I See the Gift. And I Know the Cost.
June 06, 2025
My ability to attune to others wasn’t learned in a classroom — it was shaped by a life that demanded I read every room, every silence, every shift. Now I see the gift. And I know the cost.
Maybe my tutors see something in me.
An ability to attune.
To listen closely.
To notice what isn’t being said.
To sit in silence and still feel someone’s pain.
But I don’t think they see it as something I earned through hard work in the traditional sense.
I think they know — like I do — that this attunement came from something deeper.
From survival.
Because that’s what it was.
A way of being that formed when I had no choice.
When reading the room was the difference between being safe or not.
When meeting someone else’s emotional need was how I avoided punishment, shame, or withdrawal.
It’s taken me a long time to see it as a gift.
And even now, I say that with caution.
Because a gift should come freely.
This one didn’t.
It came from loss.
From absence.
From needing to anticipate danger before it arrived.
But now, in the right spaces —
when I’m grounded, and with people who are safe —
it can be a gift.
It helps me connect.
It helps me hold others with presence.
It makes me a better parent, a better peer, a better listener.
And maybe that’s what my tutors see.
I imagine they’ve been through similar things.
There’s a quiet kind of compassion they carry —
not the kind you perform,
but the kind you feel.
A kind of knowing.
They’re not jealous of the gift.
Because they know the price.
They’ve likely paid it, too.
And in that, there’s something healing.
Something human.
Something true.
I used to think my sensitivity made me weak.
Now I see that it makes me deeply, devastatingly real.
I see the gift.
And I know the cost.
And I’m learning how to hold both.