Pause, breathe and step back onto the fray

My emotions are a jumble.

I watched myself in the surf this morning, as tears surfaced. The requirement for release clearly evident.

I watched my frustration peak as I struggled to catch a wave. 

I noticed how I loaded this frustration on me, my fault, my inability. I went back to that old mantra – what is wrong with me?

Hello, old friend. Here you are. Back when I am vulnerable. My beat myself up stick. 

You probably know the one.  

It is code for exhaustion. Code for a need to stop. 

Everything. 

Yet that is not possible right now. A few more weeks. One foot in front of the other.

Christmas wedged in between. When I would rather retreat to an empty beach.

I had to turn off the news. I noticed my rage trigger. Rage. Rage. At the injustice of the plea to recognise and remember the names of people senselessly slaughtered on Bondi Beach, names that should be remembered, while 70,000 dead people go nameless and forgotten. I abhor both forms of violence. I grieve for them all. Yet the asymmetry of grief leaves me broken at our absence of humanity for a collective group of people slaughtered in such large numbers, too many to remember by name. Too, too many.

I rage at the political weaponisation of this event – weaponisation that will only increase the division. The PR campaign has already been lost. The world cannot watch a live-streamed genocide and become aware of settler colonisation and remain neutral. 

I cannot listen to it anymore. The hypocrisy is sickening. 

Life, this gorgeous, difficult, challenging, beautiful thing. Right now asking more than I feel I can give. Yet, as I write, I think of those people in Palestine, children without limbs or parents, living in flooded tents. I think of those pushed to the margins across the world by greed and empire. My emotional load doesn’t even register. 

One step in front of the other. Feel the emotions. Let them move through me. 

I have more to give. That is the way of it, is it not? 

Pause, breathe and step back onto the fray.

Photo Taken October 25th 2025, Article published December 18th 2025