Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
-from "Lead," by Mary Oliver
I woke up this morning to gray skies and a loudly meowing cat. I turned on the coffeepot. I lit the candle, diffused forest scent, put Phoebe Bridgers on low volume. With my coffee I burrowed under a blanket, open my beloved journal, and wrote four pages longhand. For most of this year, my 25-year-plus journaling practice has made a radical shift, and I haven’t been doing my regular longhand morning pages for months. It feels good to be back.
I journaled. I read from
‘s Radical Tarot book. I opened Instagram to bear witness to the horrors. I’m grateful to folks like Sarah of Magdalene, latinxparenting, like my friends Rachel and Rachael for not shutting up, for not turning away, for inviting us deeper and deeper in our humanity by sharing and showing the unbearable grief of Palestinians.Last night, I watched a video of a young boy, maybe 10 or 12—my kids’ age—whose left arm had been blown up from the elbow down. He was weeping, saying, I just want to hold my own hand, that’s all I want in this life is to hold my own hand.
Are you willing?
This morning, I watched a video of a man holding a young girl, lifeless. He held her so gently, like he was trying not to wake her up with his kisses. He lifted her eyelids and kissed her blank eyes.
Are you willing?
This morning, I watched a video of a wailing girl, maybe 10 years old, telling her brother that their dead brother, whose body they were prostrated over, was “with dad now, it’s ok.” Then she pulled a patterned sheet over the body of her dead brother. She knew what to do. Think about that: she knew what to do.
Are you willing?
This morning, I watched a video of a man holding the soot-covered body of his child. It’s unclear whether the child is alive: if so, maybe not for long. The man is holding the child in his lap, and holding out his phone in selfie-mode, recording this moment, perhaps, or perhaps talking to a relative. From his demeanor, I imagine he’s telling the child about all the adventures they’re going to have. A final bedtime story.
Are you willing?
I closed Instagram and moved to my altar, to my floor temple. I sat on the ground. I lit more candles, I felt myself held by the earth, held by the ancestors. I brought my grief, my despair, my rage. I burned some juniper. I pulled some cards. Temperance—we are made to hold multitudes. Ten of Wands—we cannot hold it all anymore. Yes yes yes.
I opened a collection of Mary Oliver poems, that oracle of oracles. I read the poem Lead. Here, let me read it for you, if you like.
Lead
Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.
Bearing witness is a sacred, necessary act. Whether it’s Mary Oliver urging us to consider the vanishing loons, or whether it’s sitting with the pain of our Palestinian kin, our task is to not look away.
The root cause of trauma, always, is an experience when we have been left alone with our pain. Pain itself, when we are resourced, when we are held, can be felt, can expand us, can allow us to let more life in. It’s the aloneness that’s unbearable. The feeling that no one sees us, that no once cares.
That experience of being left alone with unbearable pain, if left unmet and unheld for too long, is what leads to vengeance, to violence, to genocide.
We must develop our willingness to bear witness & to have our hearts broken if we are to heal this world. We must learn to look. We must learn to stay with the pain. To not brush it off. To let it enter us, to let it break us, to let is soften us.
I write here about my cozy and comforting rituals because they are what help me hold the pain. They are what is allowing me to stay and soften. They are what is making me willing to let my heart break and break and break and break.
I’m seeing SO FUCKING MANY people on social media saying that these images should not be shared because they’re dysregulating to the nervous system. This, my friends, is how we know that these systems have co-opted the language of somatics and healing to maintain the status quo.
We should all be dysregulated right now. We are being invited deeper into our humanity.
Do not let them convince you that this is beyond your capacity to bear.
Do not let them convince you that you’re too small and broken for the pain of the world.
Do not let them convince you that your humanity is inconvenient.
Do not let them convince you that this pain is incompatible with joy, with connection, with justice.
Do not let convince you that in order to get through this, you need to feel less.
Are you willing?
Are you willing to let your heart break open to the pain of the world?
Are you willing to expand your capacity to hold this grief?
Are you willing to take up the sacred, revolutionary act of bearing witness?
Are you willing to see yourself as inseparable from the people of Gaza?
Then find what is sacred to you and lean in hard.
Nourish yourself with sensory joy.
Learn to be held by the earth, by the trees, by the spirits.
Grieve and mourn and dance and sing with your beloveds, with your chosen family of weirdos.
You can give up as many times as you need to as long as you also learn to return. To begin again. And again. And again.
A new day at the altar. A new day on Instagram, bearing witness. A new day of calling your reps. A new day of protests. A new day of mundane fucking tasks while the empire falls around us.
We must not leave our brothers’ and sisters’ pain to remain unseen, unheld, untended.
We must not leave the children to suffer and die alone.
We owe this to them and WE OWE THIS TO OURSELVES.
I don’t know what good it does, to be honest, for these actual people that we view and hold their stories and their lives. But I have to believe it does something. It has to. It has to. It has to matter.
But I know this, without a doubt: we are the ones who need to look. We are the ones who need our hearts broken open, who need our capacity to hold and feel to expand.
We will not let them desensitize us. We will not let them shrink our humanity. We will not concede that this pain is not our business.
We will bear witness. We will expand to hold the pain. We will soften, and we will stay.
We will fight.
We will sing.
Are you willing?
I am willing. Thank you so much for this beautiful call to feel everything and bear witness. Thank you for the reminder that our hearts are capable of infinite expansion, infinite love, infinite holding. We need to feel more not less. So beautifully beautifully said. Thank you on this day of thanks. Your words were exactly what I needed .❤️🙏
Thank you. I needed to hear that. ❤️