The question asks what famous or infamous person I’ve met, and the answer feels like a study in contrasts—two faces of the same species, two moments that shaped how I understand empathy.
I once met President Barack Obama. He came to West Virginia during the height of the opioid crisis, when grief hung in the air like coal dust. I worked then for a state government that did not look kindly on him, so slipping into that room took quiet defiance. I didn’t speak to him beyond a handshake, but I watched him hold a grieving mother—her child lost to the epidemic that had already devoured so many lives.
What struck me wasn’t his power, but his presence. The way the noise of the crowd seemed to fall away until there was only him and her. No cameras, no politics—just two people, one carrying unbearable sorrow, the other holding it for a moment so she didn’t have to. It was, in the truest sense, empathy embodied.
I have this picture of the moment, a treasured one. But it is not for me to share. It was never mine, even if I took it. I gave it to the month a few months later.
Years later, I found myself sitting across from a different kinds of people entirely. As a jail-based therapist, I faced murders and worse. But, perhaps the worst was a woman who led a sex cult that preyed on the vulnerable. Her husband, slow-minded and easily led, followed her will like a shadow. There was no charisma there, only force—the kind that fills the air like static before a storm. It was my job to listen, to understand, to remain clinical. But there was nothing redemptive in their gaze, nothing human in their reasoning. I learned that evil doesn’t always wear charm; sometimes it’s just persistence without conscience.
Between those two encounters—one of grace, one of violation—I began to see the truth that now runs through all of my work: monsters can be heroes, and heroes can be moral monsters. The line between them isn’t drawn by role or title, but by what they choose to see in others. Power and empathy, after all, share a root—they both demand presence. One to control, the other to connect.
As a therapist, I was trained to hold both truths at once: that a person can do harm and still be human, that even the broken can heal, that understanding does not mean forgiving. As a writer, I’ve learned that same balance becomes the heart of every story worth telling.
Because what separates horror from redemption—President from predator—isn’t nature. It’s attention. And attention, in the end, is the most moral act we’re capable of.
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