions are taking their toll on me and now I am having a hard time not absorbing so much suffering. I cannot hear a separated child's cry without breaking down with a split heart: one half feeling the fear and terror of a confused child alone in an unfamiliar world, and the other half feeling the helplessness, despair, and agony of a parent whose child's whereabouts are unknown. I cannot look at a photo of a starving seal cub or polar bear disoriented by a landscape that no longer provides food and the map needed for survival, because I cry knowing we ought to be doing better. I cannot sit at a table with a dead animal in the center because I know it was once part of a family unit and I know of the fright it experienced right before it was slaughtered. I cannot read a headline of a mother screaming because her child's leg was just blown off, literally, in what is one of the most senseless and egregious abuses of power in my lifetime, because her voice and pain permeate my entire being. I cannot listen to a privileged man berate a woman for speaking out about sexual abuse many years ago because I know her story and I know why she kept quiet, and I know what shame of privilege looks like. And here I sit feeling helpless and hopeless.

I am the fixer, the protector, the one who knows what someone is feeling and can be there to offer comfort and guidance. But I can't fix this. I can't help them all. And my ability to send compassion to those who are complicit by way of choice, silence, ignorance, convenient disregard, vote, is fading. And that is a horrible sinking feeling. It feels like a personal failure.

Can I still love all as one when so many others are suffering, and hurting, and dying? I cannot give up on that.

I cannot.

I must not.

#chooselove
#weareone
#itshumanity

It is What It is. I am Who I am.

It is what it is. I am white. I have fair skin. I have blue eyes. I am slender. These physical traits are worth gold. Sometimes, that I am a woman, strikes oil! But who am I? No one who doesn't know me, really knows that answer. But looking at me, they are certain they do.

They don't follow me around the department store. My former partner regularly shoplifted at Home Depot. But he was white and middle-aged. It is the Latinos who really needed to be watched.

I can get a job fairly easily. Many people in my predominantly white community don't show up for jobs, quit and complain when things don't go their way or when they want to ski or play instead. But those Native Americans are so lazy.

When I walk into a bank, I am greeted and it's likely assumed that I am depositing a respectable pay check or withdrawing money from a stable bank account. Surely that black woman must need help for a loan.

I can get a job. I can get a loan. I am more likely to get out of a ticket. I am less likely to go to jail.

My friends, and I mean good friends, have these traits: black, Asian, Latino, Native American, Eastern Indian, gay, bi, trans, asexual, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, tall, fat, super short, have a gold tooth or a missing tooth.

And for any one of these traits, they have been criticized, ostracized, bullied, passed over. It occurs to me that if I asked them to share a short story of one of these experiences, it would knock my socks off because I'm confident I only know a small part of that experience of harsh judgment.

There are people in my blood circle who use the N word and huff in disgust when they see Black Lives Matter or a black president, or families seeking asylum--in accordance with US law. Because who knows better than they when these people should be "over" racism and segregation; surely they can judge that better than those who suffer the N label.

I don't apologize for what I look like; as I said, I am who I am. But I am acutely aware of the overt favoritism and the unconscious preferential treatment I receive.

If I am the majority, by society's standard, then I must stand up for the minority. To not would be to not use my magic for good.

And I believe people who look like me judge more, hate more, blame more, because they don't know what to do with their feeling of shame or guilt, so it's easier to be angry. It's easier to separate. But really, if they embraced who they are fully, empowered themselves with that, they could lift up many. They could help change the world, literally.

But hey, even with all the perks and security of my physical traits, when it gets down to brass tacks, I am more likely to be grabbed by the pussy. Isn't that special.

#justsayin'
#neverthelessshepersisted
#goddesses

Prayer for 2019

If you've shared a meal with me, you know that before eating, I bow and give thanks.

Someone once asked, out of curiosity, what I said in my prayer. It can go anywhere from the obvious, such as, thanking the planet for providing the food in front of me and for bringing my meal companion to the table, to giving thanks for the hot water water I use to wash my plates and the four walls surrounding us in safety, to being grateful for coming to a place of compassion and no harm in my food choices. I may send out prayers to someone in particular who has been on my mind, or ask that all beings know peace.

Last night, as I was having an early dinner because it was the eve of the new year and I needed to be ready to spend hours outdoors with my herd if the fireworks got too close, I sat in quiet and in prayer. For the new year, the new moon, the partial solar eclipse of this week, I felt the pull to pray deep for the planet and all its beings. More than that, to pray for love. To pray that all beings may know love, love for themselves and love for others. That they may know love from themselves and from others.

Suddenly, I heard the message, it was healing. Healing needed the space.

I realized, I could pray for love--and I will continue to do so, but it is healing that is needed. For if a person has trauma, self-loathing, lacks belief in their value, stews in old patterns and thoughts, they cannot be in a space of true love. Because love of self is often the hardest to achieve, yet it is essential to really loving another. Love of self comes from being healed of worn stories, from karma of past lifetimes; it comes from believing that you are love and so is every other being on this planet.

If you cannot see yourself in every other being, your expression of love is short-circuiting. To not see yourself in other beings, is to put yourself above others, creating separation and distinction, imposing a measure of worthiness and the right to exist.

Once we heal a wound, one at a time, once we forgive a past injustice, once we detach from the story we created that binds us to what happened, we experience a freedom like nothing else. We then possess the vision to continue our healing. As this happens, the pain is transmuted to universal love.

Love isn't agreeing with or forgetting, it's allowing space for all of us to heal, including ourselves. It's holding space for another to go through their process and not be tied to the outcome for them. Love is a practice and a journey.

I. We. All.

In light and love,