Western governments, among whom I count our Canadian government, owe their citizens major compensation for the psychological stress and emotional upheaval that they have put us through due to their callous, cowardly support for Israel. If our elected, may I remind them, politicians stood for the same values, if they had the same moral courage and clarity that their voters have demonstrated, we would not have to suffer the degree of frustration, despair, anger and desperation that has taken a toll on everyone of us! These people are not only irresponsible, they should be made accountable! They have betrayed us, they have forsaken us, they have turned their backs and farted in our faces!
Thanks for your honesty Diana. I've been wondering how to write my next sub stack and feel the load of guilt for being unable to write because I long to write with hope but I have to convince myself to feel hope first. I have to convince my family, my loved ones that I am hopeful. I have to make the glimmer larger. I've been thinking about how to widen the lens, to make it bigger, because only then can we see a different future.
And this means feeling the pain. We bear this differently, each of us, this pain. There have been times when I could not cry, but I am not this way now.
For me the tears are there, too close to the surface. They come up at random places in public - like the supermarket check out counter, when I feel someone looking into me, when I feel exposed, up it comes, like a wave breaking over the rock.
I wrote a poem some years ago, it contained the line 'every pore is a tidal pore'. The other night I collapsed. My husband held me as I lamented, wailed.
As a journalist I have covered some atrocities. I saw some terrible things and who was unable to stop the terror. So many reporters who reported on horrors carry guilt. I was driven by a desire to change the world and now I feel the tug of children who - in their dying gaze - tugged me so hard, begging me to do something to pull them back into life. The Palestinian children carry me back to the Aids babies I saw in Romania. For a long time after, I suffered from insomnia and finally realised my sleeplessness was due to regret, due to guilt. The guilt for not doing the most human humane thing. I had to go back to that place in my mind, I had to do what I should have done then. Hug every one, carry every baby out.
I have interviewed people who did not seem then to realise they were failing to act humanely. I came to realise that very few people look evil. Netanyahu is the exception rather than the rule. Everyone can become an angel or a monster and in a monstrous system so many people - people who in many spheres of life seem good - become monsters.
I want answers and I feel bereft. I feel guilty when I don't attend our Palestinian rallies and exhausted when I do. I belong to a group that has been labelled terrorist even though it is peaceful. I feel swept up and out of myself because the horrors we are witnessing are too huge.
Not only am I not writing my next sub stack I have staggered into a hiatus with the next novel. I was writing about adventurous women whose lives were hidden from our histories, I was writing about men who did some pretty rotten things, I was writing about conscience and choice, I was writing towards that glimmer on the horizon where hope and change can be found. But I cannot write at all if I cannot find that glimmer in or outside myself.
From all the carnage, all the losses, all the griefs and trauma I must rise somehow. Because you and I and others I meet here have been given a gift. It is the gift to write about the real world with honesty, it is the gift to write and that is a thing of beauty. Perhaps we carry them all with us as we write, all those who deserved to live, perhaps all we can do is write because if they were here they would use their gifts. If we hide, if we huddle, if we bury our heads in the sand we bury our souls while theirs rise.
The one place I do find healing is in nature. Away from the roar of man-made machines, away from the killing machines and the machines that signal progress, rolling back and undoing, unwinding, to being; being a feather or a stalk in the grass. Then I can stir, then I can fly.
Thanks for the validation of the importance of writing during times like this. And best of luck getting to a place of hope that you can honestly write from.
It sounds like you've been exposed to so much suffering. That has to be really hard to process.
Sometimes I think it's pure stubbornness that keeps me writing; determination to write a path forward and through all the horror.
Maybe writing is our way of encouraging each other along until we actually get to a better place.
Take good care, Saige, and thanks for your thoughtful comment.
Thank you Diana, I agree. 'Encouraging each other along until we get to a better place.' This is such a good space for meeting good people and I am so grateful for your insights and outsights.
