The Weight of Witnessing: A Note from October 2023

In October 2023, as I sit quietly scrolling through the latest updates from Palestine, I feel gutted. Not in the metaphorical sense. I mean gutted—like someone reached into my chest and twisted the softest part of me until it burned.

There’s a heaviness that no amount of logic or distraction can numb. The kind of ache that builds as the news keeps rolling in—hospitals bombed, children pulled from rubble, stories cut short before they could even speak in full sentences.

It’s one thing to know war exists. It’s another to watch it happen, almost in real time, and feel absolutely useless on the other side of the screen.

When hospitals—those supposed havens of healing—become war zones, I lose my words. And that says a lot coming from someone who writes for therapy. These places are supposed to be the end of suffering. Instead, they’ve become ground zero.
It breaks me to imagine patients mid-surgery, or NICU babies whose incubators go dark—not because they lost their fight, but because someone decided they weren’t worth keeping alive.

This isn’t just about politics. This is about humanity. Or, more accurately, the terrifying absence of it.

I know I’m not the only one who feels it—that slow-burning helplessness. We scroll, we watch, we cry, we donate if we can, and then we sit with it. Powerless.

I don’t kid myself into thinking I can fix anything from here. I can’t end the conflict. I can’t undo centuries of trauma. But I can bear witness. I can sit with the pain instead of turning away. And maybe that counts for something.

I’m not the type to post political hot takes on social media. Not because I don’t care, but because I often feel like it turns into some competition of who’s the most woke. Who can sound the most morally correct.

But this time... silence feels complicit.
And honestly? I just feel guilt. And grief. And this gnawing sense of why the hell can’t the world care equally?

Why does the global outrage come pouring out for Ukraine but not for Palestine?
Why are some lives headline-worthy and others... background noise?

Trying to Conceive, While Children Die

This part hurts in a way I’m still figuring out how to describe.
As someone who’s been trying—desperately—to conceive for the past four years, seeing babies in war zones is a unique kind of torment. It’s rage and heartbreak tangled together.

I long for a child. Meanwhile, children are being killed before they even learn to say mama.
What kind of world am I even trying to bring a child into?

This Isn’t About Me. But It’s Not Not About Us.

I know this isn’t my story.
But I’m here, watching it unfold. And staying numb isn’t an option.

So I pray.
And I cry.
And I let myself feel it—because that’s the bare minimum. Because empathy doesn’t require a passport. And because pretending this isn’t happening doesn’t make it any less real.

My heart is with the children. The families. The survivors. And the ones who didn’t make it out.
My hope—however naïve it may seem—is for a world that learns to hold all grief equally. To fight harder for justice. To stop letting borders define whose life is worth mourning.

And if nothing else, I hope we never get used to this.