As I and other animal rights activists broke silence to share our personal experiences throughout the retreat, it was revealed just how many of us had or were currently suffering from anxiety, depression, insomnia, or incessant stress from working on such big issues with so few resources.

I want to know what everyone’s favorite movie is,” James West, our Director of Programs, said during lunch on the first day of our recent three-day retreat to Banyan Grove, a Service Space-managed center dedicated to cultivating inner transformation and compassion in Forest Knolls, CA.

The greatest lesson I got from this experience is the realization that, while empathy is a beautiful quality, only empathizing with somebody’s pain will drain me, consume me and render me incapable of doing something to help lessen that pain. It’s only when compassion follows that I’m helpful, when I use that empathy as fuel to act.

I knew that for about six days, I would be physically quiet (the most physically quiet I had ever been in my life!). I knew that I would sit down and try to focus on my breath for many minutes every day, and that I would probably experience withdrawal symptoms from mindlessly clicking around on my phone.