Empathy, Compassion, and Courage: What Charlie Kirk’s Death Reveals About Family Courts

When I shared this video about Charlie Kirk, it wasn’t because I wanted to add fuel to anyone’s political fire. It was about something deeper: empathy, compassion, and courage.

Because what we saw in that moment wasn’t politics. It was humanity. A man with a wife, children, and parents, gone in an instant. And no matter what you thought of his beliefs, watching someone’s life end like that shatters the illusion that our “opponents” are just talking points.

From Empathy to Compassion

Empathy lets us feel another’s pain. Compassion calls us to respond. But courage is what it takes to act with integrity when the world wants you to pick a side.

That’s where this hit me so personally. Because in my work, and in my own life, I know what it’s like to live in the crosshairs of polarized debates.

In family courts, one camp fights to have “parental alienation” codified in the DSM as a new pathology. Another camp insists alienation isn’t real at all, dismissing the lived experiences of parents and children. And standing in the middle, advocating for healing, repair, and accountability, I’ve been attacked by both.

Just like in politics, nuance isn’t welcome. If you’re not firmly planted in one camp, you’re branded the enemy by both.

Pulled Into Political Camps

Since posting about Charlie Kirk, I’ve felt the pull of people trying to drag me into their camp, to make me a mouthpiece for their political narrative. One side wants to use my voice to justify their arguments about why he “deserved” it. The other wants me to help prove their narrative about violence against conservatives.

But I will not be recruited into anyone’s political performance. Just like in my work, I refuse to let myself be co-opted by agendas that dehumanize. My point was never about politics. It was about the value of human life, the importance of compassion, and the courage it takes to resist being weaponized by either side.

When Humans Become Debate Points

What strikes me is how easily we reduce each other to symbols. Charlie Kirk wasn’t just Charlie; he was “the conservative pundit.” Parents in court aren’t just parents, they’re “alienators” or “targets.” Children aren’t children, they’re “evidence or weapons.”

The tragedy is that when we turn people into concepts, we justify cruelty. We stop listening. We stop caring. We stop seeing the human being behind the label.

That’s exactly what I fight against in my work.

• Parents are erased from their children’s lives because their pain is turned into a courtroom strategy.
• Children are weaponized as props in a custody battle.
• Professionals use grief and fear as talking points instead of pathways to healing.

It’s the same dynamic we saw play out with Charlie Kirk’s death: a human tragedy twisted into ammunition for “gotcha” moments.

The Courage to Stay Centered and Out of the Middle

Here’s the hardest part: it takes real courage to stay centered and not get thrust into the middle. To stand in the fire and say, “This is not about sides, it’s about people.”

That’s what my work demands. I am attacked by those who want alienation recognized as a formal pathology, and I am attacked by those who deny alienation exists. But here is my truth:

I refuse to medicalize children’s rejection of a parent with a new label when existing diagnoses already cover the problem. More importantly, we don’t need a new diagnosis for courts to act. Just like with physical or sexual abuse, the symptoms in the child are enough to warrant protection. The tragedy is that while the system knows how to respond to visible abuse, it continues to ignore psychological abuse, even though the damage is just as real.

That’s why I keep standing centered and grounded in that uncomfortable middle: because families deserve better than weaponized extremes.

The Human Cost for Everyone Involved

There is another layer to this tragedy that cannot be ignored. The alleged shooter, just 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, has also lost his life as he knew it. Not only is Charlie Kirk gone, but Tyler’s life and the lives of his family will be forever altered. His choices, his actions, and the consequences of that moment will ripple across generations. Two families are shattered, two sets of parents grieving in different ways, and countless lives changed by a culture that keeps reducing human beings to symbols in a fight.

What This Tragedy Should Teach Us

Charlie Kirk’s death should stop us in our tracks. Not so we can score points, but so we can remember what’s at stake when we forget our shared humanity.

For me, it reinforced the same truth I see every day in family court:

• We must stop turning human beings into debate props.
• We must stop reducing children to case law and parents to pathology.
• We must have the courage to face pain directly, with compassion, even when it’s easier to weaponize it.
• We must stop picking sides, stop making the children the prize to be won.
• We must remember the fundamental truth that children love and want to be loved by both parents in every family.
• When children are being abused, we protect all abused children all of the time.

Because the cost of failing to do this is always the same: children growing up without parents, parents grieving children who are still alive, families broken beyond recognition.

The Path Forward

If there’s one takeaway from both my personal journey and this national tragedy, it’s this: courage isn’t about choosing sides. Courage is about choosing humanity, even when it costs you.

That’s the work I’ve committed my life to. Not to win arguments. Not to push ideology. But to bring families back to each other, and to remind the world that behind every debate is a human being who deserves to be seen.

So hug your people. Tell them you love them. Refuse to let their lives be reduced to symbols. Because at the end of the day, no side wins when we forget the humanity at the center.

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