Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.
Rumi
Bombardment from above is constant. It’s all too much for many adults, let alone a child: no nine-year-old on earth should have to go through this. My daughters keep trying to hold on to my leg, to hug me, to do anything to feel safe. It will take them a long time to recover, and they will need a lot of support.
Rushdi Abualouf, BBC correspondent and Gaza resident
Shalom! (parting words to her captors before her release)
Yocheved Lifshcitz, Israeli hostage
The core idea is we all have the same light, we’re all interconnected, that we all have a shared sense of humanity, and we are able to hurt one another when we fail to see that light.
Simran Jeet Singh, The Light We Give
This has been a very challenging few weeks for all of us (especially those living in the Middle East or Ukraine or any of the many other, less visible, war zones around the world). Those of us who follow and care about current affairs cannot but admit that we are precariously close to the abyss of a global military conflagration. In this essay, I want to share some insights which have been helping me remain sane and grounded during this time.
My first response to the events in Israel was a sense of outrage. It increased when the military reaction, – the carpet bombing of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Airforce, – followed. Outrage implies `offending beyond endurance and calling forth extreme feelings´.
Fear and trauma are powerful components of our emotional makeup. Trauma is not what happened to us but rather how we reacted to what we experienced. This often takes the form of belief systems and behaviours formed initially to ensure our survival in circumstances we experienced as existentially threatening. In the long term, these may prove to be counter productive for our growth and development. Many of us are now feeling emotionally charged from all that is happening in the Middle East. This is especially true of those of us who have had personal experience of the trauma of war.
My family moved from Belfast in Northern Ireland to Limerick, in the Republic, in 1963, just as social unrest was beginning to boil over in the North. It erupted into fully blown violence in 1968 on the back of the Civil Rights Movement which quickly became hijacked and instrumentalised by military and paramilitary forces.
That part of our island went on to experience thirty years of civil war, with thousands of civilians murdered and maimed in what was to become known euphemistically as `The Troubles´. My early years, therefore, were marked by uninterrupted (radio and TV) news of tit-for-tat sectarian shootings and bombings and atrocities of a military scale perpetrated by the British Army and a variety of fundamentalist Irish paramilitary organisations which had emerged from the local communities of competing historical allegiances and loyalties.
During these years I felt the anger, fear, and helplessness of my parents, who had grown up during World War II. No consolation for the loss of childhood innocence was provided. The nurturing and reassurance of safety that every child needs in situations of danger were not forthcoming. My parents may simply have been overwhelmed by their own unresolved issues.
This all came back to me on the day after the Hamas attacks on Israel in a very visceral fashion. Having walked into my kitchen after listening to the morning news, standing there alone, I heard a somewhat forsaken, yet familiar voice rise up from the pith of my tightly knotted stomach. `Who is going to protect me from this depraved brutality?´ it asked fearfully.
As the details of the initial attacks on the kibbutzim and the dance festival emerged in the media and the subsequent military reaction rained down violently from the sky over Gaza, that inner voice became more and more audible.
How do we communicate these events to our younger loved ones? The children. We must be sensitive and authentic in how we present what is happening for us – as that is exactly how they will make it what is happening for them. And though we should not and indeed cannot keep truth from our children – we can be thoughtful and careful about how we show our feelings and talk about current events.
I spent many years hiding the trauma of my youth from my children. That is not a path to be recommended – it simply reflected my limitations in dealing with events back then, namely a combination of volatile emotional outbursts, denial, and suppression. Based on what I have learned in the meantime, my approach would be very different now.
Then, in addition to the interaction with the next generation(s), there is the issue of how we deal with our own respective Inner Child. Here I find there is still much work to be done. When my `little one´ poses such a question, it is imperative that the adult in me listens, acknowledges his concerns, honours the feelings, and reassures the child within that I will undertake everything in my power today to keep him safe. This implies conscious, loving contact on an ongoing basis, something I have been learning to cultivate in recent years. If outrage implies `offending beyond endurance´, building our inner resources will help us train endurance such that we can live with our burdens without yielding to the loud, destructive impulses of our inner saboteurs.
Many of my generation had nobody to help us after our childhood trauma experiences and many parents, who themselves had unresolved trauma issues from earlier emotional battlegrounds, were unconsciously filled with confusion and even anger, which ended up being directed, unintentionally, at their children.
In what could be considered this Golden Age of Recovery, we now have a much better understanding of trauma and many effective newly developed resources to deal with it. We also have each other in the global web of instant communications as we navigate these frightening times. We can help each other heal and grow, remain more present, and become more resilient only if we stay connected with open hearts and mindful empathy.
It is my firm hope that we can give each other and our children unconditional love and encourage them to see the world for what it is, including its most challenging aspects. And that we offer the reassurance that we are now here, fully present, to support them and keep them safe. In doing so, we can cultivate our consciousness of interconnection; that we are all manifesting the same light. This, in turn, strengthens our shared sense of humanity.
Only when we fail to see that light are we able to hurt one another.
Photo: Banksy
