I do think highly sensitive and deeply empathic people are not always understood especially in modern society. I do think we are born with a special something, call it a fine radar for suffering or intuition. It was interesting as yesterday on the way to therapy I was listening to an interview with an author (whose name I did not catch) who has written a novel revolving around the hidden unspoken history of her Polish grandparents. In the interview she spoke of how, as a child, she sensed this great climate of stress and anxiety in her family and it had to do with her grandparents experiences in Europe around the time of World War Two. I could not help but think about the post I wrote last week about unspoken trauma. The novelist uses the image of a battered brown suitcase in one chapter to provide a metaphor of many things unspoken about her refugee grandparents.
But what struck me most in the interview was how she spoke of her sensitivity to the climate around her as a youngster and how difficult it was to make sense of it. It made me think of all of us empathic sensitive kids who absorbed a climate of hostility, terror, stress or sadness in our own families.
I am a member of the Awakened Empath group on Facebook and while I am not a fan of labels or categories reading posts on this page about what others go through I see the common thread leading through our experiences. Many of us have endured deep hurts at the hands of others, many of us have felt on the outside, many of us turned to substances, addictions or other people as a way to cope that in the end proved to be counter productive and many of us felt on the outside in our families and many are family scapegoats.
I was thinking today how an understanding of my own empathic nature together with a VALUING of it, rather than a NEGATING OR SHAMING of it would have served me well. I was lucky last week to have my niece in law share with me the contents of a letter my Mum wrote to her 6 or so years before she died in 2017 in the letter she said that she had realised too late how sensitive I had been as a child and how much I struggled. In the letter she said how she handled it very very badly. Sadly these are things my mother could not say to me before she died. I cried a lot today doing a self forgiveness and forgiveness practice with realising how helpless she felt and how hard she tried to the best of her ability in later life to help. That said towards the end I feel she gave up. I am grateful for the final hours we had together a day before she died in December that year. In that time we both forgave each other.
My point in writing this post is just to affirm that as an empath it is natural for you to struggle in this society, and it can be hard to have high self esteem, that said you are worthy and you are beautiful just as you are, no matter how the world may misjudge you. But you also have a responsibility to honour your gifts and make the most of them. In the words of the bible “Cast not your pearls before swine.” That said to judge the lesser sensitive or empathic as swine seems a bit harsh to me (yes, guys I am empathic to them too, after all!)
A lot is written these days about self love but its very important. And its only when we have self love that perhaps we find it in our hearts to forgive those who don’t ‘get’ us, after all maybe it was never really their job! As empaths is more essential that we understand ourselves deeply as well as the way we are wired. We need a solid lifeline to our own hearts and spiritual core and we need strong healthy boundaries so that we can maintain our own centre and be a light while not allowing ourselves to be dumped with darkness or take on issues or responsibilities that we never ours in the first place. Learning to care and love within a balance is important. Learning to value ourselves for who we truly are is also essential.
Emerging From The Dark Night 