Six Hundred Years of Grief
I can't be the only one that feels it, heavy on my soul
Hello Beloved Friends
I am writing this email from my Masi’s couch in Delhi, India.
I feel extremely lucky to be here. As some of you may know, I visited India last year for the first time in 13 years, so to come back almost exactly a year later is a blessing. It is very needed and precious fertilizer for my many relationships to land and relatives here
Delhi is truly the city in the jungle, and reconnecting here helps me better understand the sense of home and belonging I felt when I first connected with Los Angeles
.The noise here is non-stop, the pollution is brutal, and the produce is stunning. mannnnny parallels to the Los Angeles area.
Reconnecting with Delhi last year gave me a sense of home.
While visiting was at time lonely and awkward, it was also stabilizing. I remember how sad I was to leave.
It felt like being disconnected from a collective heartbeat.
This year, the two 9-hour flights to India passed quickly, and I felt eager to return to the warmth and comfort of my Masi’s house.
Traveling to India with my mom is healing.
The smells, food, and energy of the land awaken my ancestral body memory.
It is a reconnection, healing the stretched-out bonds created by the consequences of colonization and migration.
Sometimes, I look at my family, and I see how my grandparents fled our homeland of Punjab during partition and how we have been running ever since.
From Punjab to Delhi to Chicago to North Carolina to South Carolina, and for me, to California.
If running away is the subconscious pattern, then the intentional return is the conscious counterpart, the key to healing these ancestral wounds.
I returned to the South, to my hometown, to Delhi, and I’m hopeful that one day I will revisit my family’s home in Punjab.
As I think about my family’s story and tune in to the slow, and awkward ripples of healing ;
I am also thinking about all the ripples of real time violence and pain in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and Armenia.
It makes me think of this clip I saw on tik tok of Selma Hyak in a movie called Beatriz at Dinner
In this clip Beatriz, a Columbian massage therapist and healer, is performing massage on a woman and her car breaks down. The woman invites her to stay the night, and as a result Beatriz attends a dinner party the woman is hosting. At the dinner party there are wealthy guests, one of whom Beatriz recognizes as a man who has contributed to the death of environmental activists in Columbia. In the above clip, Beatriz confronts him and says :
“you think killing is hard? Try healing something. That is hard. That requires patience.
You can kill something in two seconds, but it can take forever to fix it. A lifetime, generations.
That’s why we have to be careful on this earth. And gentle.”
I am heartened by the solidarity with oppressed people that I am witnessing
Watching people:
block ports
takeover freeways
stop weapons from being shipped
block the Macy’s day parade
Sneak Palestinian flags into sporting events
GIVE UP VAPING in solidarity with the Congo,
develop tik tok filters and audios to fundraise
All of this is so powerful to watch and participate in.
I am simultaneously heartbroken by the violence.
it feels like we are too late.
10 weeks too late, six decades too late, six hundred years too late.
I mean too late as in, horrific things have happened and are still happening. I mean too late as in, whatever liberatory future we are envisioning, it can’t undo what has happened.
Too late as in, we are all grieving the loss of a liberatory past.
I say we are too late, but it is not an excuse or a call for us to stop. We are too late, and we are in the process.
We are too late, and we have to keep going.
There is still so much we can save, protect, cherish.
It is crucial to acknowledge grief.
When I work with people around conflict, grief and shame are often the two emotions that need to be named, welcomed, and celebrated. They need more than a seat at the table, they are our elders and we need to honor their wisdom.
But often, in the absence of emotionally intelligent community infrastructure, we are left alone with these emotions and regress in their presence. We struggle to relate to them, and can instead ignore them. In this scenario, we approach conflict in desperation, hoping that resolution will stop the pain of grief or disappointment.
Often, my role is not to resolve the conflict, but to hold space for the grief.
Sometimes I am holding space for grief with people who have been harmed.
Often, I am holding space for people with power who have caused harm as they grieve who they thought they were and have to reconcile with their humanity.
In my experience, Holding space for these complex emotions of grief and shame with people who have caused harm, in combination with clear power analysis and accountability, are key to disrupting cycles of harm.
These days I am overwhelmed with grief.
From reading this article I began to ideate with a friend about the idea of having a grief rave. Hopefully more to come soon on this idea!
Similarly, one of the intentional actions I have been taking during this time is making dinner for my Palestinian friends. I’ve only done this once, but it was so powerful.
It is important for us to come together during these times and to acknowledge together what we are seeing. To intentionally pour love into each other with patience, care, and good food. Without these spaces of relational building I have seen movements dissolve as people turn against each other.
This is part of the inspiration of the shirt I designed. There are 12 days left to order! As you can see below, the shirt says, “ When we don’t rest, we cause harm,” because that’s a big theme I notice.
All proceeds go to the Middle Eastern Children Alliance. I chose to make this design with Bonfire because I ordered a t-shirt through them for a different fundraiser, and it is my favorite shirt because it is soft and comfortable.
If you have the black friday itch, but are resisting amazon and other corporate war funders, consider a shirt!
I want to close by uplifting the words of Yara Eid, A Palestinian journalist
Below is a caption on one of Yara’s posts, a photo of her crying. She posted this on November 21st. Since this post, she has continued to post about Gaza is on the verge of a communication blackout due to a depletion of fuel. Her mother is in Gaza.
I pray for the safety of her mother, for all mothers impacted by war and genocide.
I am praying for all of the incredibly brave journalists, poets, artists and truth tellers. For Bisant, Motaz, Mosab (just to name the few whose names I know).
I am pravying for the families, the older sisters doing their best, the mothers, the fathers, the children.
May this suffering come to an end. May there be peace and happiness again. May there be jaffa oranges, eggplants and watermelon in abundance. From the river to the sea, may palestine by free in 2023.
In the below caption, I was especially moved by Yara describing her fight for existance from birth.
It resonated deeply with me.
I am a human before being a journalist. I cannot separate myself from what’s happening back home. It’s my home where I was born and I grew up for most of my life. It’s where I took my first breath, learnt my first word, ate my first meal, loved for the first time. It’s where all my memories are. It’s the place that I love the most in this world. The people who are being killed are my family, friends, neighbours, colleagues, classmates, and loved ones. The places that are being wiped out are the places I grew up with and in. My house, my schools, my special cafes, my favourite restaurants, my unique spots around the city, my beach, and above all - my homeland. They are not only massacring us, but wiping our history, our churches, mosques and landmarks. They are erasing a whole people who fought for their lives since they were born. Everything about my life revolves about Palestine. My friends at uni used to call me Yara Palestine because “I speak too much about Palestine all the time” and that’s becauseI have been fighting for my existence since the day I was born. I am proud of being called Yara Palestine. I never really took pictures of myself while having a break down but today I decided to take one to share with the world that we are humans, we have emotions and feelings, dreams and ambitions, just like you. I am not always as strong as I portray myself. I breakdown. I cry. I panic. I’ve been mainly showing you strong Yara that keeps on reporting, and educating western journalists but I’m not sharing with you what Yara the human is feeling. All the battles in my head, all the worst case scenarios (some which already happened), all the fear and the trauma, all the anger and pain. I have never been in this much pain in my whole life. Despite living through 6 aggressions on Gaza (only 2 of which I was abroad), I’ve never gotten used to this suffering, this pain, this shock. I want you to know that you’re only seeing 1% of what’s actually happening in Gaza. Despite all of our efforts to show you our genocide, we are unable to completely convey the reality of what’s happening. Don’t get used to our genocide. Please don’t!
THANK U FOR READING <3
Please share my work if it resonated with you!!!!
thank u for this!!! i especially love the idea of a grief rave!