Special Series: The Problem of What to Do With Our Pain
Guest writer Gena Corea on what she learned in a Palestinian refugee camp in 1989.
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Resonant World#81
Some weeks back, Gena Corea, an author and reader of Resonant World, got in touch to offer an essay on her experiences in a Palestinian refugee camp 35 years ago this month.
Her story had a deep impact on me, and I plan to publish it in two parts over the next few days, because it surfaces a universal question in collective trauma work: What to do with our pain?
As Gena writes:
“Coming back to write about my experiences in Israel some 35 years later, I try to make sense of all this suffering, of people who had suffered unimaginable pain, persecution and loss in the Holocaust then, in turn, inflicting pain on others in a cycle that repeats endlessly down through the generations.
“Knowing there is much more to it all than this, I am left wondering something about my own life:
“How can I be loyal to the suffering I experience in this world? By which I mean: How can I stay with my pain, not abandon it but instead feel it completely, utterly, to its last bitter dregs? Can I find a way to digest my pain so thoroughly that nothing remains to pass on, that the remnants of my pain, like fertilizer, even enrich fields where food can grow for others?”
I’m grateful to Gena for sharing her essay, which has been working in me as I’ve read and re-read it.
I’m also glad to be able to publish writing that speaks to the situation in Israel-Palestine far more eloquently than I could.
It used to be my job to report from the ground on conflicts in countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But I’ve encountered a muteness in myself in relation to the appalling events on and since October 7 that I struggle to explain, or resolve.
Though what they shared was almost indescribably painful, I felt I began to come into deeper relationship with the reality of the Israel-Hamas war on February 14, listening to Gabor Maté, Natalie Lyla Ginsberg, Sima Basel, and Sulaiman Khatib speak at a fundraiser for Médecins Sans Frontières. (Resonant World#66: Love and Grief, with Ros Watts and Gabor Maté).
In a different way, I felt Gena’s essay brought me into closer connection with Israel-Palestine, and I hope you’ll find it an equally rewarding read when Parts I and II are published in the next few days.
Live Event Next Month
I’m delighted to be participating in another fundraiser organised by Dr Rosalind Watts and her team at Acer Integration: Love and Grief in the Shadow of Psychedelic Narcissism, which will take place live online on Thursday, 23 May 2024 19:00-21:30 BST. Tickets here. I will be speaking about narcissism in the workplace in my capacity as creator of Toxic Workplace Survival Guy. Proceeds go to Heal Palestine.
A labour of love, Resonant World is written in the gaps between work I get paid to do, notably editing investigations at nonprofit climate news service DeSmog. It’s a huge boost when people become paid subscribers, and support of any amount affirms that my mission to support the global community of practitioners engaged in supporting people to integrate individual, inter-generational and collective trauma has value. Thank you!