Leigha Miller is a 23-year-old from a suburb of San Francisco who graduated from UCLA and is now earning her master’s degree in social work. She hopes to become both a therapist and an entrepreneur, building a career that blends mental health care with independence and creativity. Her daily life is full and people-centered. She works with elementary school children as a therapist, studies full-time, and also works for a nonprofit while living in Venice. She values being outside and staying active, saying she tries to “get movement in” whenever she can. At the end of long days, she finds comfort in small routines, especially her nighttime skincare, which she describes as “soothing” and something that motivates her to reset and take care of herself.

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At the same time, Leigha is navigating personal health challenges that have affected her confidence. She has a hormone imbalance and PCOS, which she says has “taken a toll on self-esteem and confidence.” She shared that symptoms like facial hair growth can “make me feel masculine,” and that weight gain has left her feeling uncomfortable in her body. What has been especially frustrating is that “no diet or exercise works” the way she hopes. Still, she is actively working to ground her identity internally. She explained that she is learning to “lead with more of what’s inside instead of relying on the way I look,” and aims to keep her “self-worth at 100 percent even when on the exterior it doesn’t feel that way.” When life gets difficult, she turns to her father, who tells her, “Just keep showing up and being brave, and it’ll get easier,” and reminds her that hard moments are “all part of the plan to take you to the next step.”

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Her definition of empathy has shifted over time, especially through her therapy training. She said that for many years she believed empathy meant “getting down in the hole with someone and solving it with them,” but now she sees it differently. Today, she believes it is “not my job to fix them or give advice” but instead to “give them a container to express what they’re feeling” and to “be a container for their emotions and thoughts.” She finds it easy to share her own emotions because she was raised with the message to express rather than hide them. When she is upset, what she wants most is “active listening, active questions, not unsolicited advice,” and sometimes simply “someone I can ramble to.” A moment when she felt deeply understood came when a friend, watching a show with her, asked about a difficult mother character, “Is that like your mom?” Leigha said that the question alone showed real empathy because “she got it and understood” a very complex situation.

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A recent turning point for Leigha came in her graduate program, where she met a classmate in her fifties who greets people with phrases like “may God bless you” and “God is so good” every day. Despite surviving breast cancer, multiple surgeries, and time in foster care, the woman shows up joyful and hopeful. Leigha described this as a perspective shift, explaining that while others say “the world sucks,” this classmate continues to show gratitude and light. That example helped Leigha believe more strongly that people have the power to choose their outlook and keep moving toward their dreams. She believes empathy can be both natural and learned, saying that when someone goes through something hard, “they can learn how to be there for other people.” Above all, she defines empathy simply: “Empathy isn’t solving the problem. Empathy is acknowledging the problem’s there and sitting with it.”