Camino de la Luna

What is compassion?

Something alive perhaps, that can only be understood in practice. So often confused with pity or the self-sacrificing impulse to take on another's burden, to make things better, to fix. It takes strength and delicacy and it doesn't mean giving away your life savings.

Self compassion is sometimes the place between pushing through and giving up, the moment we can recognize our true needs, not our desires even if they're for further suffering. Sometimes the moment we find self compassion is the moment we stop and walk away.

I had found forgiveness in Switzerland and now I was heading to friends in Rome before taking the leap to South East Asia, to Sri Lanka, to a new understanding of compassion and self compassion.