CREATIVE NONFICTION

THE GIFT OF COMPASSION

Jan Bianchi

Compassion is cultivated like the pearl that comes from an oyster.

- Simile

The pearl is refined in the darken womb of the oyster over time, as compassion is empathy cultivated
through the exercise of lived experiences that have been overshadowed by the power and intensity that
has been shaped and purified by the fire of pain.

- Simile

It becomes the ultimate expansion and expression of unselfish love.

- Irony

It is also the outreach of personal growth where adept wisdom is brought forth from the intuitive self
that sheds the light of heightened awareness that directly comes from the heart.

- Personification

Being reared in a household with a handicap sibling placed a demand and imbalance upon not only my
parents, but also my sister and myself

- Hyperbole

My sister and I endured silently the underlying tensions of both parents who were struggling to care for
the child with the most apparent needs.

- Hyperbole

We were healthy and strong; we were not intentionally meant to go unnoticed.

- Understatement.

I guess that is why at 16 months of age I decided I had had enough and whacked my brother over the
head with a sprinkler!

- Hyperbole

Unravel the frostbite of my past

- Metaphor

A very strong, a quiet mirror

- Oxymoron

The birthing of empathy

- Personification

Life weaves hidden messages within every situation

- Metaphor

What was to be an intermittent period has become a long-term involvement

- Irony

Be with him when my heart is open and not closed.

- Personification/Metaphor

His stroke came like a pre-emptive hit without any warning.

- Simile

Now the weakly care giving that had been established over a lifetime between father and son has been
forever changed.

- Hyperbole

In life I have come to expect the unexpected.

- Irony

We are taught to live within pockets of comfort zones that truly, in the end, don’t exist.

- Irony

The awareness came to me recently that we can travel continually within ourselves to the heart of the
mystery that each of us carries.

- Hyperbole

Since the onset of my father’s stroke the incredible demand to shoulder the weight of damaging
responsibilities has been rudely transforming my heart whether I like it or not.

- Hyperbole

The impact of living through challenging hardship this past year has stretched and opened me to depths
and regions that have been quietly dormant.

- Personification

The inner sanctum that lies between the greater more obscure depths from within me.

- Paradox

Resentment can still cut into me, reminding me like a good barometers when I need my own space

- Simile

“Now I understand the term “My heart is full.”

- Personification