Every book is for someone. The act of writing may be solitary, but it is always a reach toward another person – a single person – since every book is read alone. The writer does not know for whom she writes. The reader’s face is invisible, and yet, every sentence inscribed on a page represents…
I have feared homelessness and have experienced it. I have feared hunger and have experienced it. I have feared abandonment and have experienced it. I have feared unemployment and have experienced it. I have feared poverty and have experienced it. I have feared gay oppression and have experienced it. I have feared age oppression and…
After years of empathizing, I have generally found that the feelings come before the story. Someone will communicate disappointment, sadness, fear. I see it and, if I stand as witness, a story will follow. I can generally trust those feelings when they show up. I have also noticed that I cannot always trust the story.…
Is someone out there teaching empathy? Some days it seems like there is. They are even doing a good job in my opinion. Over the past few months I have been feeling grief to a degree that shocks me at times. It has actually reminded me of a heart attack I had four years ago.…
One of the truly annoying factors associated with age discrimination is the amount of sympathy one gets for growing older. People, young and old alike, seem to fall into a range of responses from deniers (“Oh, you can’t be over 60!”) and pacifiers (“Well, you certainly don’t look 65 years old!”) to the sympathizers (“I…
Empathy has been defined as a multi-factor construct that results in an individual’s capacity to understand what another person is experiencing from within the other person’s frame of reference. In common expression, empathy allows us to walk a mile in another’s shoes. Empathy has been studied from many perspectives, including among others: positive psychology, neuropsychology, sociology,…
Creating Community for Everyone 