What can I do?
A question we hear so often when an injustice reverberates through the fabric of our collective consciousness.
I want you to start by doing nothing.
I want you to start by feeling everything.
I am a young, inexperienced white woman. I don’t pretend to know much. I only know my truth and how I came to be where I am. I went from “What can I do?” to “I can’t help but do anything I can”. I hope my words will help you do the same.
Start by feeling.
So many of us have been ripped away from our emotional bodies. This is not our fault. We did not ask to be born into a world that encourages self-sacrifice, punishes slowing down, and worships at the feet of productivity. We did not ask to be born to mothers and fathers who were born to mothers and fathers who never learned how to feel anything.
I want you to learn how to feel things. Not just easy things. I want you to learn how to feel the hard things. Invite them inside yourself, and give them a seat at your table. Make them tea. Let them stay a while.
You are safe.
It’s not your fault that you have been born into a world where this is not allowed. Where emotions are dangerous playthings to be abandoned in childhood and never touched again. Our bodies are made to be battlegrounds and war leaves no time for sentiment.
Once you can feel again, then you will know what to do.
It is our guilt that stops us from moving, our shame that stops us from knowing our strength, our despair that keeps us hopeless, our anger that shuts us down, our fear that makes us cowardly.
No – It is our inability to let these feelings show us the way that keeps us stuck.
I want you to feel guilt so that when you see a broken Palestinian child on your phone screen, you are more afraid for their safety than for your own. When we deny guilt a place in our hearts, we become afraid of it. We become afraid of the broken child. We look away from the broken child. We do nothing to help the broken child. When guilt speaks, it tells us what we’ve done wrong and helps us know what to do next.
I want you to feel guilt because on the other side of guilt is action.
I want you to feel shame. Shame is a wound. Shame hurts. Buried shame hurts more. It must be uprooted and spoken aloud. It tells us we are bad, we are wrong, we are unworthy. Let shame reveal your wounds so they can be healed. Do not allow shame to keep you afraid of knowing who you are and what you can become.
I want you to feel shame because on the other side of shame is inner power.
I want you to feel sadness so you do not lose your softness to the hardness of the world. Listen to sadness and it will tell you of loss. Sadness whispers empathy. It helps us seek comfort and refuge. Cry. It means your soul is alive.
I want you to feel sadness because on the other side of sadness is hope.
I want you to feel anger. Anger is sacred. Anger is powerful. Stay close to your anger and it will show you your values. Feel anger, but let it move through your body like fire. It will transform you. When anger speaks, it tells us we have been wronged. Let anger show you what is wrong with the world.
I want you to feel anger because on the other side of anger is truth.
I want you to feel scared. Fear is a trickster. A shapeshifter. A helicopter parent in our brain telling us to be careful. Fear wants to protect us, and it will do almost anything to keep us safe. Safe but small. Safe but confined. Safe, but in a danger more perilous than it will ever let us see. Fear can be selfish. It can tell us to save our pride when another human’s life depends on our humility. Feel scared so you can expose fear in its lies and face the real danger before you.
I want you to feel scared because on the other side of fear is bravery.
I want you to feel everything so that when you are faced with injustice, you do not confuse discomfort with danger. Shame is only paralyzing when we are afraid of it. Sadness is only despairing when we can’t confront it. When you see a Palestinian woman burned half to death, and you want to look away and never think about it again, I want you to feel. Feel the guilt, then peel it back and reveal the shame, then peel it back and reveal the sadness, then the anger, then the fear. Then you will know what to do. Then you will not blame the woman for your distress. You will blame the bomb and the one who sent it.
This too is rebellion.
The emotional revolution precedes the physical one.
About the Author
Elizabeth Cox (She/Her) is an Acadia student studying nutrition and dietetics. She is originally from Clinton, Ontario, which is located on the land of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Neutral peoples. She now lives in Mtaban(Wolfville), located in Mi’kma’ki, the land of the Mi’kmaq people. Elizabeth is a pro-Palestinian activist who is heavily involved in organizing with the Acadia Collective for the Liberation of Palestine (ACLP). Information about the group can be found on Instagram @acadia4liberatedpalestine, where you can add your name to a letter demanding that Acadia divests from Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The group can be reached by email at [email protected].
