TW: From the mother in me, for all the mothers, a lament. This post contains photos of my gorgeous lost child. It also contains one of a dead Palestinian girl. I'm dancing with motherhood and loss.
Gina, your words are a scalpel of truth, cutting through all illusion. You never look away. My daughter died alone at age 26. We broke down the door to find her already cold on the floor. I lay beside her weeping until the paramedics came, too late. Her juvenile diabetes had finally taken her. After a year of despair, I began to claw my way back into life. Like you, I was surrounded by the love of those who carried me through those dark months of anguish. I had the luxury of safety and comfort while I healed.
What happened in Israel on October 7 was an abomination. What’s happening in Gaza is inexcusably cruel and prolonged. Today I find myself teetering on the edge of the old abyss. Is there no bottom to human depravity? Who are we to allow this?
Wow, thank you Gina. This struck me so deeply... "see us all (me included) wrestling with the part of us that freezes into numbness when our empathy overloads."
Oh Gina, tears and heartache here once again as your writing hand reaches through all the bullshit and grabs my heart, pulling it out to show me my own beating, sacred flesh. My heart that cares, that doesn't look away, that knows the darkness and the pain and the wild fiery rage that protects innocence. Thank you, thank you, thank you 🙏❤️🙏
Thank you, Gina. Your words are so deeply powerful and rallying. We must not look away. Even as collective grief guts us and the force of strategic, mindless distraction claws at us. We must not look away.
Gina, thankyou for your words, for your lucidity, for naming what you see (and what you, we are a part of). For bringing language to that which leaves me dumbstruck.
Wow! Just wow. You with your great, big, beautiful heart are a gift to this world. I read your words and can finally understand how I feel. You make us be better. Thank you xx
Thank you Gina. Your writing is that of an artist and brought me to tears. I will never truly know the lived experience of Palestinian mothers whose children have been killed, but I share with them and with you the profound grief of having lost a child. You have the ability to carefully and skilfully convey what is, more often than not, beyond the ability of language to express. I too am unimpressed by the distractions of popular culture, but with the notoriety you have gained through Alone, it is something which you must negotiate. I hope you will be able to find some respite from the relentless demands on your time.
Thank you Gina for talking about the hard stuff, so beautifully and intelligently. Your post reminded me that while we may feel helpless, upset and outraged we (I!) need to take action. I’ve taken a look and things like subscribing to Amnesty International Australia, writing to politicians, and donating to trusted charities like UNICEF and others who are doing the hard work in Gaza can be a good place to start.
"To hold the body of someone you love after they have discarded it.." This is so beautiful and so true. Only those who have had this experience understand. I haven't lost a child, I haven't had one to lose, but I lost my wife 6 years ago and miss her every day.
Gina I ran into you at Ultra Violet on Saturday night and was so thrilled as I loved you in Alone and also in your writing that I did something I never do. I gave you a hug and told you your writing reminds of my wife's which it does.
Maybe you remember what we did - Barb and I used to publish Lesbians on the Loose back in the 90s when you were in Sydney, so maybe you read it. She went on to have a blog about her illness - emphysema - and so much more called The Departure Lounge.
I have to say too that that photo of the Palestinian girl is so shocking. But you're right, we can't look away. We have to witness. And maybe if enough of us witness, the world will learn that we are all humans and we need to get on with one another
(I am apologising in advance. I meant to leave a short comment. It just kept coming ... and while I wanted to cut it up, it took me over an hour to 'tap out' - because my hands aren't very good.
Then I decided that this was me, sending my frustration out into the Universe, so that my mind had room for newer thoughts.
Please feel free to ignore ...)
Thank-you, Gina.
You see ALL the victims ... and the difference between a People, a diaspora, and a State that enacts brutality in their name.
I've had too many discussions that begin with, "Israel needs to stop ...," only to be met with, "Does that mean that you are against Jews?" ... deep breath ... sometimes the question has been genuine, from someone who is uneducated in the difference, once from someone who didn't know the history of the modern State, the Country, at all. So, deep breath.
You can't expect to teach someone with anger, or with your frustration showing ... and you try to remember that you didn't learn any of this in school either, you learned it because you read books, and chose documentaries, the same way you learned all the other 'hidden' histories that don't make the curriculum. All, long before the social media came along and made "facts" of "opinions", because the opinion was shouted, and got enough 'likes,' so it must be true.
It needs to stop. It ALL needs to stop. Israel planned it's recent attack, as you said, 'while no-one was watching,' the same way Russia annexed Crimea while it was hosting the Sochi Paralympics. And the way it uses the cover of inexplicable horror of what is happening in Gaza, to continue it's unjust war upon Ukraine.
