The last year was rough. And no- nothing significant happened to me. I didn’t lose my job or get arrested or was diagnosed with a life threatening illness. I am healthy, surrounded by family and am grateful for the love my friends have for me.

And nonetheless every moment of happiness, every genuine connection I’ve made, every selfie I have taken with my husband and children, and every accomplishment is stained by the unprocessed grief that has kept my psyche in limbo for the past two years.

There was no cathartic realization, no grand funeral procession, no monument, no conclusion to the endless pain and wretchedness that Palestinians have felt and continue to feel throughout this horror.

The genocide and massacres have not stopped. A ceasefire was clearly a facade, a cover for the continued eradication of the Palestinian people with no media coverage, and to distract attention away from the obvious encroachment and theft of more and more Palestinian land.

Now that humanitarian aid groups will be banned from operating inside Gaza, we can anticipate the continued suffocation of the Palestinian people to be done in silence away from the cameras and away from the media.

I guess that’s how a majority of genocides operate: the bad guys can butcher and raze the people and their land, dictate the terms of their existence, claim the war is over and continue to butcher and raze the land and its people even more. The survivors and their loved ones are left yelling into an endless void for justice and liberation.

Justice and liberation.

Liberation and justice.

Words when repeated lose its meaning. Facts when repeated over and over lose its meaning. Grief when pondered over as facts instead of felt also lose its meaning.

I have repeated throughout these two years about those I love that I have lost, such as Sama. I am able to say her name and repeat that it is Israel who murdered her, and crushed her small body under the brute force of bombs and cement. I am able to type out that her 16 year old brother and dear mother was among those who were killed. I am even able to say that I spoke to Sama the day before and told her about my newborn baby.

I am able to tell this story and garner sympathy and the response of “I’m sorry” also means and feels like nothing.

I recently told someone that the German state, “does not even allow us to grieve.”

They responded that this doesn’t make much sense. “Grief is something you feel. How can a state dictate how you feel?”

They were right in the end.

In our attempt to fight for our loved ones’ memories, we have failed to feel their absence. We have failed to feel their impact. We have failed to memorialize their existence, and instead demanded nation states and a selfish evil world order to do so for us.

What I meant to say before, was because of the intensity of us fighting, we have failed to reflect on why we' are fighting Our emotions stunted and ability to feel clouded, we have desensitized ourselves to Palestinian suffering because of our own suffering.

I think of the political prisoners in the UK currently. I think of the Palestine Action political prisoners and their bravery and resilience. I think of their current resistance on hunger strike and I think of the strength their minds must have to fight for not only their own survival but for the survival of the cause itself.

I always believed that after a ceasefire in Gaza was announced, people will learn the true extent of Israel crimes these last two years. They will learn about all the stories that were not told and about the names that were forever buried. Maybe those that were lost would be found again…

But I was wrong. There is no closure. There is no comfort on the day after. There is only more pain. And 2025 taught me to stop being so naïve, but also taught me that in 2026 my goal will be to finally process all that happened.

It is a privilege to pause and reflect.

It is idiocy not to try.