You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented

This is one of the secrets to freedom as well as learning compassion…not only for ourselves but for everyone.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive. ― James Baldwin

See also: There is nothing unique about our suffering. (Tonglen, a compassion practice)