#EmpathyForNativeAmericans Archives - READ,WRITE & LIVE YOUR TRUTH

E.G. Kardos

October 24, 2025

Silhouette of a young mother lovingly kissing her little child o

My mom taught me compassion, empaty and love. It wasn’t just what she said, but what she did. In her small way, she responded to others’ pain and understood their disappointments.

She endured hardships as a child during the Great Depression. She saw, first hand, the struggles of family, friends and strangers. Most people, she thought, tried their best in nearly impossible circumstances. The poor and infirmed are always hit the hardest and then and as it is now, she knew that we don’t all start from the same place and we don’t all have the same opportunities. We just don’t.

Some of us get a head start. I know I did.

Compassion, Empathy and Love

So what do I mean by these three words? Compassion is our sympathy for the suffering of others without placing judgment on that person or group of people. We can’t understand what they have experienced or how they arrived at this place in their lives–but we feel for their suffering and we want alleviate it. We can all be compassionate–no question about that.

Empathy is more active than compassion so it takes a little more work on our part. It is an intentional act to understand others feeling by putting yourself in their place and attempting to their situation, or their world, from their perspective. We need to do this, like compassion, with no judement. Yeah, it takes intention and some work.

So what about love? Yep, it’s hard to define, but it is certainly the most powerful force in the universe. It’s the only force that moves us forward. It endures.

Through Actions

It’s great to think, pray, meditate, hope and have a whole lot of faith, but we need to attach these wonderful aspect with action.

Mom showed me her compassion, empathy and love through her actions, especially for people she didn’t know. She gave what she could to support Indigenious People, for example, who have suffered from injustices ever since European’s showed up on their beaches. White folks brought a lot of ills and devastated a people and a culture. No getting around that.

Mom was of western Eureopean decent and her family and generations before her had very little, but she knew she had more that the folks who first inhabited the Americas. She felt their struggles the best she could. She knew their plight and how they, at the hands of intruders, had nearly lost everything. She opened her heart to feel a fraction of their suffering. She acted and gave what she could.

When asked about compassion, empathy and love, Mother Teresa said:

“…I can only love one person at a time–just one, one, one. So you begin. I begin–I pick up one person. Maybe if I didn’t pick up that one person, I wouldn’t have picked up forty-two thousand…. The same thing in your church, your community. Just begin–one, one, one.”

Other ways my mom taught me about compassion, empathy and love

In 1977, when I was 17, my mom, dad, and I watched the U.S. Open on TV, where we saw Renee Richards play for the first time. She had transitioned from male to female in the early 1970s. My mom turned to me and said, “I feel for her and what she must have endured her whole life, knowing she was trapped in the wrong body.”

She had the compassion, empathy, and love. She also had the courage to openly support a trans woman, even in a time when the LGBTQ community faced harsh judgment, ridicule, violence, arrests and shame for being who they were born to be.

For younger folks, back then, and until very recently, most of LGBTQ community was deeply closeted due to the darker side of humanity that still lingers. Hate is alive, unfortunately, in 2025 and many communities are enduring unnessary siege. This is why liveing without judgement of others is all part of compassion, empathy and love.

This all came from a woman born in 1921. If my mom were alive, she’d be 105. She saw injustices and always knew that humanity could do – should do- better. She knew it waw all about man and nothing else.

I learned this from her

It’s so easy to be compassionate, to strive to be empathetic and to show love Yes, you read that correctly. Being compassionate, empathetic and showing love is easy.

It’s a matter of will

The happiest people are compassionate so as it lifts others it lifts us as well.

The Dalai Lama sums it up personally for me when he says:

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

If we can remove our ego and judge no one, we might start to feel the pain, and the joy, of others and actually do something about it..

We might choose to help instead of building walls and blaming others for our problems. There’s far too much whining from the most privileged in our country..

I don’t care who your are, but we all need help sometimes—yes, you’ve needed some too. It not, you will.

For me, compassion, empathy and love is about being human. We would be light years ahead if we only valued humanity–our neighbor. To put it another way, if we only valued what (most) moms show us, we would be light years ahead of where we are today on this puny planet.

Man spends his life gathering possessions that he ultimately leaves behind, rather than the things he could collect that would stay in his soul well beyond his last breath.

If you liked this post, you may like my other posts in my category, I Seek Therefore, I Am.

About E.G. Kardos

I am a fiction writer and the author of five books. My writing draws inspiration from the beauty surrounding us all—both in nature and in each other. Spirituality, friendship, love, and our connection to the universe inspire me to write. Here’s more about me and my books.

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Tag: #EmpathyForNativeAmericans

Compassion, Empathy, and Love and it Started with Mom