Thanks, Saige. And, I agree, this is a great place for meeting good people. I really enjoy how conversational this space is. I appreciate your openness and encouragement. It's nice that we can help each other through these terrifying times.
" I want the emotional safety to shed those tears and feel into my grief. "
Same here. I can't even shed a tear when I see horrible photos of mangled children's bodies in Gaza... I figured it must be a defense mechanism to keep me going, to not break down until we shut this genocide down for good. But every once in a while, something sad hits me and I do cry a little. I think we're all going to need some group therapy before too long.
I think you're right. We're going to need group therapy for the horrors we're witnessing and our governments are supporting, while we're powerless to do anything about it, even though we're trying hard.
Thanks for this post, Diana. I have been going through a very difficult time with someone important to me and I would like to sit down and have a good cry, but it just does not happen. It helps to hear that others have that issue too. When I was younger I cried about everything: just the opposite of now. I cried on the bus and everywhere: it was too much crying. Now I am the opposite. I actually feel nauseous more often now, especially when I read the news.
I see your writing as you grieving Diana, that is how you are expressing it.
Grief is not passive, quiet or obedient .
It screams , hollers and laments across the airways as outrage at the atrocities.
Grief is more than crying, it is bone deep, it is love , it is belief that every thought, word and deed is making a difference.
A tidal wave of grief is mobilising and joining those who are courageous enough to rise up and say STOP.
The systems of Colonialism, Oppression and Capitalism will not change easily or willingly , but they are breaking down, loosing power and being questioned. This change is underway, but may not be visible for a while, maybe not in our life time. Your work is a valued part of this tide of change,thank you. 🙏🏻
Susan, thanks for that big picture. I think these systems are in their dying days, and they're flailing around in ways that are so dangerous while in their death throes. I really appreciate your encouragement. Thanks.
Death. So much death. Of Palestinians, of Ukrainians, of innocent amazing loving animal species bound for extinction, of homeless people, of starving people, of people abducted imprisoned and tortured by our own sick rulers. So much delusion and psychotic greed. Life offers pain enough, but heartless human fools are increasing it exponentially. It's better not to cry too much, if you can manage it. I try to remember that too much deep grief damages us in ways that include even the physical heart. It's a massive horror show, and we can't do much to change it, but we keep trying, "keeping hope alive," while thinking "Stop the world, I want to get off."
It's terrible to feel so helpless and be ruled by people who wish to deny the impending doom of climate change, go back to a dark age of cruelty, racism, misogyny and superstition, and worship their one true god: money.
It's always good to hear someone else articulate what we are all feeling,and it's always uplifting to read about a positive vision for our world, to shine a little hope in dark times.
Thanks for writing this, Diana. I've been feeling the same way for quite awhile now. I find that I am numbing all my feelings, as no matter how bad things are for me, nothing compares to the horror of Gaza. I haven't been writing, as my words seem petty in enormity of the world's problems. You remind me that it does help to write our thoughts (as it is so hard IRL to find others who understand), just to let others know that we are not alone in these feelings.
Jean, thanks for expressing that. I often feel that way too, that nothing can compare to those going through a genocide in Gaza for all the world to see, yet it continues.
It's hard to know what to write, but silence feels like complicity. I'm not OK with this and I'd scream it from the rooftops if I could.
There is so much pain and suffering in the world now that the only way to continue having the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other is to become numb to it. It's a necessary defense mechanism but it also makes one wonder if somehow their very humanity is being lost. I don't like the times we are in AT ALL.
These are truly terrifying and numbing times we're living in. How do we reclaim our humanity? How do we overcome the powers that are inflicting this upon the world? I wish I knew...
I had a firsthand experience with this the other day, Diana...
This did not happen in a big city. I live in a small town of just under 10,000. I was walking up the steps to my local Post Office to drop off some mail when I tripped and fell forward into the steps, landing pretty hard. I almost had the wind knocked out of me and I'm lucky I didn't break a wrist. The mail I had been carrying scattered across the steps.
