Hey there internet neighbor, thanks for stopping by!
I'm not really good at distilling myself down to a few bite-sized snippets. I'm pretty anti-reductionistic thinking so the whole "about me" section is out of my comfort zone. I totally get that for those of you who are here checking out this section that it is probably valuable to have a sense of who I am, where I have been, and what I have done. So it is for you that I will try.
I was born into a military family so every 3 years we would move. Being born before mobile phones were common and before the internet, this meant losing all the relationships and having to restart. I've moved more than 14 times in the US and other countries so my own sense of culture isn't the most typical. My parents had two healthy kids and two of us with challenges. I married a man with Type 1 Diabetes and life has been a unique balancing act with the two of us having chronic health issues.
My mom always wanted me to collect something, I imagine to make giving me gifts or telling others what to get me a little easier. The things I value are far too eclectic to easily label with the exception of people. I love people. The family was pretty terrified that I'd make friends with a stranger who was nefarious with ill intent. While they managed to instill some fears in me they couldn't quench my thirst for understanding the world from a new acquaintance's perspective. My husband calls the way I see the world, how I think about things, and how I connect with the people I encounter as I go about life "enchanting". My mother's take on me was shared in a rare vulnerable moment "I think people don't like you because your genuineness scares them". My traits have this sense of magnetic tension, people tend to either feel seen and experience genuine connection or they are repelled. I'd like to say that I'm perfectly comfortable with being myself and experiencing such dynamic responses but I'd be lying and I'm a terrible liar.
I'm the kind of person who thinks about who they want to be rather than what I want to be. Here's my list- I want to be truthful and also kind; I want to have trusting and reliable relationships so I'm going to do the hard work of understanding myself so that I can set appropriate expectations and meet them; I want to have lasting relationships so I will be trustworthy, compassionate, and try to understand the other person as best as possible so I will grow the skills needed to do this; I want to be a safe person for my loved ones and even strangers to find a refuge from the weight the world has put on them and I want to try and not make things harder for them; I never want to be arrogant so I will remember that I have done the same things that I get upset at other people for and I will choose to move away from those behaviors and be gracious towards those people who haven't; I want genuine connection so I will look for the heart of those around me and I will speak courage and encouragement to their unique hearts; I want my values to be consistent in my words and actions; I want the world to be a better place because I have lived and I want your day to be at least a little better even just for the moment that I am in it.
Empathy Unites Us is a passion project for me. The ideas for this blog have been brewing for a while, but I'll admit, my insecurities kept me procrastinating for almost eight months. I have a hard time believing that anyone in their busy and important lives will stop to listen to my very unique way of seeing the world.
By sharing information I research, stories from other's lives, or moments from my own life I'm hoping that you'll experience something new and take something with you that you'll think about. I'm not interested in trying to convince you to see the world exactly as I do. Just like I am unique and my perspective may give you something to think about, you yourself are unique and in a unique place in your life journey. If I somehow managed to brainwash you into being a mini-me then we'd be losing out on the wisdom and wonder of your uniqueness. I would like however to provide some food for thought, to provide a different perspective for consideration, and maybe help our society to be more thoughtful in how we engage one another. I believe that we can all learn to be a little more open, a little better at listening, a little better at understanding, a little more flexible, a little more curious, a little more forgiving, and a little more generous which would make us a whole lot more humane in our treatment of one another.
Thanks for joining me on my journey to make the world just a bit better today.
~Kristina~
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