Love Saying You’re an Empath? Here’s Why It Misses the Point.

I’ve been pulled lately to examine the course of my life from afar. “Me” as object rather than subject.

“Me” whose details hold tragedy and heartbreak and wonder and miracles. “Me” who is indivisible from other journeyers on this human path — those known and unknown. Those on this timeline and timelines I can barely imagine.

If there’s a through-line in these wanderings, it’s a guiding presence far grander than “me” at all. I don’t pretend to know what this is. I don’t pretend words come anywhere close. Source, the Universe, the Divine, and the like — undersized stand-ins for what cannot be named.

I feel the presence though, ever nudging the illusory edges of self. Ever guiding me to stretch beyond the familiar, the comfortable, the normal.

It’s always been there. It couldn’t possibly be otherwise.

Exploring this divinely, precisely placed edge is what finally, finally allows me to embody self and soul more fully. My use of present tense is intentional — this is far from over and the edge is always moving. But I’m on the path.

Looking back across the years, I never strayed. I just couldn’t always see it clearly. Still, some deep part of me knew the way. Some deep part of me always insisted on doing things differently — oddly, really.

A small town girl, I refused the expected. I rejected “normal” absolutely. This has held steady — from my earliest years on. Now 46, I at last celebrate it.

I insisted on “being a boy” (and finally, in fifth grade, was allowed to get a boy’s haircut). I insisted on the freedom of everyone to love and desire whomever they love and desire (even back in Redneck High, where I’m pretty sure being queer was punishable by flogging).

I insisted on leaving my cornfield county and going straight through school and more school — from undergrad to grad to a year-long post-grad fellowship abroad, getting top marks along the way. I did this despite not having it paid for. I did it despite not knowing anyone in my small world who was doing it this way.

I say all this not to brag — I’m a highly disciplined overachiever, rather than particularly smart or exceptional.

I say it because it still shocks me, looking back, that I chose the route I chose and managed it. No one really did that, where I come from. My trajectory is exceedingly unlikely. The odds were not in its favour.

Then came part 2: living and traveling abroad solo, on a shoestring, as a small female. Somehow winging it with a backpack, laptop, and bank account always teetering on empty.

This set a faster, more expressed version of growing into self in motion. All the more so back then, before internet cafes and the digital nomad moment.

Then as now, I weighed 90-something pounds and barely grazed five feet. I was often mistaken for a child. But I packed up my life and veered far from the beaten path, seeking destinations empty of tourists.

No one taught me how to do this. No one recommended or praised it. Indeed, they usually questioned it with good reason! Unsafe, financially stupid, a waste of schooling — lots of cases could be made against my life. But my soul led me, that is all.

When I chose to finally settle down, it was for Chinese Medicine school in my thirties. By the close of that five-year, intensely rigorous chapter, I’d transitioned from patient to doctor.

This too was a pivotal piece in coming home to myself. In owning and inhabiting my strangeness. The measure of success shifted. The focus moved away from me…and towards being of service — tending to the body, mind, and spirit of others.

As lofty as that sounds, I’ll be the first to tell you I didn’t arrive there immediately or particularly gracefully. My first years as a Chinese Medicine student were mostly about: 1) getting the top grades (which I did, fuelled by addiction to overwork and perfectionism), and 2) holding tight to my story of self as injured, wounded, victim, patient.

To become a doctor, for me, the second one had to go. But I resisted a while.

Now an instructor and dean of Chinese Medicine, I love seeing this happen with students.

Many, like me, end up studying medicine because they too long to heal and perhaps have already experienced healing through holistic care. They enter their training seeing themselves as patients. They want others to see and validate the hardship of their path.

I get that. I was that. But at some point — often not until they start seeing patients in student clinic — a powerful transition is set in motion. One that asks them to take responsibility. One that places their patients first. One that means leaving the familiar, safe story of self as patient behind to emerge a practitioner.

This does not always happen — some aren’t ready yet and some never will be. That’s okay too — it’s simply not their path this timeline.

But when the movement from patient to doctor does unfold, it’s beautiful to watch. As a teacher, it touches my heart.

That too, is only a beginning. A next place is not attaching to this new story: self as empath, giver, martyr, healer. Intimate cousins of self as patient and self as victim, these too imagine a separation. These too are tangled in ego and disconnected from spirit.

As a new practitioner, seeing the medicine work and seeing patients get better and lean into me, this flavour of story was deeply seductive. (As it is for many, whether or not they become doctors.)

Here’s the thing though: Taking credit or silently imagining such already gets in the way.

Ultimately, healing is relationship. Ultimately, our job as doctors and people is to show up fully, bringing all we can so far as skill, artistry, listening, and presence.

Ultimately, that is what we’re responsible for — not outcomes, which rest on many things (most especially, in most cases, the capacity and choices of the patient or others).

This holds whether results are miraculous or dismal.

Our place, as one small part of the Universe’s safety net, is to make ourself a conduit and hollow bone. Our place is to show up fully while at the same time stepping out of the way, allowing spirit and Universe to move through us.

The realization comes that “I” am neither patient nor healer. The realization comes that there is no separation and our stories are just stories.

This again creates space for inhabiting the whole. Seeing darkness and light in each of us. None different or special. All different and special. A both/and truth washing away the narrow, tired banks of ego and story.

The “de” in the Dao De Ching is sometimes translated as “virtue.” Another rendering is a quality of the Divine inherent in humans. That expression in mind, I took liberty with this excerpt from Chapter 51:

Therefore all things arise from Dao.

By the Divine in us they are nourished,

Developed, cared for,

Sheltered, comforted,

Grown, and protected.

Creating without claiming,

Doing without taking credit,

Guiding without interfering,

This is the original Divine, present in us.

So. Coming to this place of not taking credit. Coming to this place of showing up for life in a way that is heart-sourced and skillful.

For others. For self. For all of us. No difference. No separation.

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