The blog that follows was written before the election took place—I purposely wrote this prior to November 6, knowing I would have my own thoughts, feelings, and emotions to process; knowing that the election results would leave us with winners and losers; knowing that we would have voters who are thrilled and overjoyed, voters who feel devastated and disheartened, and even many who will be angry.

Rather than project the aftermath of such sentiments before I’ve had the opportunity to sit with my own, I chose to focus on another aspect of our humanity: compassion. And what especially brought this front and center for me were my recent health issues. So I’ll start there …

The View from Someone Else’s Shoes

As October was coming to an end, I had finally recovered from some undefined intestinal issues that took over two weeks to run their course. My ongoing symptoms and discomfort led me to the doctor to have tests run. Bloodwork to check for irregularities, including indicators for Celiac disease (since my sister was diagnosed with Celiac many years ago), along with scheduling the ten-year follow-up colonoscopy I promised to do this year, following anal cancer in 2014.

As I waited for my Celiac results, I connected with a level of compassion for my sister that went beyond anything I’d previously felt. In the past, I’ve seen how challenging it is for her, especially when she attends social gatherings where food options are not always provided. Even I was remiss last Thanksgiving when I failed to offer adequate gluten-free appetizers. I know this year I’ll be serving a variety of choices. Suddenly, though, as I considered life as she has been living it, I saw the challenges she’s faced that I might have to deal with. No French bread on our Italian dinner table. Gluten-free pastas that don’t hold a candle to the pastas produced in Italy. Greek dishes no longer prepared authentically, trying to replicate them using gluten-free alternatives. I’m embarrassed to admit that it wasn’t until I put myself in the possibility of wearing the same shoes as she that I finally saw just how difficult these adjustments are, especially because of the Italian and Greek heritages of my family and my husband’s.

I am grateful to share that the Celiac results were negative, and I am relieved—even thrilled. I am also well aware that this experience brought me front and center with my own lack of compassion—my inability to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.”.

Until we find a way to connect with someone else and what they’re going through, we can’t connect with our sense of compassion. We can never know exactly what someone else is thinking, feeling, or experiencing until we are willing to set aside our own judgments, thoughts, feelings, and assumptions. Until we are willing to no longer hold others and their suffering at arm’s length, as I had done with my sister’s circumstances, we cannot begin to appreciate what they are going through. As long as we are stuck in our own interpretations, or we avoid even considering what someone is experiencing, it’s almost impossible to hear what is really going on for them. Of course, it also requires their willingness and bravery to share the depths of those experiences with us.

I believe that’s why I especially love memoir and fiction that takes us into the characters’ internal landscapes.

Sharing Your Experiences

When someone tells their story well, we are able to sit with them in their experiences and reach deep within ourselves to listen with our hearts to what they share. We feel their struggles and hardships, their pain and sorrow, their regrets and disappointments, their anger and grief, alongside their joys and triumphs. Their story has the capacity to connect us with our own, not to minimize their experiences or think more highly of ourselves, but as an opportunity to walk, even for just a few hours, through someone else’s circumstances and see that, no matter who we are or what we’ve lived through, we are all more alike than different. I believe that at our core we all seek to understand and be understood. And we all want to love and be loved.

To me, that is the beauty of memoir. When we who write memoir expose the underbelly of our experiences, we take others into those moments. We give our readers the opportunity to sit with us through the gamut of thoughts and emotions as we traverse a landscape that may have been filled with boobytraps and landmines. We bring them back to solid ground as we share what we’ve come to know as a result of what we’ve lived. We invite them to connect with their sense of compassion.

Where I sit today is in the intention that whether I read another’s story or listen to a family member’s or friend’s challenges, I will do so with the open heart of compassion. Compassion and kindness are what our world need—now more than ever!

Hope for a Compassionate Country 

Which brings me back to the 2024 election. By the time this blog is posted, the results will have been announced—at least that is my deepest hope. We will all be in a state of processing what has occurred. Whether our candidates won or not, this will be a time to dig in deep to find a sense of compassion, first for ourselves and then for others. This will be a time to set aside our opinions and judgments and seek to be an instrument of healing in our country. As a country, we have become more divided, which doesn’t serve us or others, including the world at large. It’s up to each of us to find ways to begin healing that divide.

So, what if, instead of using the election results to increase the divide and separatism we’ve been experiencing, we extend the heart of understanding and kindness, starting within our own families and then extending it to our neighbors and communities? What if, no matter what the leadership and our media do to grow our division, WE THE PEOPLE approach those closest to us and extend the hands and arms of compassion, kindness, and understanding? What if WE THE PEOPLE ground ourselves in the light within each of us and stand witness to whatever others are feeling?

I understand this isn’t easy, especially when we feel that someone is standing on the opposite side of the fence from us … but I do believe it’s possible. We can start by seeing it in our mind’s eye, extending goodwill to another, no matter how different we believe they are from us. Visualize that ripple becoming a wave—an incredibly powerful wave of love, light, connection, compassion, and kindness that moves out further and further. See ourselves becoming an instrument for creating such a country … such a world. It’s up to us … WE THE PEOPLE.