{"id":4035,"date":"2016-09-28T00:01:02","date_gmt":"2016-09-28T06:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mops.org\/?p=4035"},"modified":"2016-09-28T00:01:02","modified_gmt":"2016-09-28T06:01:02","slug":"marked-with-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/marked-with-empathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Marked With Empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was a history major in college. The way the world has arrived at the place it is now, the causes and effects, the victors and the victims, the passive people and the active, their environments and thoughts and words, all of it fascinates me. I ate it all up, jumping from book to book like a frog on lily pads. I could read all about the triumphs and tragedies of mankind and come away from it with my mind lit up like a flame, the fire set and smoldering by the spark of curiosity and knowledge colliding. It was all a fascination, a sense of satisfaction for my minds cravings and it still is, but it\u2019s different now.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s different because I\u2019m a mom. When I became a mom, a trail was blazed deep and long and wide between my heart and my mind. The two cannot be separated. You\u2019ve heard the saying, \u201cAll roads lead to Rome.\u201d Well for a mom, all roads lead to the heart.<\/p>\n

Because of that, I can\u2019t look at war and oppression and tragedy with an objective perspective anymore. There\u2019s no possible way for me to read about all that\u2019s wrong with human history and human present and then just tuck it away like a book on a shelf.<\/p>\n

All I think now is: That was someone\u2019s child.<\/p>\n

Someone\u2019s child who was harmed and battered. Someone\u2019s baby who was forced into oppression. A mother had to watch and grieve as that happened to her child. The same mother who spent months sheltering that person inside her body, who came to terms with the stretch marks, and the sacrifice and the weight of love that is incomparable, had to witness that. That was the product of all of her investment. All of the days she spent hoping and dreaming and loving, and loving, and loving some more, culminated in utter heartbreak.<\/p>\n

I think these same things when I see the ordinary hurts that happen each day. I wonder how the mother of the bullied child or the child with no friends sleeps at night. I can\u2019t even watch movies where bad things happen to people anymore because I simply can\u2019t stop the thoughts and images that start in my brain from bolting down the road to my heart, the one that was carved by the hands of my children.<\/p>\n

Once those images have been converted from scenes on a screen or facts from the news or a book to images of mother\u2019s crying over the pain of their children, I can\u2019t help but feel utter sadness and panic at the thought of how that feels. How that would feel if it were me.<\/p>\n

Maybe this is dramatic, or much too sensitive. Maybe it\u2019s the embodiment of worry. But maybe it\u2019s something else, something that is altogether powerful.<\/p>\n

Maybe the transformation that comes from motherhood is one that ushers in empathy. Empathy that can change the world.<\/p>\n

What if we saw this for what it is? The power to feel what others feel, to understand that every person is someone\u2019s person, and the impact of hurting them would have far greater affects than we could ever know.<\/p>\n

Actually, we would know because we\u2019re moms. We know how it would feel to be pierced with our children\u2019s anguish and sorrow. We can imagine how the mother of the soldier or the bullied or the refugee or the lonely is feeling. We can put ourselves in their shoes because we all wear the same size; the size of love that can\u2019t be measured.<\/p>\n

What if we saw this soft spot as power? Power to look at the pain in the world through a mom\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

Moms have the power of empathy. It\u2019s a power because we have the opportunity to do something with it. We can teach our kids to look at others like the treasure they are to someone else. We can train them not to see an enemy where someone\u2019s child stands and an object where there is a heart. We can train them not to take people for granted because what lies in everyone is the sum of someone\u2019s heart, and love and hopes and dreams.<\/p>\n

We can turn that soft spot deep within our hearts into a place of strength because we are the people-makers, the heart-molders, the generation-shapers. We have the power to instill within our children the ability to love others over themselves. We can blaze a trail from their minds to their hearts and pack it down tight with our love.<\/p>\n

May our children be moved by the softness within us. May they be marked with empathy.<\/p>\n

\n

Kelsey Lasher is a wife and stay-at-home mom in her home state of Colorado. She is unapologetically passionate about little people in footy pajamas and the women who are raising them. You can find her blogging about all of this on her personal blog, <\/em>whilewemother.com<\/a> or pick up her debut novel, <\/em>Where Our Stories Leave Us, releasing this September.<\/em><\/p>\n

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This article originally appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of\u00a0Hello, Dearest. If you didn\u2019t get a copy and would like your own, you can\u00a0subscribe<\/em><\/a>\u00a0to get\u00a0Hello, Dearest\u00a0in your mailbox every season. If you subscribe, forward your receipt to\u00a0<\/em>magazines@mops.org<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and we\u2019ll shoot a copy of the current issue in the mail to you for free \u2026 just because we like you.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was a history major in college. The way the world has arrived at the place it is now, the causes and effects, the victors and the victims, the passive people and the active, their environments and thoughts and words, all of it fascinates me. I ate it all up, jumping from book to book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":4036,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[546,205,661,662,663,664,665,230,640,666,667,55,56,668,631,669,670,51,671,672,673],"class_list":["post-4035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness","tag-baby","tag-books","tag-child","tag-curiosity","tag-empathy","tag-environment","tag-generation","tag-heart","tag-history","tag-knowledge","tag-mind","tag-mom","tag-motherhood","tag-oppression","tag-pain","tag-perspective","tag-power","tag-tragedy","tag-transformation","tag-war","tag-world"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}