Empathy has no script. There is no right or wrong way to do it. It's simply listening, holding safe space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of “you are not alone.”

I grew up visiting Iowa’s field campus, the Macbride Nature Recreation Area (MNRA), home to my earliest memories of exploring outdoors. It is the place with the “little house” in the forest, in which my sister and I would peer out the window at the bird feeders, counting the songbirds and making up names for each one we saw.

As a college dean who began my position on March 1, 2020, and then closed all in-person activities 13 days later, I’m often asked to comment on the topic of resiliency. Resiliency is the ability to recover from traumatic or cumulative stresses. Early research on resilience emphasized the role of genetics – as in “some people are just born resilient.” However, more recent research shows that some people become more resilient over their lifetimes – suggesting that there are things we can all do to bounce back more quickly and effectively.

Dr. Scott Peck writes in his book, The Road Less Traveled: “Life can be difficult. Scratch that. Life is difficult.”