I haven’t been posting here lately. But I have been writing. Every day.
What else could I possibly be doing while unemployed during yet another genocide? While I struggle to keep sending out job applications amidst all this horror, I have been feeling the circles of grief seem to tighten around me until breathing is another luxury.
So I have been writing. Journaling, drafting comms for activists and groups I’m connected to, posting on social media, and so on. I’m even in active chats with friends and comrades around and with whom I’ve been creating art in this exact space, in some cases, for years.
And yet, though I have been using my words every day, I just couldn’t “copy, paste, and post.”
Today I figured out why. This feeling is the water I know so well–the flow of grief. Clear and deep and cold, a lake of grief in which I’m immersed and cannot escape.
Grief is why I could not take the seemingly mundane step, a step I’ve taken a thousand times without a second thought. I figured this out when I finally turned around and confronted my “inner saboteur.”
I learned to confront this voice when I realized he was infiltrating my psyche like a cop. I really don’t like having cops in my head, so I know when they show up.
Echoing in my head has been that pesky critic, concern trolling me: “You don’t even know anyone who has died. You really should be fine.”
“You don’t even know anyone who has died” is not the admonition of a rational friend with your best interest in mind. But it’s also a voice from me, and I can ask it to reconsider its approach and de-escalate (something I don’t suggest in real life, by the way. Real life cops are when you stay silent, just a reminder!).
Through narrative-based therapy, I have come to think of this voice as the one who tries, through bullying tactics, to keep me from the pain I’m feeling. I know that listening to that voice never goes well. The moment I remembered this, I stopped entertaining that voice, took some silence, and let myself listen for what’s actually going on: I am afraid of how many people I may know who have lost their lives to pointless militarism and to terrorism, because I am already trying to grieve for those I did indeed know.
I have to be honest with myself about this in order to face my fears that are rooted in pain. I don’t think that I know anyone who has died since October 7, on either “side,” from either Israel’s genocidal siege on Gaza (as well as the West Bank) or from the Hamas attacks on Israel. It says a lot that I’m not sure. Considering that almost my entire world was Jewish so much of my life, and that I have lived, volunteered, and worked in both 1948 Israel and Occupied Palestine, it is far more likely that I know someone who has been killed than that I do not.
And, if I know anyone who has been killed, it’s statistically much more likely that they were an IDF soldier or a settler than a Palestinian. I cannot hide from that fact. This is the place I came from.
But because of the place I”ve come to, the thousands killed in Gaza are closely related to people who are important to me. At first, that was all I knew. However, in November, I realized that some of the most famous Gazans who have been murdered so far are close to people who I love, people who have saved my life on more than one occasion. People who meant so much to people who mean the world to me are being murdered on camera…and it feels like no one is doing anything.
When I paused long enough to hear myself thinking in absolutes like “no one” piling on, it helped me finally perceive. the circles of grief closing in. This writer’s block is almost entirely rooted in grief.
So, like any good Torah scholar would do, I opened the book that I keep for just these times. The writer who is my rabbi in these moments, Beth Pickens, and whose book Make Your Art No Matter What I would buy for every artist I know, if I could. The chapter titled “Grief” is the one that makes it so indispensable for me. Today, this passage in particular made me catch my breath:
“The vulnerability required to feel and express grief is profound, and allowing it to be part of your practice is a gift to your audiences. I don’t mean employing manipulative tactics to make people cry, [...] But when you bring emotional truth to your work, tapping into the grief you are feeling, you will create the conditions for your audiences to feel theirs as well.”
Pickens caught me off guard today, and unleashed my tears, because she knew exactly what was happening for me without ever having met me. And, she did it by being vulnerable in her writing.
She did it by doing the thing I know I am good at, have done since I could hold a pencil, and maybe even love most about myself: she arranged the same old words in a totally new way than ever before, and by doing so, she spoke new truth into the world. Her gift is one we both share, and she told me that we are in this together and we will endure.
