Commiserate

Commiserate when broken down means com - with and miserari - lament. The act of lamenting with one another is more than sympathizing or even empathizing; it is informing. 

For example, John Carlos did a speech on YouTube commiserating about how putting his black-gloved fist in the air in protest for human rights cost him his marriage. What I didn’t know until then was that it wasn’t a divorce, but his wife suicided under all of the pressure! 

His sacrifice paved the way - but the cost! But what he mentioned also was that when firemen (all or mostly white) would put out blazes in Black areas, no matter how small, they would chop up all the furniture and toss it out the window. 

Now we had a similar experience that I thought nothing about until this was mentioned! A white neighbor’s apartment upstairs accidentally flooded and someone called the fire department. 

They then checked our department down below and after looking at us, started bashing in our ceiling just to make sure! 

They wound up doing more damage than any water or fire! But since it’s only happened once, I had no examples to draw from. ‘Commiserate’!