Lisa Marie Basile

If you’re an empath, you probably easily absorb the emotions of others and need time alone to decompress. If you're like me you're one exhausted empath!

I grew up knowing my family always had its very own black cloud. Like a backyard pet that comes and goes when it pleases, a room locked but filled with things we weren’t allowed to look at or set free. And it was all passed down to me like some broken heirloom — my ancestor’s weaknesses and fears, swirled into DNA’s mad ritual. Does the body sometimes take into itself — take from its creators — what it cannot heal from? Sometimes, yes.

What do you do when your workplace is so toxic that it makes you sick? How do you take action then? What happens when you have nothing left to give?

Some grief is inert. Some grief is an engine. Sometimes actively participating in grief, I’ve learned, is one small way we can learn to escape its riptide.

It’s Monday, 6 a.m. and Sarah, 30, wakes up — as she does five days a week (but really, it’s seven, because the body is a fickle thing).

The fact of the matter is that content mills are dangerous and personal essays are a different beast. And there’s a vast level of discrepancy between a phone-it-in XYZ — and a Here’s What It Feels Like piece and other essays, where the language sings and the story is backed up by reportage. I’m aware of this. But there is also a middle ground.

In this column, I talk about things other people think or say, but not out loud, and certainly not in public. No one wants to say, “People either love me or hate me” because it sounds ridiculous and arrogant and icky.