Friendships – Simply Etta
Posted on July 9, 2021 July 23, 2021 by SimplyEtta	· 5 Comments
Unless you live in a vacuum or totally off-grid without human contact, people will disappoint you. Our days flow according to our expectations and so does our disappointments. Time has always been a commodity, the more things you have to do the less time you seem to have and people now more than ever guard their time jealously. While there’s not much you can do about people disappointing you, you can do something about how quickly you bounce back. It’s hard when someone disappoints you, whether it’s a trusted friend or colleague tossing you under the bus and hitting reverse speed, a dinner date cancelling last minute or family members who you thought would always have your back suddenly not there when you need them most. Life is filled with disappointments and you have a choice in your reaction to those disappointments.
Learning To Express My Authentic Self
Empath/ˈɛmpaθ/noun
a person with the ability to perceive the mental or emotional state of another individual.
My grandmother not only had a heart of gold, like most grandmothers, but she was also very intuitive. She gave this personification of someone wise and all knowing, for a young child at tine this was unsettling and I remember asking her one time if she was a psychic, she simply smiled and said no, ‘I just know things!’ I never truly appreciated her gifts of knowing what to say, when to say it or what to do and when to do it, until I got older. Her selflessness, always giving so much of herself to others, a lot of whom were undeserving, her relentless willingness to help those in need even if it meant giving her last. Often came across more as a weakness than anything else. But those who truly appreciated her, said she had a pure heart of Gold.
As the old adage goes, the chip doesn’t fall far from the block. It was not just a part of my upbringing, it was engrained in my fabric because I started noticing the same attitudes in myself that I saw in her and I was never aware of the word empath until I was well into my 40s. All of my life I was singled out as being selfish, stubborn, naive and just a little bit crazy. Some call it a gift, some say it’s a curse, I’m caught in the middle because the empathic self also comes with the uncontrollable surge of feeling the emotions of others. This made me understand better why my grandmother was so jealous of her time, why she was bordered becoming a reclusive. Empaths are not selfish, crazy or naive, we just see and experience the world differently. I have had friends who stopped communicating with me after my warning them about certain relationships only to have them to come back months or sometimes years later to ask. “how did you know?” Over the years, I can’t say that I’ve learned to control my sense of knowing, because how do you not care about others? It’s not something that can be flicked off and on at will. But I have become more aware of my emotions and have found people who have supported me along the way.
I think Anthon S. Maarten put it best into words what he says………..
As the world went into lockdown, there were many who buckled under the pressures of confinement. My spirit welcomed it! I no longer had to lie in bed for an hour while my brain coerces my my body into motion. I didn’t have to exhaust myself for 9 hours while trying to maintain the barrier to buffer the noise and all the different personalities around me. In those months my spirit had the opportunity to heal, my thoughts were not randomly trying to wander off, they were more focused and gained clarity. It was a renewal of self, something I was not able to do in a long time. It felt great! Had it not been for that break I don’t think I would’ve had the mental or emotional capacity to handle all that is happening in my personal life right now. That time of rejuvenation and renewal gave me the strength to reinforce those boundaries. In doing this, I’m learning also learning to express my authentic self!