Empathy is not a tone of voice. Empathy is not a mask that can be pulled on and off. Empathy is neither vapid nor intrusive. Empathy is a way of life, porous like a sieve. Your body is full of holes, and instead of covering and patching the holes, you invite others into the wounds, you allow the eddies and the flows that trap and drown other people to stream into you, through you. In this way, you sense, you feel, you begin to think, indeed, to live, differently.

For someone who suffers from relational trauma and medical trauma, having to rely on doctors, surgeons, nurses, and healthcare administrators I don’t trust is a subtle but exquisite form of torture.