As Valentine’s Day flashes her candy-studded smile, I don’t think much of romantic love. Casual abuse permeates the culture in 2025, making empathy feel like a slippery fish.
Usually, the first step in healing is to put down a screaming phone box and talk to a human. Met Michael Tennant for Cappuccinos and smoothies at Fresca Vida in Clearwater. The 41-year-old tenant is an empathic expert. He wants us all to become experts.
When two of his brothers died within months of each other, the tenants found themselves paralyzed with serial dates and substances. Therapy and a group of men helped him “be with these truly horrifying feelings until they dissipate.”
The former marketing executive, Tennant lives in Largo with his wife, workplace partner Caroline Belker and his two-year-old daughter Naya. In 2018 he actually launched Curious, a conversation card game. In the uprising that followed the 2020 turmoil of Covid-19 and the murder of George Floyd, he began studying empathy and learning how emotions manifest in the body. The result was the power of empathy: 30 days’ path to personal growth and social change, some personal stories, some workbooks. This month, dealing with his father’s recent death, he announced “Abundance: A Guided Journal for Full Life.”
This conversation has been edited. The truth is, I might have been able to talk to tenants all day about how people relate to them. There is no more important conversation now.
I assume it’s difficult for people to get there with empathy. People are really entrenched in politics and the values they were raised and the environment they are in.
Sometimes I see all the grey hair I have now that I have never had. Sadly, I think we are in a much worse place than we do.
It’s back to some degree of averageness, but it’s depressing.
I think this is very, very, very, very difficult, but the first thing we can do is be fundamentally happy to see the perspective of others. To be fundamentally willing to accept that their feelings are real for them in that moment. For me, it’s a difficult truth and a starting point. At least from there, you can enter into the conversation and not break your heart unless it moves in some direction that your beliefs should. At least from there, you can plan into the game what it looks like to be curious. Someone has to surprise someone who has an olive branch.
The more you practice empathy, the more you think the way to pick up laundry from those around you will rub off those who live with you?
It’s exactly the same as when you’re learning the choreographed dance moves for the first time. There is this point that you practice enough to smooth out.
Some of the things that made me feel confident even writing a book were the moments when I was able to witness my parents in their grief, and we were totally with each other It was a moment of unhealthy interaction, but I was unable to make it possible to stay with my intentions for long enough to escalate the situation. I saw room for my mother to be a little more vulnerable, and there was a situation with my father. And those things are actually treasures now, I’d never heard of them that my parents were important to the reason why they behaved the way they behaved, right?
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There’s always a reason for everyone.
For the past four years I worked on teaching empathy, and then positive behavior has been struck by it and I have lived through the past two years of this election environment here in Florida. I’ve gotten shorter. I had to overindex my indexes almost to take care of me to go to places that were still room for healing, to go to places that were upset. Maybe one day I’ll be closer to that, but I’m going to say that one day I can be enthusiastic with my purpose of empathizing with everything.
How do you empathize with people who hate you?
If you know that you need a level of self-understanding to go there, you can have blessings for so many people. Not taking it personally means having enough confidence, grace, resilience and intentions to bridge it. So my book is about healing yourself to heal the world.
There are a lot of conversations for now about empathy without action. You need to combine the two.
I think there is a deep and indifferent demand for spaces and experiences that help people gather together. I don’t think people want to be as far apart as they do. 12 or 14 years ago, there may be differences, but in reality it doesn’t feel like the enemy of WWE.
I hope this is just one of several experiments that can crunch ideas that will soften people’s thoughts. But what’s important about Valentine’s Day is intention.
Maybe even in our home. I love this person so I actually have this elephant in my room. I don’t want to talk about this. But what does it look intentionally? Having something really important is because sitting in silence doesn’t strengthen the relationship.
What does it look like showing up for you everywhere? It could be a step in the baby. You may be able to own that the relationship is not the same anymore. Let’s try this here by bending your muscles a little. What does the smallest step look like for you? What about talking about topics that have become taboo to fit your human intentions? You might actually be on the same side.
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