I have a very vivid memory of the first time I got terrified by my tendency of procrastinating. It took a lot of therapists to unpack what was going on there, but suffice to say it’s deep shit I don’t plan to share on here. However, I would like to share how I use that therapeutic insight with the tools we practiced in therapy, on a daily basis, to keep going.
When I can trace a behavior to a trigger memory, I can get back on track with whatever I’ve been derailed from by the trigger. A “trigger memory” is one where I don’t remember any coherent thoughts, just my actions and my feelings. It's important for me to understand when I’ve hit a trauma-impacted memory so that I can know I’m triggered, take a break, and regulate myself.
I’m breaking it down like this because I think “trauma” is a word that implies a lot but often says very little. Now more than ever, we need to be very clear about trauma. I believe that sheer humanity requires us to do so, or we may break under the mass trauma we are currently experiencing around the globe. I offer my own personal process because I don’t want others to have to go about it alone, or think their process is unusual.
Which brings me back to this morning, and how I got back to posting.
One of my favorite humans on this planet is my husband, who for this blog we’ll call HB. When I read Pickens and gasped, I knew that I needed to use my tools to get through the block my trauma is causing me. She had circled me back to the grief pressing in on my whole body at an almost molecular level, I felt the fear I know to be based in childhood.
So I went to my husband and told him I needed his help figuring this out.
My love didn’t tell me what to do. Instead, he held me while I cried. Because he knows me more than I know myself, he knew to hold me and just let me cry. He knew that I often need permission to let it out. He knew who I was weeping for, and why, and what they meant to me and my people. He believes me when I tell him what happened, what I’ve seen, how they’ve died, and who killed them. He knows about all of them even if I can never tell him the whole story.
After I stopped crying, I heard myself saying aloud “Oy vey. I’m so ashamed. I cannot do something that will probably take 10 minutes and here I am asking you for help like a baby.”
Which is when he snapped back, just as I have asked him to do when I’m shame spiraling. He cut me off gently and looked straight in my eyes and said, “Shame is a colonial construct. Don’t let your inner colonizer shame you out of telling your truth.”
I feel so vulnerable sharing this story, as I really hate writing about my partners at all. Preserving my own intimate relationships and the privacy of said partners, both past and present, has become sacrosanct to me in healing from sexual abuse, but HB suggested that this is a good time to break the rule.
And since he knows how much I relish breaking a rule meant to be broken, I took the bait. And after he left for work, I sat down and began to write this blog.
I was going to post something else today, but I ended up finding myself unable to do so, and I’m realizing now what a gift that was. I needed to have that conversation in order to process the massive grief tripping up all my steps.
And I needed it to admit why I’m afraid to post one damn word. It’s because everything I have to say could be risky and it will be controversial. Because I’m going to tell some truths on this Substack I’ve been writing about on social media or in private about for nearly 20 years, but have never really “published” online. And everything that’s being done to suppress Palestinians at this moment has at least some connection to things I have really experienced.
My body is afraid it is going to be in physical danger because it has been so many times. But, because I am committed to healing my trauma so that it doesn’t control me, I know how to coax it back to safety.
This is what I want to offer on this blog: I want to tell you the truth. I want to offer that vulnerability because I agree with Beth Pickens that it can be a gift.
So much of the pain we are feeling at this moment is justified anger about all the lies the powerful tell us in order to keep us compliant. I know how that kind of institutional gaslighting feels deep in my bones, and I also know how I got away from such abuse, and how I’m healing.
I want to be honest with people who are walking a similar road, and I’m afraid I’ll suffer the consequences of telling the truth. But here’s the thing. They’ll kill you either way, if they want to. It’s so much better to live free while you’re here, and I plan to keep doing that.
So, in the tradition of my ancestors for millenia, I’ll leave you with a piece of my Torah, from one of my favorite poets, Audre Lorde, from her 1978 masterpiece The Black Unicorn.
by Audre Lorde
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;
For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.