S2:E3 — The New Empathy: On Presence, Performance, and Remaining Human

What happens when care starts to feel harder to read?In this episode of It’s a Poetic Life, I sit with a feeling I haven’t been able to shake: the sense that empathy is still present, but the way we encounter it has started to shift.From the language we absorb online to the way it follows us into real conversations and onto the page, I explore how care can become tangled with being seen, being affirmed, or being rewarded, and what that does to the way we trust each other.This isn’t a callout. It’s a conversation.A reflection on empathy, performance, mentorship, creative community, and the quiet work of remaining human with one another, even in the stories we tell and the characters we create.At the center of the episode is a question I’m still carrying:What does empathy look like when no one is watching?And how do we keep choosing presence in a world that often rewards performance?In practice, not perfection.