Meet Hadassah Patterson

We recently connected with Hadassah Patterson and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Hadassah, so excited to have you with us today and we are really interested in hearing your thoughts about how folks can develop their empathy? In our experience, most folks want to be empathic towards others, but in a world where we are often only surrounded by people who are very similar to us, it can sometimes be a challenge to develop empathy for others who might not be as similar to us. Any thoughts or advice?

This is really a critical one, especially right now.
Empathy is feeling *with* others, whereas sympathy is feeling for them. For instance, a lesser offshoot of sympathy would be pity. Sympathy is more closed off — where we view someone’s condition from an emotional distance.

Empathy is so much more nuanced and so much richer, because it allows us to connect with others and enrich one another’s emotional landscape by reaching out — often from a vulnerable place ourselves.

Vulnerable, because most of us build some kind of wall or protective mechanism surviving difficult experiences. It takes conscious healing and growth to keep our emotional selves available, and allow us to continue to flourish despite disappointments in life.

As I move through different circles, it’s become apparent just how much we’ve all survived the last few years. And how everyone reacts to trauma or difficulty differently. For some, it’s easier to simply cauterize the wound and move on to the next urgency. Maybe that’s a bit more closed off than we really need, to be whole. But that’s the best some can do at the time.

But for us to be empathetic, and really live emotionally, we have to allow that part of ourselves which was hurt or disappointed or whatever — to live and breathe and re-live over again. Plasticity.

And we think this is a long-drawn out process, but it isn’t always. Healing can be quote motile. Sometimes just letting oneself experience a memory or sense memory, or building a new one without bitterness or sadness, is enough. And by letting the light back in to shine on that space, we give ourselves permission to be more fully human again.

Of course, then it’s so much easier to embrace and acknowledge and feel the humanity of others with them as a shared experience. So I’d say the conditions of my empathy were the same as everyone else’s, but my response was intentional.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

If you are new to my journey, I am an Afro-Indigenous, multi-hyphenate creative born and reared here in North Carolina.
I have Skarure, Yesah, and African ancestors, among many others. So my family has been here for millennia.
Therefore, it gives a different gravitas to the work I undertake with visual work, food, culture, writing, or various forms of leadership and guidance roles.

I am a solutions journalist, executive chef/hospitality director with private service and consulting; actress/host and filmmaker with theater, commercial and film experience; and a certified Community Health Worker I with a focus on food access and operational strategy consulting.

Currently I’m running my seasonal market pop-up, Handcrafted DURM. The 6th Annual Holiday Market at Durty Bull is coming up on Small Business Saturday, 11/29/2025. There’s a big push in the zeitgeist right now to Blackout big box retail and support local, small and minority-owned. This is exactly what we have done for the last 6 years.

Some of our vendors are SNAP recipients. People work hard to support themselves regardless of their circumstances. I’m focused on finding ways to incorporate community resources like health, mental health resources and other benefits in my hospitality work. You can follow my market at @handcrafteddurm on IG and FB.

I have an Indigenous Southern Woodlands cuisine docuseries in production. You can follow my food and film work at https://www.instagram.com/originsculinaryseus/on IG and https://www.facebook.com/originsculinaryseus FB.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Language — English, reading, spelling, grammar, reading comprehension, foreign languages, music and any form of communications has always been one of my strongest, most passionately pursued skills or talents. This is what connects us to one another and communication is one of the most vital, least appreciated and under-cultivated skills in our society.

Learning — Geminis collect knowledge the way other people collect wine, artifacts and art. Even if I don’t need advice right then, I’ll still store it in my mental “files”. I cannot stress enough how important it is to continue to hone our crafts, and continue refining our understanding, and be humble enough to be open and adapt in the world around us. An open mind is a young mind. Our brains and hearts are muscles that thrive when exercised. And everyone pretends to be an expert at *everything*, but no one actually is that. We have to shut our mouths to open our ears and minds. The one constant in life is change.

Flexibility — Which brings me to the last one. Life is so much different than even the last 5 years were. We are the shoulder generation. We are in the very crux, on the very precipice, of a monumental shift in the way humans relate to information and to one another. Our values and our fundamental bedrock of society is drastically changing. Agility is imperative, but so is balance and maintaining our core values as human beings, as decent and responsible global citizens of the world living locally within our communities on a planet we are stewards of for the next 7 generations.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

The kind of folks welcome in my life are positive, trustworthy, reliable, industrious and respectful of boundaries, both personal and professional, as am I. I am interested in creative collaborators in film, community and business, especially film professionals, business management, staff and funders.

I can be reached at writeztuff97 at gmail for creative, writing, and acting undertakings.
Portfolios:
Visual: https://sites.google.com/view/actresshadassahpatterson/home
Writing: https://muckrack.com/hadassah-patterson-1
Acting: https://resumes.actorsaccess.com/hadassah-patterson

I can be reached at originsculinaryseus at gmail for food, multimedia and film projects.
https://www.facebook.com/originsculinaryseus
https://www.instagram.com/originsculinaryseus/

Contact Info:

• Website: https://muckrack.com/hadassah-patterson-1
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/originsculinaryseus/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/handcraftedDURM/
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/handcrafteddurm
  https://www.facebook.com/originsculinaryseus/

Image Credits

Tiger-stripe scarf top premiere shoot photos – Aaron Blount Photography (varied backgrounds)

All other Photos Courtesy Chef Hadassah Patterson