October & November: Polaroids
Resisting Compassion Fatigue
“No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity."
-Toni Morrison
A Note on Spring
Kambarang Season, Western Australia
It’s my sixth spring here but I’ve only ever seen two snakes, I tell my family back home. I still walk faster down by the river with the pram. The colours are still vivid before the summer heat parches and pales; before the desert mocks our striving from under hosepipe-watered grass blades. She was here first. No one can hold her back forever. These are not the springtime colours I know well, but it is colour, symphony, orchestra, all of it, all of us. There are wars far from us and wars within us and maybe survival for some or for one is seeing one million colours resting in the kambarang sun.
A Note for Myself [Compassion Fatigue]
You are finite. You are here and not there. Your body trembles with limitations. Your minutes are punctuated by limited heartbeats. Your feet are bound by borders. Your brain can only process so much information. You can’t be everywhere, and you can’t care about everything.
Today, you may only have enough strength to lift your grocery bags in and out of your car. Today, you might need to let the laundry pile up. Today, reading the news can wait. Today, your planet might need to shrink down to the walls of your own home. Today, you might need to rest in the grace of others.
Today could be a good day to remember how enormous the world is and how small you are. Our heartbeats cannot be hoarded but we will only have around 100,000 today. So, make your sandwich. Sun your eyelids. Drink a chocolate milkshake. Stretch your toes. Sew some buttons on an old shirt. Smell an orange. Take a breath, and then take another one.
Today is a good day to pray for the people you can’t hold and the places you can’t reach. It’s a good day to remember that there are experts and agencies and local organisations serving around the world with resilience and dedication.
There isn’t a single way to be generous. There are many ways to care. You don’t have to understand it all. You don’t have to care about it all. You can still can do tiny things with enormous love.
Tomorrow, the sun will rise without your help. Tomorrow, your empathy will not run dry. Tomorrow, your feet may travel a little further. Tomorrow, you can learn. Tomorrow, there will be more time. You are a helper, and so you will find a way to help, but today it’s enough to just look into the eyes of the people that you know.
Maybe it’s a good day to remember that courage has many, many faces and yours is also one of them.
A Note For My Son
I stitched your name into your daycare bag tonight as your eyelids curved close like two sliced moons, two spoons half filled with milk, sweet skin, my kin, may peace be yours and theirs, and theirs as you sleep. Outside your door, far from here but near bombs rattle homes into skeletons. I check on you more than I should, listening, stitching cotton words because I can’t sew peace or a baby’s breath together. All I can do now is make something, anything, to give you when you wake and the moon disappears into dawn.
Other things I’ve loved this month:
This poem gave me the shivers (‘Gethsemane’ Mary Oliver) because it reminded me that our human forgetfulness and frailty is a part of a bigger story beyond ourselves.
‘Write What You Don’t Know’ a substack post by
. Especially this: “Write your way into knowing something and then unknowing it and knowing something different.”Recommended by
, ‘s essay ‘Rewilding the Fairytale’ a captivating reflection on the stories that help us survive, “As a mother, I’m most interested in telling my children stories that will help them adapt and survive—through their relationships, their resourcefulness, their enchantments—on a damaged planet.”As always, I love hearing from you. Feel free to leave feedback, comments or reflections. Thank you for taking the time to read this little publication :)
Your writing is truly remarkable, Ella!
Thank you, Ella. You are a treasure.