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| Photo by Molly |
By Chelan Harkin
Empathy is more than just saying the “right thing.” It’s energetically attuning with genuine compassion and acceptance to a wound in another that resonates with one you’ve come to know intimately in yourself.
When we’re unfamiliar with something, we tend to fear it and react to it by trying to change or fix it, or in other words, we try to make it to go away.
When we know something deeply and understand its story and how it came to be, we can come to be familiar with it, close to it, to have love for it.
So when another entrusts us with a vulnerability, if we’re familiar with it because we’ve done the beautiful, courageous work of becoming familiar with our own matching sorrow, we can then give the extraordinary gift of pouring never before known light into the wound of the other and offer it profound healing through the act of profound acceptance—not trying to change it or make it go away but by saying to the wound, “I see you. I know you. You’re welcome here in the light just as you are.”
When we can do this with another, we offer the profound gift of an imprint of worthiness on their wound that was previously associated only with shame.
When there is no longer shame, there is no longer reason to hide. When there is no reason to hide, more of us can be seen and known. When we can be seen and known, others can become familiar with us. Where there is familiarity, there is closeness and love.
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