🌻 Becoming the Empath I Didn’t Have Words For

By Lady Flava

From a young age, I knew something in me worked differently than the kids around me. I had friends — good ones — and I always found my people. But even back then, I saw life through a deeper lens. While other kids were just being kids, I was trying to heal the world around me.

I listened to my friends’ problems, offered advice, shared perspective…

like I was already carrying grown-woman wisdom before I even understood what that meant.

I came from a good home — stable, loving, safe. A home where people cared, where values mattered. My neighborhood felt the same way. But once I stepped into school, I saw the reality that not every child had that kind of foundation. Some came from homes filled with chaos, struggle, or neglect. And somehow, even at that age, I took on their pain like it was mine.

I didn’t know the word Empath yet.

But I knew I felt deeply.

And being a Cancer, I already understood emotions were my language.

I carried myself older — in how I dressed, how I spoke, how I moved in the world.

Small talk bored me. It still does.

I’ve always needed conversations with weight, with meaning, with something I could chew on mentally or spiritually.

But the real awakening — the moment I learned exactly what I was — didn’t happen until I moved to Vegas.

Vegas hit me like a tidal wave.

Loud.

Chaotic.

Electric.

A constant flood of personalities, egos, emotions, and noise.

That city is built on stimulation, and my spirit was drowning in it.

Every room felt too full. Every conversation too charged.

Too many energies. Too many stories. Too many masks.

I was taking in all of it, absorbing every drop, and it showed.

My spirit was overwhelmed.

And there was no water.

No nature.

No quiet.

Nothing to cleanse my energy or ground my soul.

Then Covid shut the world down, and suddenly it was just me, myself, and that silence I had been craving for years.

And that stillness became a blessing in disguise.

I had to sit with myself.

Face myself.

Understand myself.

And that’s when I realized:

I needed to go home.

Seattle has always been my safe place.

The water.

The air.

The rhythm.

The energy.

My people.

The moment I returned, something in me settled.

My spirit quieted.

My intuition sharpened.

I knew how to protect my energy better.

I knew how to let dark energy roll off me instead of soak into me.

Vegas exposed me to a world I wasn’t ready for — and honestly, don’t ever want again. But it taught me something valuable: what I need to stay whole.

I’ve been back home for two and a half years now.

And I know myself better than I ever have.

My spirit is calmer, but more aware.

I know when something isn’t good for me.

I know when work environments feel unbalanced or unsafe.

And at this stage in life, the idea of starting over at a new job — interviews, onboarding, learning new personalities — it doesn’t appeal to me.

So, I’m learning how to shift my spirit in a space that doesn’t always shift for me.

I’m trying.

Some days are harder than others.

But I know this much:

I survived Vegas.

I survived energies that could swallow a person whole.

And I came out knowing how to protect my peace.

I’m no longer the girl trying to save everyone.

I’m the woman who finally knows how to save herself.

— Lady Flava