🫶 When There Is No Balm...

Dissonance paralysis + the work of active hope

I load the dishwasher with the groans of creation sitting at the very top of my esophagus, constantly threatening to tumble out with no warning. I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and think about what it must be like to raise a toddler in a war zone. I remember a video I saved on Instagram a couple of weeks ago of Palestinian doctors singing in the hospital everyone is arguing over who actually bombed: we will stay here. I am crying while listening to The Daily and I am annoyed by my crying and crying feels like the only option and my kids are asking why I’m crying and I vacillate between burdening them with pain they cannot carry and shielding them from a world they will eventually inherit and then I think about all the mothers who do not have the choice.

Globally we all feel it but maybe you’re feeling it personally. None of it is new and all of it is. Humans have always done these things to each other and it seems like a new fresh hell every time. I’m picking out a pumpkin with my kindergartner, I’m watching a live genocide. I take my SSRIs even though it feels stupid and pointless and it also feels stupid to not take them. And there are the dueling voices in the back of my head: one imploring me to be gentle with myself and the other rationally asking “Honestly, who the eff cares?” The tug of war between my performative nature versus the shame of centering myself in a tragedy that is not actually about me versus the idea that I could do anything about it at all versus the idea I would stay silent gives me what I’ve haltingly named dissonance paralysis.