Meanwhile, three or four people at the top of the stairs looked on and not ONE asked if I was okay, or offered to help me get up or retrieve the mail. There was not a single word or gesture of support, assistance or care.
Nothing. Total silence. Flustered, I gathered up the envelopes and limped up the stairs and the people silently walked away. Luckily, other than a little bruising I was okay.
For some time -- going back at least eight years -- I have noticed the evaporating necessity of all decent communities: Reciprocity, the absolutely essential "thank you, you're welcome" daily interaction of a functioning community. Reciprocity is a form of empathy.
While few if any say a word of thanks if I hold a door open for them, where I have really noticed and felt the lack of reciprocity in our collapsing society is with the crisis of the US/Israel genocide in Gaza and now with the criminally brutal, illegal roundup or immigrants. Such brutality happens daily and out in the open and while there are protests the vast majority of people -- sheeple -- really don't care. They lack empathy and can't even begin to grasp that if such brutality can happen to others it can, and likely will at some point, happen to them or someone they care about.
As for my reaction to our genocide, I have had this short video up on my screen for almost a week. I have seen a lot of brutality from the US/Israeli genocide documented but this short video of the trauma this young child is suffering rattles me every time I view it. What has she seen? Who has she lost? The sound of the birds in the background add something I can't quite explain.... https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Q8kLGGQMqC0
Reciprocity is essential to and an expression of a decent society and the most essential dwindling natural resource. Practice it. Model it. Teach it to the children.
I'm pretty out of touch with today's music, but I'm not hearing that sadness and revolutionary rage that we heard in earlier times. Are you familiar with the band Black Puma? This song doesn't strike me as political per se, but it has that feeling, at least to me. Here's October 33, in case you haven't heard it. I just love it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an3AkQL62F8
Yes, I started listening to them a while back and rate them really highly. Great musicians IMO too. It's a damn strong song. Thanks, Diana! This one is a personal favourite....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1qHvYFdlz0
As I was feeling these things, it suddenly dawned on me that I should express them, since I thought so many others were probably feeling something similar.
Sometimes expressing our vulnerability can validate the vulnerability of others, and hopefully be empowering. That was my intention writing this post.
Reading through these comments is also helpful. I, too, am having trouble writing, other than in my journal. Even there, I was just sitting on our deck, among beautiful greenery and flowers, and realised my pen wasn't moving and I was feeling numb. Then, I noticed that a critter had been digging in the planters overnight and I totally lost it -- a reaction that was ridiculously inappropriate, but cleansing, nevertheless.
Western governments, among whom I count our Canadian government, owe their citizens major compensation for the psychological stress and emotional upheaval that they have put us through due to their callous, cowardly support for Israel. If our elected, may I remind them, politicians stood for the same values, if they had the same moral courage and clarity that their voters have demonstrated, we would not have to suffer the degree of frustration, despair, anger and desperation that has taken a toll on everyone of us! These people are not only irresponsible, they should be made accountable! They have betrayed us, they have forsaken us, they have turned their backs and farted in our faces!
It's true, Diane. We've been betrayed by those who were elected to office.
Thanks for your honesty Diana. I've been wondering how to write my next sub stack and feel the load of guilt for being unable to write because I long to write with hope but I have to convince myself to feel hope first. I have to convince my family, my loved ones that I am hopeful. I have to make the glimmer larger. I've been thinking about how to widen the lens, to make it bigger, because only then can we see a different future.
And this means feeling the pain. We bear this differently, each of us, this pain. There have been times when I could not cry, but I am not this way now.
For me the tears are there, too close to the surface. They come up at random places in public - like the supermarket check out counter, when I feel someone looking into me, when I feel exposed, up it comes, like a wave breaking over the rock.
I wrote a poem some years ago, it contained the line 'every pore is a tidal pore'. The other night I collapsed. My husband held me as I lamented, wailed.
