Sayings of Parker Palmer

Become less afraid of other

people’s suffering. Become more 

willing to be present to it in a 

faithful, abiding way because 

one is no longer treating it as 

a sort of contagious disease that you too might catch. 

One's been hollowed out by one's

own suffering, which makes

 space inside 

of one for the

 suffering 

of other 

people. One

 is better able to offer an empatheticpresence to them.

Empathy born of  suffering says to one; “We’re all in this together/ this is part of the human experience.” 

Now you enter the company of

 those who have experienced some 

of the deepest things a human being can experience. So you start to make meaning of it, it seems to me, by realizing that this incredibly isolating experience 

"DEPRESSION" (it’s isolating to

 a greater extent 

  than I imagined survivable)

ultimately it reconnects you  w/the human

 community in a 

 deeper/wider

/richer way.

once you’ve survived depression

you can say to yourself, “What

 could be more daunting than 

that? I survived depression, 

so the challenge in 

front of me right

 now doesn’t seem 

all that fearsome."

Depression becomes an experience against which other things 

don't look    

so bad.

Since we have 

    experiences 

of facing into things 

that are pretty tough that’s a real asset

 /something of 

               real meaning.

It’s important 

a person’s 

experience of depression/ becomming 

the darkness

   /be well  

integrated  into his/her self   image/self   awareness. 

If there is any residue of shame or a sense of being personally flawed then the ex-perience may not be ready to be shared

/it could in fact be unhelpful 

or dangerous to do so