With the media currently focusing heavily on war in the Middle East, it seems to me there’s no escape. Even if you try to avoid the news, you can’t, unless you hibernate behind padlocked doors.
Even if you don’t want to, you’re going to see something or hear something that pulls you in. A child pulled from the rubble, a mother wailing, or smoke over a skyline that once held ordinary life, just like yours.
War has a way of getting through to us and placing grief straight into our nervous systems. And for many thoughtful, sensitive women, especially those of us who’ve spent years cultivating awareness and compassion, the result’s usually the same.
“I feel heartbroken… and totally powerless!”
The war in the Middle East, like so many conflicts before it, exposes a painful truth about the modern world. We can witness immense suffering in real time, yet have no direct influence over the forces that created it, over the war mongers!
This can leave you suspended in a strange emotional experience… part grief, part rage, part helplessness.
Many women I work with tell me they even feel guilty for continuing with ordinary life while others are living through unimaginable devastation. They question whether to try to avoid the news or to keep bearing witness.
But there’s a deep misunderstanding here…
Early on in my training, I would spend our group therapy sessions crying my eyes out. By the end of the first year, I realised I was crying for all the members of my group who, at that stage, were unable to express their pain.
A part of me was tuned into the collective pain, but eventually, I learned not to let it take me over. In the same way…
Your role isn’t to carry the weight of the world’s suffering in your body.
Empathy is sacred. But when it becomes overwhelming, it doesn’t serve those suffering or, indeed, you.
What you can do is something smaller and more profound, and that’s the way you live your own life in the presence of suffering.
You can refuse to numb out and stay human in a world that often rewards disconnection. You can help raise the next generation, lead conversations, and make choices rooted in compassion rather than fear or hatred.
You can support humanitarian organisations doing work on the ground, stay informed without drowning in the news, and you can hold space for grief without letting despair define you.
Most of all, you can tend to the small, living circle of influence around you… your family, friends and community.
History isn’t only shaped by governments and armies. It’s also shaped by the countless quiet decisions of ordinary people, like you and me, choosing humanity again and again… and again!
Even now, woman…
Especially now!
Love and wild warm wishes…
For women who’ve reached, “There has to be more to life!”
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