As a journalist I have covered some atrocities. I saw some terrible things and who was unable to stop the terror. So many reporters who reported on horrors carry guilt. I was driven by a desire to change the world and now I feel the tug of children who - in their dying gaze - tugged me so hard, begging me to do something to pull them back into life. The Palestinian children carry me back to the Aids babies I saw in Romania. For a long time after, I suffered from insomnia and finally realised my sleeplessness was due to regret, due to guilt. The guilt for not doing the most human humane thing. I had to go back to that place in my mind, I had to do what I should have done then. Hug every one, carry every baby out.
I have interviewed people who did not seem then to realise they were failing to act humanely. I came to realise that very few people look evil. Netanyahu is the exception rather than the rule. Everyone can become an angel or a monster and in a monstrous system so many people - people who in many spheres of life seem good - become monsters.
I want answers and I feel bereft. I feel guilty when I don't attend our Palestinian rallies and exhausted when I do. I belong to a group that has been labelled terrorist even though it is peaceful. I feel swept up and out of myself because the horrors we are witnessing are too huge.
Not only am I not writing my next sub stack I have staggered into a hiatus with the next novel. I was writing about adventurous women whose lives were hidden from our histories, I was writing about men who did some pretty rotten things, I was writing about conscience and choice, I was writing towards that glimmer on the horizon where hope and change can be found. But I cannot write at all if I cannot find that glimmer in or outside myself.
From all the carnage, all the losses, all the griefs and trauma I must rise somehow. Because you and I and others I meet here have been given a gift. It is the gift to write about the real world with honesty, it is the gift to write and that is a thing of beauty. Perhaps we carry them all with us as we write, all those who deserved to live, perhaps all we can do is write because if they were here they would use their gifts. If we hide, if we huddle, if we bury our heads in the sand we bury our souls while theirs rise.
The one place I do find healing is in nature. Away from the roar of man-made machines, away from the killing machines and the machines that signal progress, rolling back and undoing, unwinding, to being; being a feather or a stalk in the grass. Then I can stir, then I can fly.
Wow, Saige.
Thanks for the validation of the importance of writing during times like this. And best of luck getting to a place of hope that you can honestly write from.
It sounds like you've been exposed to so much suffering. That has to be really hard to process.
Sometimes I think it's pure stubbornness that keeps me writing; determination to write a path forward and through all the horror.
Maybe writing is our way of encouraging each other along until we actually get to a better place.
Take good care, Saige, and thanks for your thoughtful comment.
Thank you Diana, I agree. 'Encouraging each other along until we get to a better place.' This is such a good space for meeting good people and I am so grateful for your insights and outsights.
Thanks, Saige. And, I agree, this is a great place for meeting good people. I really enjoy how conversational this space is. I appreciate your openness and encouragement. It's nice that we can help each other through these terrifying times.
" I want the emotional safety to shed those tears and feel into my grief. "
Same here. I can't even shed a tear when I see horrible photos of mangled children's bodies in Gaza... I figured it must be a defense mechanism to keep me going, to not break down until we shut this genocide down for good. But every once in a while, something sad hits me and I do cry a little. I think we're all going to need some group therapy before too long.
I think you're right. We're going to need group therapy for the horrors we're witnessing and our governments are supporting, while we're powerless to do anything about it, even though we're trying hard.
Thanks for this post, Diana. I have been going through a very difficult time with someone important to me and I would like to sit down and have a good cry, but it just does not happen. It helps to hear that others have that issue too. When I was younger I cried about everything: just the opposite of now. I cried on the bus and everywhere: it was too much crying. Now I am the opposite. I actually feel nauseous more often now, especially when I read the news.
Thanks for sharing that, Susan. It's so weird, isn't it? I used to cry more often too. Take good care.
I see your writing as you grieving Diana, that is how you are expressing it.
Grief is not passive, quiet or obedient .
It screams , hollers and laments across the airways as outrage at the atrocities.
