Being an empath has its downsides. I feel like an energetic sponge for everyone’s stuff and have had to work hard to learn to ground and separate my feelings from others. But I still often feel drained by the end of the day.
However, on my path of growth and exploration, I’ve learned to view and use my empathic nature as a gift. As a healer, it enables me to easily pick up on what my clients are going through. And as a writer, I’m able to slip into the shoes of my characters pretty easily. In fact, I’ve learned that the more distant a character is from my own experience, the better I’m able to capture and convey their journey (there are exceptions to that rule, but not many).
The more I can relate to my characters, the more realistic it will feel to the reader, and the more they will be able to empathize with them as well. In my short stories and poetry, I’ve loved writing from surprising perspectives (that of a house, a cloud, a potato, a meditation bell, a sloth, and a cantankerous crow, to name a few).
In my dual timeline debut novel, archival footage and images from the early 1900s and reading biographies and works written in that era ignited my imagination. Thanks to them, I was (I hope) able to feel and transmit what it was like to be a young woman escaping a tragic event in that era. Pictures my sister and friends sent me or verbally painted of places they’d been and experiences they’d had, like working in South Sudan and baby cuddling, enabled me to bring them to life in my writing.
Just a reminder that our challenges are often also our biggest gifts, especially as writers! It’s part of our path to learn to befriend them and use them as assets to support others on their journey.
