“You keep planting sympathy in rows meant for empathy and I’m here picking weeds with tears in my eyes.”

Grace is found flourishing beneath skin blooming from each scar.

I am the moments and memories from the past tied up with good intentions and mistakes from the future.

Growth is no longer seeking acceptance from those who cannot give it to themselves.

If you want to see the world as it should be, read poetry.

I fell for you dissolved like sugar in tea – completely.

I was quiet, yes but I heard all you never said, your silence read.

When I met my darkness clouds | swirled the night sky | refracted light danced in the wild eyes | freedom came for me.

I don’t want the world but I want you in mine.

I will remain soft in a world marked by hardness.

You were waiting for the sunset while I was longing for the moonrise.

If hearts are our homes, why do we let others break windows and throw stones?

Whole, loved and worthy just as you are.

From each scar today bloom the flowers of a kinder tomorrow.

You are already more than enough.

Don’t reorient yourself to fit in to an upside down world.

Let’s get perfectly lost recklessly joyful, let’s rest a while in this sweet reverie.

Real empathy is sometimes not insisting that it will be okay but acknowledging that it is not.

When people are really suffering, and we know they’re suffering, that question can be a very difficult one. Inadvertently, I think without anyone meaning it, it communicates a lack of empathy.

Don’t judge someone’s attitude until you’ve felt their pain.

Is it a boon or curse I wonder; to feel another’s pain so much to consider it my own? To moan another’s funeral as if it were my own?

Feel the needs of others more than your own.

To listen with empathy is the most important human skill.

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.

It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.