Grief is more than crying, it is bone deep, it is love , it is belief that every thought, word and deed is making a difference.
A tidal wave of grief is mobilising and joining those who are courageous enough to rise up and say STOP.
The systems of Colonialism, Oppression and Capitalism will not change easily or willingly , but they are breaking down, loosing power and being questioned. This change is underway, but may not be visible for a while, maybe not in our life time. Your work is a valued part of this tide of change,thank you. 🙏🏻
Susan, thanks for that big picture. I think these systems are in their dying days, and they're flailing around in ways that are so dangerous while in their death throes. I really appreciate your encouragement. Thanks.
Death. So much death. Of Palestinians, of Ukrainians, of innocent amazing loving animal species bound for extinction, of homeless people, of starving people, of people abducted imprisoned and tortured by our own sick rulers. So much delusion and psychotic greed. Life offers pain enough, but heartless human fools are increasing it exponentially. It's better not to cry too much, if you can manage it. I try to remember that too much deep grief damages us in ways that include even the physical heart. It's a massive horror show, and we can't do much to change it, but we keep trying, "keeping hope alive," while thinking "Stop the world, I want to get off."
Yes, so much of it. And it didn't take long for it to become almost normalized. How do we respond to what some want us to consider the new normal?
It's terrible to feel so helpless and be ruled by people who wish to deny the impending doom of climate change, go back to a dark age of cruelty, racism, misogyny and superstition, and worship their one true god: money.
And people drowned without warning from a weather bureau dismantled by utterly disgusting immoral fiendish maniacs.
Those in power in the western world seem to have no sense of responsibility to the rest of us.
It's always good to hear someone else articulate what we are all feeling,and it's always uplifting to read about a positive vision for our world, to shine a little hope in dark times.
Thank you
Thanks, Lisa. I thought others might be feeling the same way, especially when my friends said they weren't able to cry either.
Times like this can force us to confront ugly facts.
For most humans, however, they provide an exercise in ever more tortured cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is right. Somehow it doesn't compute.
Thanks for writing this, Diana. I've been feeling the same way for quite awhile now. I find that I am numbing all my feelings, as no matter how bad things are for me, nothing compares to the horror of Gaza. I haven't been writing, as my words seem petty in enormity of the world's problems. You remind me that it does help to write our thoughts (as it is so hard IRL to find others who understand), just to let others know that we are not alone in these feelings.
Jean, thanks for expressing that. I often feel that way too, that nothing can compare to those going through a genocide in Gaza for all the world to see, yet it continues.
It's hard to know what to write, but silence feels like complicity. I'm not OK with this and I'd scream it from the rooftops if I could.
Well said. Thanks.
I have become...uncomfortably numb.
There is so much pain and suffering in the world now that the only way to continue having the strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other is to become numb to it. It's a necessary defense mechanism but it also makes one wonder if somehow their very humanity is being lost. I don't like the times we are in AT ALL.
These are truly terrifying and numbing times we're living in. How do we reclaim our humanity? How do we overcome the powers that are inflicting this upon the world? I wish I knew...
I had a firsthand experience with this the other day, Diana...
This did not happen in a big city. I live in a small town of just under 10,000. I was walking up the steps to my local Post Office to drop off some mail when I tripped and fell forward into the steps, landing pretty hard. I almost had the wind knocked out of me and I'm lucky I didn't break a wrist. The mail I had been carrying scattered across the steps.
Meanwhile, three or four people at the top of the stairs looked on and not ONE asked if I was okay, or offered to help me get up or retrieve the mail. There was not a single word or gesture of support, assistance or care.
Nothing. Total silence. Flustered, I gathered up the envelopes and limped up the stairs and the people silently walked away. Luckily, other than a little bruising I was okay.
For some time -- going back at least eight years -- I have noticed the evaporating necessity of all decent communities: Reciprocity, the absolutely essential "thank you, you're welcome" daily interaction of a functioning community. Reciprocity is a form of empathy.
