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Read.

React.

We feel it all, it's one of the reasons that we are writers.

To learn how to be with all the people in the world that we live with means we enter into their world with them. 

We enter through compassion, empathy, walking along and listening to their stories and being witness to life within their communities.

We read, we feel, we see them step through their suffering.

We can't reject some of it, and then only take on this or that on. By being there for their experience is to be a new person for them. Someone who believes in what they tell us that life is like for them.

We need to stay informed, we need to be here for our world.

But some can read, nod sadly for a few minutes, then continue on to the next story. And others, they stay, immersed in the sorrow and struggle and inequality, tragedy, injustice that falls upon others.

We write, we feel the words on our shoulders, and the pictures that others' eyes glance through, become someone's story to us.

To look into these other worlds means we need to monitor our intake. Before we let our only source of input be of horror and inhumanity, we need to seek out more than one window into the world.

Step away and breathe, guard your energy and replenish your oxygen, do it through sleep, rest, art, music, and the decision to not forget to not forget yourself.

And then come back, able to share life together, again.

xo

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