What are your character strengths? How can you use these strengths in your current situation?

I am empathetic. It’s not hard for me to get inside the experience of others in a given moment and comprehend their possible emotions, motivations, thought processes, and needs. This is really helpful when someone does or says something that could be taken as hurtful or difficult to digest. And this can be really helpful right now because it keeps me from judging others harshly when they do or say (or don’t do or say) things that could be troubling within the specific circumstances we are facing right now. It also helps me be a source of comfort and consolation (I hope!) to those around me who are hurting or fearful and simultaneously allows me to celebrate with those who are celebrating something right now.

I am very dialed-in to nuance—both in circumstances and in people. I don’t need everything or everyone to be black or white. I see the myriad shades and tones and hues of all the colors in between, whether they exist distinctly or are mottled together in some degree of mixture. This is helpful right now because it allows me to make space—both for myself and for others—for change and shift and process. It keeps me flexible and fluid, instead of rigid and unchanging. It allows me to be patient and peacefully cohabitate with the in-betweens, almosts, not-quites, not-yets, and I-don’t-knows (for a while, anyway), which is pretty much all we have to work with right now.