A process for developing personal compassion to engage in compassionate community for a more compassionate world

Welcome to Compassionate Sunday. We’re working through Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong, one step per month.

If you’d like to share a post about what you learned about compassion (The First Step), what you’re seeing in your world (The Second Step), self-compassion (The Third Step), empathy (The Fourth Step), mindfulness (The Fifth Step), action (The Sixth Step), how little we know (The Seventh Step), how to speak to one another (The Eighth Step), or concern for everybody (The Ninth Step) use the link list below. Or join the discussion in the comments or on Facebook.

As I mentioned last week, I’m struggling with The Ninth Step, concern for everybody. I’m also struggling, along with many women this week, with the hurtful turn in the presidential election. So, I thought it would be a good week to revisit The Third Step, self-compassion.

One source of comfort for me this week has been the awareness of how many women have been affected by inappropriate touching from men, how many women told stories in the last week that they’d kept secret for years. A staggering number of women responded to a tweet by Kelly Oxford as reported in this story by NPR.

I told my two stories to my husband for the first time ever. They were minor compared to many stories I’ve seen this week and I’ve always been more puzzled than traumatized by them. And, yet. Why do I re-experience not only the emotions but the physical sensation of a stranger’s hand on my body, even though it’s been more than thirty years?

Another comfort this week was the sense that women and men are saying, along with Michelle Obama during her moving speech, that enough is enough. You don’t want to miss this, so I embedded it to make it easy to see:

Finally, here’s a resource that many of us might want to use for self-care in the upcoming weeks, and especially on November 8: Election Night Survival Kit.