How to be present with collective suffering
A gentle and urgent guide to move through distressing times
Before I say what I came here to say, I’m lifting up an urgent call to action by Jewish Voice for Peace to put as much pressure as possible on our legislators to ceasefire and urge Israel to stop bombing Gaza. You can find a link to email or call your representatives on their homepage here. If you live outside of the states, I encourage you to find local initiatives taking action to raise awareness to the unfolding genocide occurring. Regardless of how informed you feel and where you are, what we’re witnessing is unacceptable and American dollars are funding the decimation of thousands. This is without a doubt one of the biggest crises we have experienced and may experience in our lifetimes.
Grace Lee Boggs taught us to “transform yourself to transform the world.” I’ve been sharing my process of educating myself and learning about the geopolitical situation that’s been filling our feeds, and have been sharing educational resources, news, and analysis from both Palestinian and Jewish voices on my Stories. On my feed, I’ve been sharing frameworks, reminders, and synthesized teachings from my years of studying justice, liberation, and social change.
Now, what I came here to say.
As an autistic person with a deep commitment to justice and liberation, I am very attuned to collective suffering. I have an underdeveloped theory that this is one of the roots of my depression— I feel so deeply and am dreadfully sensitive to violence (which greatly reduces my film + TV viewing options) that it makes sense I go into depressive episodes every few weeks. I feel the weight of the world and through years and years of building my sense of self and studying the social model of disability, I think my depression has shown me how to care more deeply about the world within me and the worlds around me. I think my depression is a valid reaction to the violence and harm in this world.
As my feed fills with families searching for each other within destroyed neighborhoods, hospitals overrun with bleeding children, and journalists recording videos of themselves escaping from building to building as bombs explode in the background, I’m distraught and enraged. Why is this happening? What led to this? How, after decades of destruction, escalated conditions that the United Nations has described as “unlivable conditions,” and large scale organizing efforts calling attention to the severity of this human rights crisis, is there still a deliberate silencing of what’s at stake?
During times like this, I zoom out and zoom in. I zoom out to educate myself from independent, international news sources and people on the ground who have been directly impacted by the crisis. Then, I zoom in— how do these systems of oppression and cycles of violence show up within my own thinking? How can I do everything in my power to challenge this cycle and change it for good, within and around me?
Transform yourself to transform the world. One of the barriers to change, transformation, and healing is disconnection and disassociation. How can we change something if we’re not present with it?
This isn’t about answers. This is about questions. Questions are kind of like a compass for me— they help me think deeper about where I am and where I can go from here.
With all the crises we’ve endured the past few years, in addition to moving through debilitating mental health issues, I’ve been building on my capacity to hold my pain.
What is my pain telling me?
How can I be present with it?
I can apply these questions to collective suffering too.
What is this pain telling us?
How can we be present with what it needs?
I want to listen as if lives depend on it.
I understand now that the way I relate to my pain is how I’ll relate to the pain of others.
Being present with what’s happening outside of us requires a practice of holding the pain within us and among us in interpersonal conflict.
Artwork by Malak Mattar
It’s jarring, uncomfortable, and maddening to witness what we’re witnessing, then go about our daily routines as if we aren’t witnessing one of the worst atrocities of our lifetime compound in real time.
What causes this degree of suffering and how can our lives become an offering toward an honest, accurate, holistic iteration of justice?
What practices shape our beliefs and how can we become believers of change?
Peace is not about prayer alone. Peace is both a personal and collective practice.
We need courage to look at ourselves and the ground we’re on. We need courage to be responsible for the impact we make. We need courage to give ourselves enough grace to say— I got this wrong, how can I pivot? We need courage to shed the habits that harm us and transform them into habits that hold us. More of us. All of us. With our collective imagination, this must be possible.
We need guiding stars among each other. It was through the diligent love of people on my feed— artists, organizers, cultural workers— who called on the collective to speak up about the 75+ years of settler colonialism and forced occupation that resulted in this catastrophic violence.
We need healing, yes. But to heal, we need to learn how to hold the pain of being uncomfortable.
Never before has it been more urgent to hold ourselves so we can hold our legislators, elected leaders, decision makers, and power players responsible for what’s on our hands.
Jewish Voice for Peace: call or email your representatives (if you’re in the U.S.) Please share with someone you know.
If you or someone you know will be in DC and feel comfortable showing up in person, you can demonstrate with Jewish Voice for Peace at The White House as they call for a ceasefire— register to attend an action here.
Lastly and firstly, be present with your pain. When you find yourself defensive and uncomfortable, let it be a moment to expand our ability to think with nuance, act with multiplicity, and care with fierce courage. These are dark, grim times that are telling us where we are. Meet the ugliness where it is and do whatever is within your power to transform it. Do not stop caring. The future depends on it.