During one of the scariest times of my life, when my husband was hospitalized with COVID early in the pandemic, I sat on a concrete bench outside the hospital -- watching him through a wall of windows as he sat in a packed waiting room, laboring to breathe.

No one other than the sick were allowed inside. No one knew if the loved ones we dropped off would make it out alive. I can vividly recall my devastation and fear.

Then, something happened that I will never forget.

One of my oldest friends in St. Louis drove up -- even though I told her not to come, even though she had not been meeting up with anyone during the pandemic. She double-masked and sat several feet away from me on that bench.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of you sitting out here alone,” she said.

When she left, another friend -- a physician dealing with the overwhelming load of patients at her hospital -- used her precious little time off and also showed up. Another friend called and said she was on her way. By that time, my husband had been taken back to a room, and I needed to go home to our children.

Never in my life will I forget how those friends made me feel in my darkest moments. I felt less alone. I remember my gratitude for those who dropped off food at my door or sent DoorDash gift cards, especially since I was also sick.

Even though I have always prioritized helping others who are going through difficult times -- taking them food, for instance, and attending funerals when I can -- this experience made me realize how receiving others’ compassion, care and empathy profoundly affects us. It also reinforced that reaching out and showing up after a crisis can be just as valuable as being there in the moment.

For those of us who spend any amount of time online, the ever-present cruelty in people’s comments and the silence of others in the face of horrific abuses can make you question our collective humanity. I’ve found myself wanting to keep a distance from those who demonstrate callousness or indifference to the suffering of others. I limit my exposure to the nastiness online because it feels corrosive to my spirit.

I’ve also been thinking about how to deal with empathy burnout or compassion fatigue in the face of too many sad and enraging stories in the news and on social media. How do we stay engaged when we are bombarded with bad news?

Serendipitously, a reader recently mailed me a copy of a book, “The Gift of Empathy: Helping Others Feel Valued, Cared For, and Understood” by Joel Bretscher and Kenneth Haugk. The latter is the founder and executive director of Stephen Ministries St. Louis, a nonprofit Christian educational organization focused on helping laypeople give compassion and care to those facing painful life challenges. In the book, they wrote: “When someone who is hurting tells another person about their struggles, they are most likely to get a fix-it solution, a pep talk, a platitude, a dismissive remark, a story about someone else’s suffering, or some other unhelpful response, when what they really want and need is empathy.”

The book offers simple advice on how to be a better listener, how to see the world from someone else’s perspective, feel what they might be feeling and express your understanding of those feelings to that person. It helped me realize that I am too quick to try to fix people’s problems -- I blame Eldest Child Syndrome -- rather than allowing myself to sit with the discomfort of hearing another person’s pain.

The book offers simple phrases that one can say, such as, “That sounds painful,” or “I’m sorry -- it’s hard to deal with that,” that can better convey empathy. It suggests asking questions that allow a person to share more about what they are feeling. It includes tips on how to experience another person’s feelings without taking them on as your own. This is key to preventing burnout.

When the world feels torn apart, one of the most powerful antidotes is to feel a connection with another person. Research shows that empathy is a learned trait, not something you are born with. I’m going to take the suggestions in this book and mindfully work on being more empathetic.

It’s a way to survive the cruelty of these times with our hearts intact.

At 20, Camden Cimorelli finally found a job he enjoyed: laying specialty flooring.

His father, Frank Cimorelli, a former pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, became cautiously hopeful that his son’s life was starting to turn around.

Cam had struggled with angry outbursts as a young boy after his parents’ divorce. They figured he was having trouble adjusting. But by the time he was 11 or 12, his parents knew something was seriously wrong. They took him to doctors for help. He was admitted to one of the best psychiatric hospitals in Milwaukee, where they lived. Doctors diagnosed him with ADHD.

When he was released a week later, he was no better. He didn’t like how the medicine made him feel. The family tried four or five different medications. Cam refused to open up to his therapist. His parents knew he wasn’t getting the help he needed.

“We felt so helpless the entire time,” Frank said. When Cam would spiral, they would take him back to the hospital, where they'd keep him a couple days and then send him home. He probably ended up at the hospital 10 times over the years, his father said.

Doctors never gave their son another diagnosis even though he sometimes experienced hallucinations and paranoid delusions. But he also had periods when he was more stable, like when he found the flooring job.

That was the happiest his father had ever seen him. Cam was a funny, smart, big-hearted young man. He was a loyal friend and had a way of charming others. He also loved talking to his grandfather about guns.

One day, he called his father excited about purchasing his first gun.

“My heart sunk,” Frank said. “I felt like his fate was sealed at that point that day.”

At 18, Cam could walk into a store in Wisconsin and legally buy a gun -- even with a documented history of psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide ideation. There was no red flag law to stop him, no place to share a doctor’s warning. The majority of states lack red flag laws. More than 27,000 people died by firearm suicide in 2023 -- about 58% of all gun deaths.