"Unjust war." The mind rebels against such an insane combination of words - because concentrating on words is less painful than the horror that seems to be everywhere.
Demanding that the political-entity-that-is-Israel stop murdering innocent children, and women; that the corrupt, war monger - that somehow lead the country, despite his crimes - step down/be made politically impotent - doesn't make you 'anti-Jewish.'
Hoping, demonstrating, speaking out for the innocent Palestinians being slaughtered in Gaza, doesn't make you 'pro-the-political-entity-that is-Hamas.'
Watching the unrelenting horror (of both wars) from afar, is empathetically exhausting, and a constant reminder of how very little WE can do, of how little power we have in the world; I don't pretend for a second to understand the horror that millions of people are experiencing ... right now ... as I laboriously tap out this comment, this get-it-out-of-my-head so that there's room for other things ...
It all just ... Needs. To. Stop.
Enough ... no-one believes that wanton murder of innocent children is 'just' ... no-one. Surely, not many people believe that Israel cares about the hostages, as they've done a pretty good job of killing them themselves.
The 7th of October was brutal, criminal, and wrong, by ANY standard, but murdering more than 12 000 children, and 20 000 trapped, penned in people who had nothing to do with the original attack? That is the opposite of "Justice."
"Never again," meant, 'to ANYONE, anywhere.' And if any country should have lived that statement, it should have been Israel.
They all rely on the creeping numbness that slowly replaces the horror - too much 'inhumanity,' too many stories and images that break your heart and hurt your soul ... finally overwhelmed by your complete and utter inability to make a material difference.
We don't need to wait for the death that Climate Change will ultimately bring us; we are far too good at destroying each other right now.
thank you for your unflinching way of telling life as it is, deep, painful, joyful, helpless, truthful; confronting who we are with what is "out there" that we don't want to be a part of, not fluffy, real, solid, something I can feel and be part of.
It is a difficult time for people with a conscientious who cannot hide behind TV programs and superficial existence.
I have no TV, thank God, but of course, is Internet that much better?
Only nature soothes me 100 percent.
Your emails are privileged in my inbox, I welcome your brand of sanity into my ever-receding circle of life.
Gina, your words are a scalpel of truth, cutting through all illusion. You never look away. My daughter died alone at age 26. We broke down the door to find her already cold on the floor. I lay beside her weeping until the paramedics came, too late. Her juvenile diabetes had finally taken her. After a year of despair, I began to claw my way back into life. Like you, I was surrounded by the love of those who carried me through those dark months of anguish. I had the luxury of safety and comfort while I healed.
What happened in Israel on October 7 was an abomination. What’s happening in Gaza is inexcusably cruel and prolonged. Today I find myself teetering on the edge of the old abyss. Is there no bottom to human depravity? Who are we to allow this?
Wow, thank you Gina. This struck me so deeply... "see us all (me included) wrestling with the part of us that freezes into numbness when our empathy overloads."
Oh Gina, tears and heartache here once again as your writing hand reaches through all the bullshit and grabs my heart, pulling it out to show me my own beating, sacred flesh. My heart that cares, that doesn't look away, that knows the darkness and the pain and the wild fiery rage that protects innocence. Thank you, thank you, thank you 🙏❤️🙏
Thank you, Gina. Your words are so deeply powerful and rallying. We must not look away. Even as collective grief guts us and the force of strategic, mindless distraction claws at us. We must not look away.
Thank you, Gina. Utterly harrowing. If only our politicians had the same moral compass as you.
Gina, thankyou for your words, for your lucidity, for naming what you see (and what you, we are a part of). For bringing language to that which leaves me dumbstruck.
Wow! Just wow. You with your great, big, beautiful heart are a gift to this world. I read your words and can finally understand how I feel. You make us be better. Thank you xx
Thank you Gina. Your writing is that of an artist and brought me to tears. I will never truly know the lived experience of Palestinian mothers whose children have been killed, but I share with them and with you the profound grief of having lost a child. You have the ability to carefully and skilfully convey what is, more often than not, beyond the ability of language to express. I too am unimpressed by the distractions of popular culture, but with the notoriety you have gained through Alone, it is something which you must negotiate. I hope you will be able to find some respite from the relentless demands on your time.
Thank you Gina for talking about the hard stuff, so beautifully and intelligently. Your post reminded me that while we may feel helpless, upset and outraged we (I!) need to take action. I’ve taken a look and things like subscribing to Amnesty International Australia, writing to politicians, and donating to trusted charities like UNICEF and others who are doing the hard work in Gaza can be a good place to start.
