The Paradox of Feeling So Much
An Honest Look Why it Does, and Doesn't Matter - and How to Deal With That
Hello ♡,
I had a much different newsletter planned for this week. And I am sure many of you can relate to expecting to be thinking and talking about much different things this week.
I wake up thinking about Israel and Gaza, and I go to sleep thinking about the families and children who have lost, or will lose their lives. I go to soccer practice to pick up my son, I lay on the trampoline with my daughter - thinking about mothers across the world who have lost, or will lose, or can’t get to, their children. It’s incomprehensible. And it is happening.
I sit in my office with people who are helping friends through cancer, or facing illnesses themselves, who are trying to repair a marriage, or repair themselves. I listen to people hurting and hurting and hurting. I comfort a child who is upset, I clean up after dinner, I talk to a friend who is hurting, I have an incredibly frustrating professional experience. I breathe a sigh of relief about someone’s good news. In the background of everyone and anyone’s lives are constant terrors and losses and injustices in the world, this one being the most current on our minds. But the others are still there too.
People say don’t look away - it is a privilege to look away - true. People say protect your mental health - don’t read about it. People reduce the loss of innocent lives across the board to over-simplistic talking points and arguments. People lose their humanity arguing against the lack of humanity of someone else. People say you don’t know anything. People say go learn something. Everyone has an opinion on how to engage with this nightmare we are watching continue.
I am not coming at you with an opinion.
I am pulling up my chair beside you and saying, this is all so much. I am pulling up my chair and looking at it all with you, side by side. I am shaking my head in the fury of disbelief at what is happening in the world with you. I am heart sick with you at everything. I am wondering also how it intersects with your unique background, identity, and story. And, I am saying I have no solution to feeling so much.
How you feel really does matter, and it really doesn’t matter at all. That is indeed, in my opinion, the pain and risk of feeling. But it is also, in my opinion, the only way forward.
How you feel about anything and everything, in your circle and the larger world couldn’t matter more. It must be heard, expressed, and validated. It all matters. Feeling your heart breaking, feeling rage at injustice, is essential to the world changing. It is what leads people to lead change.
And yet.
And yet.
Here I, for example, sit in my privileged life at my kitchen table. Two sleeping dogs behind me. Meetings wrapped up for the moment. Carpool quickly approaching. The afternoon juggle of three healthy kids quickly approaching. The quiet of a life in privilege at the moment. And how I feel about what is happening in Israel and Gaza couldn’t matter less. What I mean is - my heart is breaking, and I am powerless to fix any of it.
You might say (and rightfully so!) pray about it, find an organization to donate to in order to provide relief, go to a protest, contact a senator, contact people impacted. Use your voice to cry out for a ceasefire. Yes, of course. May we do all these things and more as we are led to.
And yet. In the quiet of each of our days not living there…
My aching for a mother grieving her child as I hug my safe healthy child can’t do anything, it can’t bring her child back. My terror at the detailed report of how lives were taken can’t bring them back. How I feel doesn’t matter in the way it can’t save anyone.
And yet still.
Refusing to give up my heartache for the life of another that I will never know, and cannot save from the horror of this moment, is essential.
Refusing to give up our heartache is what keeps us human and keeps us connected to each other.
How you feel couldn’t matter more, and doesn’t really matter at all - it can’t save anyone…
And yet still.
May it be the living embodiment of refusing to deny the dignity, the love, the humanity, and the chance at life for each other.
And so, I pick up my bag of grief, of all the things I know about in the world, and in my circle, and in my work. And I set it down in front of us. And I wonder about your bag of grief for the world, and in your life, in your circle, as you set it down in front of us. And as we sit side by side, I want to honor your grief, my grief, the grief of those we will never meet, the grief of those we want to save from any danger and terror, by refusing to numb our grief, look away, and move on.
Yes, I will go to carpool, and you will go to your next thing. We might laugh today. And yet still, we will carry it with us. We carry it with us as a sacred act. Grief goes with us.
Feeling so much is not a waste of time, it is part of honoring the humanity in ourselves and each other.
And so in this moment, and forward today, when we cannot fix what we feel so much about - may we not miss that feeling the pain of and for others is one way we give dignity, care, and honor, to one another. We refuse to numb our hearts to the lives of others whose hearts beat the exact same way.
With you,
Monica
“Opening our hearts to grief - others and our own - is how we hold our humanity in a world that would destroy it. It’s how we will begin to survive this.” Valarie Kaur
I felt the same, a grief for people that I do not know, from a country in a far place from where I am. I never wanted to reject my sensitive nature though it was lonely and difficult as I was the only one in my community that felt such emotions. thanks for sharing. it makes me realise there are people in other parts of the world that feel the same as me. I appreciate this post and being your subscriber. your posts provide the space I needed to experience and accept my humanity.
Thank you. I read the news. Post to social media, donate and then have to retreat for awhile. Its too much for all of us. Its heartbreaking. We have to remain connected though so thank you for your wise words