While few if any say a word of thanks if I hold a door open for them, where I have really noticed and felt the lack of reciprocity in our collapsing society is with the crisis of the US/Israel genocide in Gaza and now with the criminally brutal, illegal roundup or immigrants. Such brutality happens daily and out in the open and while there are protests the vast majority of people -- sheeple -- really don't care. They lack empathy and can't even begin to grasp that if such brutality can happen to others it can, and likely will at some point, happen to them or someone they care about.
As for my reaction to our genocide, I have had this short video up on my screen for almost a week. I have seen a lot of brutality from the US/Israeli genocide documented but this short video of the trauma this young child is suffering rattles me every time I view it. What has she seen? Who has she lost? The sound of the birds in the background add something I can't quite explain.... https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Q8kLGGQMqC0
Reciprocity is essential to and an expression of a decent society and the most essential dwindling natural resource. Practice it. Model it. Teach it to the children.
I'm so sorry about the callous treatment you received, Mark. We really need to model manners, empathy and compassion, and make it normal again.
That poor girl. I wonder the same things and I hope she's alright now.
Take care, Mark. Thanks for commenting, and for writing the post in response to this one.
let's hope we reach a lot of people with the message.
yeah, it feels like we're all dispossessed, people are either subjects for extraction, or "casualties" of the war on earth.
It really feels that way, doesn't it? I think part of our struggle is realizing our worth, and the worth of others around us.
Spot on, Diana. I feel quite similar. I find humour as an outlet. Sometimes very black humour though...
I sometimes do too, Brett. Writing this post was quite cathartic. The next one I wrote was much angrier.
I'm always encouraged when I see a writer use anger as a fuel, a motivation. So, I'll definitely check out your next post, as always, Diana. It's a pity but I think we have less now in popular culture that gives us a mirror for these types of feelings. I wrote about this once here and still think it's true... https://www.cataloniatoday.cat/article/105-opinion-today/889353-i-have-to-ask-where-have-all-the-sad-and-angry-songs-gone.html
I'm pretty out of touch with today's music, but I'm not hearing that sadness and revolutionary rage that we heard in earlier times. Are you familiar with the band Black Puma? This song doesn't strike me as political per se, but it has that feeling, at least to me. Here's October 33, in case you haven't heard it. I just love it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an3AkQL62F8
Yes, I started listening to them a while back and rate them really highly. Great musicians IMO too. It's a damn strong song. Thanks, Diana! This one is a personal favourite....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1qHvYFdlz0
Hey, thanks for sharing. It's a good song, Brett.
That we feel Gaza’s pain every day is a prayer for peace. The solution is spiritual ultimately this we must know. Do not despair.
Thanks, Gogo. I think it's spiritual and a lot of other things too. And don't worry; I'm too stubborn to despair.
all we have is our resistance, witness, love, and solidarity.
And who knows what will come of their combination? I hope we can find a way out of these desperate times.
Thank you for your vulnerability, Diana. So many of us have this issue.
You're welcome, Wendy.
As I was feeling these things, it suddenly dawned on me that I should express them, since I thought so many others were probably feeling something similar.
Sometimes expressing our vulnerability can validate the vulnerability of others, and hopefully be empowering. That was my intention writing this post.
Take good care.
I've also found the comments really helpful and validating, Wendy.
Thanks for sharing your vulnerability too. I know -- it's easy to over-react when we're numbed out like this.
The whole world is desperately in need of healing in every way possible. Stopping the genocide in Gaza would be a great first step.
Reading through these comments is also helpful. I, too, am having trouble writing, other than in my journal. Even there, I was just sitting on our deck, among beautiful greenery and flowers, and realised my pen wasn't moving and I was feeling numb. Then, I noticed that a critter had been digging in the planters overnight and I totally lost it -- a reaction that was ridiculously inappropriate, but cleansing, nevertheless.