“Chen, Can You Take away My Pain?”
Photo by Avshalom Sassoni for https://www.jns.org/
I received this email below in response to the newsletter I sent before leaving on vacation where I shared how worried I am about my family and friends in Israel who are living in such despair.
It caught my attention, and I wanted to share it with you all and address it, because there is so much to unpack here.
I hope we can use this as an opportunity to learn something important about healing, especially in today’s complex, polarized world. ✨
“I am a big fan of you, and I appreciate you so much, and I can feel the difficulty and the hardship you are living, and how your heart is with your friends and family in Israel, and I am sorry for that. But, at the same time, I felt hurt that you didn't also mention the pain from the over 30,000 Palestinians dying right now in extreme, unimaginable suffering.
It added for me the divide in the world, and the inability of one side feeling with the other. I live in Lebanon, and through social media I witnessed the horror of 7 October and also the ongoing multiplied horror going on now in Gaza.
I needed to share this ‘cause I care about you, others and the world. And I can understand that being in this pain makes it sometimes difficult to take into account other perspectives. Thank you for being you.”
The war in Israel and Gaza is bringing up so many emotions for so many people around the world.
It's complex. And it's extremely hard to be in the middle of it all and to feel it all.
When we are in constant pain and flooded with emotions, it can be hard to switch and feel the other side.
I'll be honest and say that I can barely be with one side at the moment.
This doesn't mean the other side doesn't exist or that what they feel is not important. It also doesn't mean I don't care.
It means that as a human race, we are doing atrocious things to one another to the point that it becomes impossible to feel it all in the body, and we go numb.
Photo by Abed Khaled/AP
If we want to be in resonance when we share with others, we have to come from our own lived experience–we have to be with where WE are, feeling what WE are feeling.
If not, we are in dissonance, disembodied, and disconnected from our reality, and we abandon ourselves.
The person who sent me this message was asking me to feel something that I couldn't at that moment.
The amount of pain, grief, and helplessness that I have felt in the past 7 months has been more than my body could handle. There is so much numbness because it's too much for the nervous system to hold.
It doesn't mean that I don't care.
I have felt enough hatred through antisemitism in the online space in the past 7 months that would last me for a lifetime.
As someone who grew up in this conflict, I would say that I am pretty open and am able to feel both sides most of the time. That's not the case for most people in the Middle East. This is also because I have lived away from the region for decades, and I live a very spiritual life.
What is happening is heartbreaking. If I am expressing one side's suffering it doesn't mean I agree with the horrific things that are happening right now on the other side. It just means I am sad and in pain.
I should be able to express how I feel when I am sad and feel pain. My experience does not erase the others’ experience.
When the person who sent this email said “I am hurt”, they implied that I did something to them personally.
But underneath hurt… is pain.
If you feel the pain of the divide, it’s because there is a divide. I can’t take away your pain or ease it for you because I did not create this divide.
Like you, I am feeling it, and it cuts through my heart.
Yet, if we can learn how to express our pain without turning it into a conflict between us, real healing can begin.
Then, I can feel pain and sadness for my family and friends, and you can feel pain and sadness for this divide. Both can exist together, and then there is space for love to come back. Over time, we might even feel it all together. And that is peace!
It is possible to learn how to process and express your pain, and to slowly build your emotional resilience so you can feel all of these experiences in your body, and release what no longer serves you… or the world.
I’m not saying that this is easy. This is very tough inner work.
Yet, what I can do is show you how to process these difficult emotions, release them from the body, and get out of numbness or intense suffering.
If you want to explore what this kind of healing could look like for you, I’m hosting a FREE Open Info Session for you to come and experience what we do in the Healing through Somatic Intelligence 10-week LIVE group program.
Healing Program Open Information Session
We want to support you in understanding exactly what kind of program you might be stepping into, share what you’ll experience, and offer some perspective. And of course, give you an opportunity to ask all your questions.
The truth is: I can’t take away your pain…
… but I can share with you the transformative practices and guidance so you can dive deeper into what you feel and where you feel it in your body… so you can begin to heal yourself.
And that, lovely, is even more precious. 💗