As the students streamed through the doors on the first day of school, filling the corridors with their laughter and conversation, my heart felt full. At Montrose, we spent the summer building, painting, and transforming classrooms and offices into more purposeful spaces and places for our girls. We also engaged in deep full-faculty conversation about why we do what we do and ways we can amplify our efforts to make a difference in the life of each young woman here.

In his TED Talk “Want to be Happy? Be Grateful,” Benedictine scholar and monk Brother David Steindl-Rast says that “it’s not that happy people are grateful, but rather that grateful people are happy.” Modern social science research bears this out: expressing gratitude increases our feelings of joy and well-being. According to a review of gratitude research in a Harvard Health letter, “gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

Empathy is the ability to step into the shoes of another person. When we empathize, we imagine their feelings and perspectives and use that understanding to thoughtfully guide our responses. Empathy is also related to dignity -- because empathy is a natural response once we recognize a person’s inherent worth as a human being. Children’s book author Anna Dewdney offers this wonderful definition: “Empathy is an understanding that other people have feelings, and that those feelings count.” Or as researcher and author Brene Brown writes, “Empathy is communicating that incredibly healing message ‘You are not alone.’”