I’ve written before
of the gift of a larger-than-life original portrait of my son Noah from our niece and how a glimpse of it can mesmerize me. Sitting in my living room this week
gazing into the Zoom meeting screen, I realized my head was in just the right
position to block Noah’s head in the portrait on the wall behind me. I
appeared, for once, to be looking out at the world from Noah’s place in it.
This was startling as it had never quite happened that way in the many Zoom
meetings I’d done in that room. Did I suddenly notice the convergence of our
two heads because I’d recently been reading and thinking about empathy?
I’m ashamed of how
little I was able to understand Noah’s feelings and walk in his shoes when he
was struggling. I was too caught up in my own struggle, helpless to help him
and to find a way out of our estrangement. My own experience of depression in
my 20s was very different than Noah’s and I couldn’t see why it was so
disabling for him. I didn’t know that he was having severe anxiety attacks and frequent
suicidal thoughts; even if I had, I would not have known how those felt. I knew
he was in deep trouble but I was too frantic about it to be able to sit with
him in the dark and listen.
It was only after Noah’s
death, through suicide prevention training, that I learned how to be present
for someone in distress and hear their story. It was only after learning more about
suicide and mental health conditions that I could sense the suffering all
around me, especially among young people, and try to reach out.
Empathy, I now know,
is a response that can be taught, a muscle that can be strengthened. My
greatest lessons in empathy have come through walking beside other suicide loss
survivors on the long, circuitous path to healing. In the early years, I was stumbling
through traumatic grief, hanging on every restorative word of those ahead of me
on the journey. I could say anything about how I was feeling and they
understood. I could ask how they could bear it and they would tell me, step by
step. We were all banished to a parallel
universe, breathing the same thin air of an alien planet, trying to find a way
home.
Over the past ten
years, I’ve gotten into the habit of reaching out to other loss survivors,
especially mourning moms, on this blog, in my book, and in person, both one-on-one
and in groups. I encourage survivors not to fear their grief but to sit with it and fully
express it. I invite their stories, anticipate their needs, reassure them, as I
was reassured in the bleakest time. I try to remember not to assume anything about others’ grief,
but to gently ask instead. I remind them to take good care of themselves every
day.
Being with my
fellow survivors reminds me that there are always more opportunities for
empathy—giving it, receiving it. And that the more we practice it, the more it
becomes a part of us and of healing the world.
Wishing everyone a
heartwarming season of gratitude.
To my
fellow survivors: If
you want to be with some powerful empathy teachers, check out International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day to see stories of survivors
from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. Another great resource every
day of the year is the articles and community forum at Alliance of Hope for Suicide Loss Survivors
