Empathy is an Inside Job

I was a mediocre soccer player in high school, tall and strong enough to push people off the ball but unwilling to do the necessary work to truly excel. 
 
The boys soccer team had the best practice slots during summer practices, so our long runs were in the sweltering heat of midday. 
 
I had an old knee injury and, when the runs were especially grueling, I lied and quit, fake-hobbling my way back to the water-bottles instead of gutting it out with my teammates. 
 
It wasn’t until I joined the rowing team (crew) in college that I connected with my capacity & desire to work hard.  As a freshman, our first practice was “dry land” and, even though I was at the very back, I ran every step of that five-mile slog. 
 
Through the fierce camaraderie of bloody, blistered hands and hours spent on the water, I learned to push myself to my limit and then a bit more.
 
In the years afterwards, I was doggedly committed to a demanding workout routine.  This continued into pregnancy: I was running until just two days before I gave birth to our first child. 

And, as years piled on stress, sorrow, and responsibilities, I funneled many of those undigested emotions into my body. 
 
I can remember finals week during my first semester of my MBA program.  I was almost eight months pregnant with a high-risk infant, actively parenting a toddler and a 1-year old, with a long string of sleeping just 4 hours a night to prepare for accounting, marketing, and finance finals. 
 
After the last exam wrapped, I was exhausted, overwhelmed and sad.  Instead of taking a nap or calling a friend, I hoisted myself onto a treadmill for a 45-minute run.   
 
Why?  Because there is a part of me that is still running from that high-school version of myself, the one who let her teammates and herself down by quitting.  She seemed so weak and undependable, everything that I worked hard, in subsequent years, not to be. 
 
However, the body keeps the score and, a few years later, I had to give up running and punishing workouts for a long period of incremental healing. 
 
In these years of recovery and integration, I am learning a new way.  I was on a trail run in 2022, winding my way up one of my favorite Bloomington ridge lines. 

But ice crusted the trail, I was exhausted and there were still 4 miles to go. I wanted to walk and heard that old whisper, “Don’t stop; you’ll never start again:  you are a quitter.”
 
And in that moment, I could speak back to the accusation.  “I’m not a quitter.  If I walk, that is OK.  I know how to start again when I need to.”
 
I still sometimes feel an urge, when I am exhausted or my child is preparing for surgery, to go and sprint or throw around really heavy weights. 

But now, when I feel that frenetic energy, born of anxiety or sadness or loss, I am much more likely to treat myself gently, to go for a walk or sit in the sauna.
 
Why am I writing this in the newsletter that centers on empathy towards others?  Because, if you want to build sustainable cultures of care, you need to learn kindness towards those pieces/versions of yourself that you are *currently* meeting with disdain or dread.
 
Because the voices that live in our head don’t stay there; they can’t help but influence how we relate to others.  If I am intolerant of weakness in my own story, I will have very little space for the limitations of others. 
 
I am learning, with each passing year, to meet my limits and my history without harsh judgment.  More and more, I bless those orphaned parts of my story, “You were doing the best you could with the information/resources you had”.
 
And this unleashes empathy towards those around me, allowing me to meet them with genuine, sustainable care instead of judgment.