Inheriting Radical Empathy

The blue water of the Baltic sea reflected off of my oversized aviator sunglasses. I was grateful that they were large enough to cover the grimace that spread across my face. I looked down at the generous portion of fried herring my mother passed to me. The herrings returned my stare with their wide, open glazed eyes.

“Come on, beautiful girl, just try it,” my mother said in an attempt to coax me into eating the fish. “Your great-grandmother would want you to try it.”

This exchange occurred in the summer of 2019 on the Old Town Pier in Helsinki, Finland. Finland is our ancestral home, a beautiful land my great-great parents left in the late 1800s to create a new life in the United States, or at least that is what my mother chooses to believe.

My mother’s mother (my grandmother) was adopted by Katherine, a woman I have always called my great grandmother. It is Katherine’s heritage that my mother clings to, the familial roots she has chosen to adopt for herself, because it was the loving-spirit of this Finnish woman who nurtured, inspired, and sustained the beauty in my mother’s soul.

As a child, my mother experienced extreme physical and psychological abuse, the acts of which are too atrocious for me to name here. When my mother was a young teen, Katherine took her in and finished raising her. Katherine was a source of stability and a fountain of maternal love that my mother never had. If anyone has a right to be apoplectic at God or mistrustful of the world, my mother does, and yet she chooses not to carry that heavy burden. My mother is jovial, optimistic, compassionate, and is a well of gratitude for the little joys in life such as a warm home-cooked meal, a favorite song playing on the radio, or a warm southern evening spent sitting on the porch listening to a symphony of cicadas.

For many years, my mother worked with children, able to serve as a protector and advocate that she never had as a little girl. Her desire to care for children and young adults from difficult homes extended beyond her career to the friends my brother and I invited over for play dates. Both my brother and I had a tendency to find and befriend children with neglectful parents. Our mother taught us to always be kind to everyone, and her spirit radiated through us. My mother’s home was a safe place to dock for children adrift in this world, and my brother and I unintentionally acted as her lighthouse. My mother greeted each child who passed through our front door with a hug and a “Hello beautiful/handsome, are you hungry? What can I make you?”

As a child, I witnessed these interactions but never gave them much thought, taking for granted the power of my mother’s love for everyone. As a teenager and young adult, it is hard to see the influence of your parents on yourself or others, or if you do, you choose not to acknowledge it as you forge your own identity and place in the world. It took me until my early 20s to understand the influence of my mother.

I was at a restaurant with high school friends during the holiday season when everyone was home from college for the winter break. As my friends and I caught up on our lives, experiences, and their adventures in new cities and states, the conversation naturally flowed to catching up on our family members. A friend asked how my mother was and before I could respond she said, “You know, I always loved coming to your house to see your mother because every time she greeted me, she called me beautiful and no one else did.” What had been a trite greeting in my home was a significant affirmation to a woman raised in an emotionally vacant household.

There is a quote most often attributed to Maya Angelou that says, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” My mother not only understands this quote, but she lives it. My mother makes people feel seen, respected, acknowledged, and loved…truly loved.

My mother taught me compassion, the power of a good beat especially in a 90’s hip-hop track, the joy of laughter, curiosity, and travel, as well as charming persuasion which is how she got me to finally eat that fried herring in Helsinki. But above all else, my mother’s gift to me was to teach me radical empathy, a gift she inherited from Katherine—the most significant intangible family heirloom one can receive.