I learned to ride a bike back in the dinosaur times, before knee pads and helmets.

Two years later, smarting at being the only fourth-grader who wasn’t whizzing around the streets all summer long, I pulled out my now reasonably sized bike and, in the privacy of the back yard, taught myself to ride. I pushed myself off from our porch and rode in circles on the grass until I felt confident enough to do it in public. I still enjoy cycling.

“This isn’t going to hurt you.”

I’m not even sure that was true. It was true in the sense that my children’s knees were protected by kneepads. (I can’t remember applying any bandages after bike riding lessons, but given the state of my memory, that doesn’t mean much.) Nevertheless, if they had fallen and skinned their knees, it would have hurt me a little - if not my knees, then my heart. That’s the thing about empathy: if you define it as feeling someone else’s pain along with them, then empathy hurts. Empathy is powerful, but it hurts. Empathy is powerful because it hurts. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to tell my knees, “You can survive this hurt.”

So how about now? How do I watch my children get involved in activities a lot more hazardous than riding a bike - activities like working toward a dream, or falling in love, or parenting - and hazard myself, over and over, to the pain of empathy? I’ll be honest: quite often I don’t. I compartmentalize, dial down my empathy, protect myself. It’s a survival mechanism. But when I let the emotions in, I can be much closer to the sufferer, more of a comfort, and more alive. I can put my arms around them and grieve with them - isn’t that the essence of loving, and living?

Here’s a lovely quote from Rusty Berkus’ book To Heal Again that I ran across when I was grieving my miscarried babies:

Bless this pain, for it will bear its perfect gift to you in its perfect time.

It has been that way for me: my overwhelming pain has ripened over the years into the rich fruits of deepened relationships, clearer wisdom and tender empathy. It can be that way for my children.  Next time one of them comes to me with a heart scraped and bleeding, I hope I can open up to my parallel pain, welcome it, and wait for it to bear its perfect gift, to me, and to my child.