Cam was doing well -- even supervising a flooring crew -- until something in his brain switched again. Around age 23, the hallucinations, paranoia and angry outbursts came back. He was at his father’s home in December 2022 when he walked down to his bedroom with a hoodie balled up over his face.

“What’s going on?” Frank asked. Cam took the hoodie away. He held up thumb and index finger to make a gun gesture with his hand. Cam had shot himself under his chin. The impact blew out all his teeth and destroyed his jaw. Frank called 911.

“I didn’t know if he was going to die in my arms,” he said. “If politicians had to see his face that day and didn’t do anything about it, I'd have a whole lot of four-letter words to describe them. If that was their kid, and they saw that and went to work the next day and did nothing ...”

Cam was rushed into surgery. He had tested positive for COVID, so no one could go into the hospital with him. For 12 hours, his family had no idea what was happening.

By some miracle, Cam survived the suicide attempt. He spent the next several weeks in the hospital having multiple surgeries to reconstruct his jaw and face. When he was discharged, his parents took him straight to a psychiatric hospital.

They begged doctors to keep him for intensive inpatient treatment. He was there for five days, then the doctor called and said they were sending him home.

“We knew if he came home, we knew something bad was going to happen. We couldn’t help him or watch him 24/7,” Frank said.

Sure enough, 24 hours after coming home, Cam was dead.

The autopsy was inconclusive. Doctors suggested that an electrolyte imbalance might have caused death in his already weakened state.

Months later, when Frank finally went into Cam's room, he found little white things scattered around the floor. He started to clean them up and realized they were his son’s teeth.

Frank has spent the last year telling his son’s story to anyone who will listen -- on social media, at gun violence prevention events and in meetings with lawmakers. He says he’s not against the Second Amendment or anti-gun.

“I don’t worry about responsible gun owners,” he says. But he is furious that nothing stopped his son -- a young man who experienced repeated mental health crises -- from getting access to guns.

The medical system failed Cam. But the gun industry and NRA-funded lawmakers helped kill him.

Growing up, I heard my father describe America as “the greatest country in the world,” and it made perfect sense, given his core beliefs and life choices.

He chose to leave his homeland and family as a young man for the proverbial better life in America. He believed wholeheartedly in the foundational values of freedom, justice and liberty for all.

Perhaps he wasn’t as well-versed in the details of our country’s darkest chapters. Maybe he hadn’t lived here long enough to repeatedly witness the ways in which his adopted country fell short of its highest ideals. Conceivably, he had not yet felt betrayed by the country’s leadership.

At any rate, his love for this country had made such a deep impression on me that I literally cried when I read the unvarnished history of America as a teenager. It taught me that the truest form of patriotism is embodied by those who have fought and sacrificed in the pursuit of freedom, justice and liberty for all.

Immigrants and their children have levels of patriotism that match or exceed those of native-born Americans, according to research by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. In its 2021 Immigration and Identity National Survey, it found that an overwhelming majority (80%) of immigrants say they feel grateful to be Americans.

“They say this despite being more likely to report experiences of being treated like an outsider,” the report stated. “For instance, first-generation immigrants are more likely than the third generation and higher to say that others frequently or occasionally presumed they were not American (51% vs. 10%), confused them for a store employee where they didn’t work (45% vs. 31%), called them racial slurs (39% vs. 20%), or made negative comments about the food they ate (40% vs. 20%).”

Many immigrants and their children can separate how they might be treated by fellow Americans from their faith in America’s institutions -- such as courts that uphold the rule of law and the Constitution, a free press unafraid to call the powerful to account, and fair elections that represent the will of the people.

So, what should one do when institutions fail to protect the core tenets of democracy? When corporate media has cowered, the will of the people has been ignored or outright overturned, and your leaders’ actions resemble the authoritarian governments your parents fled?

So many things I never thought would happen in this country have now happened: a man convicted of multiple felonies and found guilty of sexual abuse elevated to the presidency, due process eliminated, mass purging of inspectors general and government watchdogs, aggressive consolidation of executive power, dismantling of civil service protections, decimation of federal agencies, suppression and criminalization of dissent, undermining and ignoring court orders, withholding billions in federally approved funds, disappearing people off the streets and erasing entire chapters of American history.

The hypocrisy of so many institutions and individuals has been laid bare for all to see.

These are dark and discouraging times for our republic.

While it’s tempting to try to simply ignore the constant onslaught of bad news, to disengage and try to survive as best as one can, that’s not what the true patriots are doing right now.

Look at the millions of people who have taken to the streets to protest the government’s authoritarian actions. Millions more are calling and writing representatives; others are deciding to run for office or registering to vote. Some are getting more involved in providing direct aid to the most vulnerable communities. I hear the voices of those consistently speaking out against the abuses of human rights perpetrated by the state.

When current institutions have failed, it’s time to build new ones. More news consumers are turning to independent or nonprofit sources; several long-form podcasts draw larger audiences than cable news shows; an upstart candidate, Zohran Mamdani, toppled a political dynasty in New York; and grassroots initiatives are focusing on local civic engagement.

This is what Americans have done throughout our history.

This is what love of one’s country looks like.