"To hold the body of someone you love after they have discarded it.." This is so beautiful and so true. Only those who have had this experience understand. I haven't lost a child, I haven't had one to lose, but I lost my wife 6 years ago and miss her every day.
Gina I ran into you at Ultra Violet on Saturday night and was so thrilled as I loved you in Alone and also in your writing that I did something I never do. I gave you a hug and told you your writing reminds of my wife's which it does.
Maybe you remember what we did - Barb and I used to publish Lesbians on the Loose back in the 90s when you were in Sydney, so maybe you read it. She went on to have a blog about her illness - emphysema - and so much more called The Departure Lounge.
I have to say too that that photo of the Palestinian girl is so shocking. But you're right, we can't look away. We have to witness. And maybe if enough of us witness, the world will learn that we are all humans and we need to get on with one another
What have we created- indeed. How do we dig ourselves out of this downward spiral? How did we let it all get so dark?
(I am apologising in advance. I meant to leave a short comment. It just kept coming ... and while I wanted to cut it up, it took me over an hour to 'tap out' - because my hands aren't very good.
Then I decided that this was me, sending my frustration out into the Universe, so that my mind had room for newer thoughts.
Please feel free to ignore ...)
Thank-you, Gina.
You see ALL the victims ... and the difference between a People, a diaspora, and a State that enacts brutality in their name.
I've had too many discussions that begin with, "Israel needs to stop ...," only to be met with, "Does that mean that you are against Jews?" ... deep breath ... sometimes the question has been genuine, from someone who is uneducated in the difference, once from someone who didn't know the history of the modern State, the Country, at all. So, deep breath.
You can't expect to teach someone with anger, or with your frustration showing ... and you try to remember that you didn't learn any of this in school either, you learned it because you read books, and chose documentaries, the same way you learned all the other 'hidden' histories that don't make the curriculum. All, long before the social media came along and made "facts" of "opinions", because the opinion was shouted, and got enough 'likes,' so it must be true.
It needs to stop. It ALL needs to stop. Israel planned it's recent attack, as you said, 'while no-one was watching,' the same way Russia annexed Crimea while it was hosting the Sochi Paralympics. And the way it uses the cover of inexplicable horror of what is happening in Gaza, to continue it's unjust war upon Ukraine.
"Unjust war." The mind rebels against such an insane combination of words - because concentrating on words is less painful than the horror that seems to be everywhere.
Demanding that the political-entity-that-is-Israel stop murdering innocent children, and women; that the corrupt, war monger - that somehow lead the country, despite his crimes - step down/be made politically impotent - doesn't make you 'anti-Jewish.'
Hoping, demonstrating, speaking out for the innocent Palestinians being slaughtered in Gaza, doesn't make you 'pro-the-political-entity-that is-Hamas.'
Watching the unrelenting horror (of both wars) from afar, is empathetically exhausting, and a constant reminder of how very little WE can do, of how little power we have in the world; I don't pretend for a second to understand the horror that millions of people are experiencing ... right now ... as I laboriously tap out this comment, this get-it-out-of-my-head so that there's room for other things ...
It all just ... Needs. To. Stop.
Enough ... no-one believes that wanton murder of innocent children is 'just' ... no-one. Surely, not many people believe that Israel cares about the hostages, as they've done a pretty good job of killing them themselves.
The 7th of October was brutal, criminal, and wrong, by ANY standard, but murdering more than 12 000 children, and 20 000 trapped, penned in people who had nothing to do with the original attack? That is the opposite of "Justice."
"Never again," meant, 'to ANYONE, anywhere.' And if any country should have lived that statement, it should have been Israel.
They all rely on the creeping numbness that slowly replaces the horror - too much 'inhumanity,' too many stories and images that break your heart and hurt your soul ... finally overwhelmed by your complete and utter inability to make a material difference.
We don't need to wait for the death that Climate Change will ultimately bring us; we are far too good at destroying each other right now.
thank you for your unflinching way of telling life as it is, deep, painful, joyful, helpless, truthful; confronting who we are with what is "out there" that we don't want to be a part of, not fluffy, real, solid, something I can feel and be part of.
It is a difficult time for people with a conscientious who cannot hide behind TV programs and superficial existence.
I have no TV, thank God, but of course, is Internet that much better?
Only nature soothes me 100 percent.
Your emails are privileged in my inbox, I welcome your brand of sanity into my ever-receding circle of life.