Finding Our Way Through This Heartbreaking Time, Together
Cultivating a journaling practice that holds you, so you can hold the world
Oh, my people.
I have started and stopped this post so many times since October 7, 2023. It is an understatement to say that my heart aches at the state of the world, at the escalation of violence at the hands of empire. The children of Palestine. The children of Israel. I know in my bones that none of their lives are acceptable collateral for any reason, ever. I cry constantly. My tears mean everything and also nothing.
My journals have proven (no surprise here) to be critical to me in this moment. I can’t unfurl solutions here, educate you about the history of this conflict, tell you how to feel. What can I do here? I have been asking myself for days.1
I’ve been writing and writing. Questions that rattle around my heart and brain that social media isn’t the venue for (people are eviscerating each other out there). My pages are full of ethical and political grappling, deep reflection about my own values and what principled struggle means in my own life, tangible ways I can be in community to build a better world, and so many pages as prayers for the children.
I won’t pretend that I knew much about the history of Israel, Palestine, the land, the people, and the US involvement in the conflict before two weeks ago. My American public education taught me nothing, the propaganda machines have been whirring for decades, and the general ethos among many non-Muslim and non-Jewish people in the West has been “it’s too complicated for me to understand.” As someone long involved in interrupting and preventing violence in the country I was born in, I will admit that my capacity (or perceived capacity) to gain clarity about this history, this trauma, this violence has been limited. And now, I must increase my capacity. My moral, ethical, spiritual and political life requires that of me.
How will I show up for suffering people? How will I embody a violence free life? How do I participate as if all children are sacred (they are)?
I see people organizing together, holding complex grief in community, leaning on faith practices in ways that offer guidance, risking livelihood and even life to stand with humanity.
I also see people from all sides of the political spectrum weaponizing pain, armchair screaming about how simple it all actually is (it’s not), and tearing each other down even within spaces where we all share the same fundamental beliefs about a free and safe Palestine, and safety for Jewish people everywhere (we can actually want both). I see people flinging rules of engagement around like knives, as if any of us in the US have ever in our lives, en masse, witnessed genocide unfold from 4 inch screens in our hands, from social media platforms where everyone has a mic and the overseers want us rageful. I see a lot of people acting from pain, trapped in binaries, our collective imagination in crisis. If you’ve been afraid to say you don’t understand, or if saying that you actually very much understand feels unsafe, to share how this impacts you and your people directly: you are not alone.
I am so grateful that my journals hold my complexity in a way social media never could. I write when I can’t sleep, when I wake up in the middle of the night. I write when I should be working. I write when I’m crying. I write when love sits with me.
Though I am not going to share with you all the questions I’ve been grappling with, I am going to share with you that writing out all my questions has been grounding and clarifying. Writing out my heart led questions about this situation helps me focus on sources and perspectives that might give me the answers I seek, rather than being completely overcome by the unhelpful noise.
Though I can’t tell you exactly how you should show up in your communities now or ever, I can tell you that spending time in my journals with this question has helped me break up the paralysis feeling, reminding me what is in my power and sphere of influence.
Though I won’t tell you what your values are or should be during times of global and human crisis, I will tell you that writing your way to your own answers will serve you (and most likely your people). A few things have become much clearer to me through this moment in our humanity: too many approaches to social justice and collective well-being in the West have come to revolve around parroting talking points, performing knowledge, and cult of personality rather than analysis and praxis2 from a deeply rooted place (for me, it’s spiritual; it takes faith to believe that liberation and well-being for all of us together is possible).
I won’t and can’t define your values for you, but I will tell you that through writing and creative practice, I found my way back to a forever value - and it has helped me make meaning for myself during this brutal time. I’ve mentioned here many times that my professional life has been devoted to supporting children impacted by trauma, and also preventing the trauma from happening in the first place. This is work I have been called to, it is spiritual for me in the most complete sense. Through all of the confusion of the past few weeks, reconnecting to that value has offered guidance. Rather than taking “sides” like this is the most traumatizing of football games, I know that my anchor is and will always be: what gets all children, everywhere, closer to safety, love, dignity, and their own cultures? Standing firmly in this place reminds me, again, that binary thinking will never get us free.
Knowing my values has made one thing very clear, no matter what I know about how this conflict got to where it is: what the Israeli government is doing to the people of Gaza in this moment is genocide, and it’s playing out on top of many years of global Islamophobia and a devastating occupation. I also know that the loss of life in Israel at the hands of Hamas is real and wrong, and it’s playing out on top of many years of global anti-semitism and the generational trauma of genocide. I also know that civilians should not be conflated with their governments. There’s enough room in my heart for all of that grief, for multiple truths. I refuse to choose, and I believe that the way forward lives in this space.
I can hold all of that, and also focus on the IMMEDIATE NEED for de-escalating Israel and pressing my government for ceasefire now. I can show up in my communities in ways that reflect my values. I can do this because my journaling practice holds me, which helps me hold the world.
Write your way to your values. Lean in to your pages. Don’t let perfectionism stop you from finding your humanity there.
for your practice
I can find my way to my deepest values and let them guide me during this very troubling time.
What questions do I have about this conflict? Moral, historical, political, personal….
What values do I hold that can inform how I make meaning of this difficult moment in our shared history?
How, specifically and tangibly, can I show up in my communities, in alignment with these values? How will my values offer guidance?
Who’s values are close enough to my own, so that I can learn from that space? How will I know if the sources I seek information from are accurate, balanced, aligned with my values?
Fill your pages with quotes that lift you up, and motivate you to stay present and as well as you can be.
I appreciate your grace about the space between this post and the last, the workshops in development that have gone quiet.
from dictionary.com: noun,plural prax·is·es, prax·es [prak-seez].
practice, as distinguished from theory; application or use, as of knowledge or skills.
convention, habit, or custom.
I also wanted to thank you for the words about mourning: our tears are everything and nothing. I do believe that mourning right now is absolutely what we need to be doing together to connect us, no matter what "side" we find ourselves on. Mourning melts the anger. Mourning washes our eyes clean and maybe we can see more clearly....
Thank you, I needed this so badly today. I’m also sitting in the grief and horror of this moment of collective pain, frozen. It’s comforting to sit here with you