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I’m in my own process of trying to find my way through this. My earlier attempts at activism were hampered by how I related to my own identity, which went something like this: I’m here as a white person to…
We are safe until we are not. We are never free of the fate of others–our kids in particular. Doomscrolling on the sidelines is not a solution in the slightest. I also know fatalism is not acceptable. Apathy is worse,…
We are safe until we are not. We are never free of the fate of others–our kids in particular. Doomscrolling on the sidelines is not a solution in the slightest. I also know fatalism is not acceptable. Apathy is worse,…
The screen reflected back not just environmental catastrophe but my own complicity in the systems that perpetuate it. My car keys sat heavy in my pocket. The plastic water bottle on my desk suddenly felt like an accusation. In that…
Having ambition and drive is the usual thing to have in Aleppo. My name is Ammar and I am part of this culture.
It’s when you leave your inner self and move into the unknown; it’s when you are forced to flee from your awareness, from your assets, from yourself, to move as a physical creature and start to find any place or…
I have not had the luxury to mourn fully, to scream, to collapse under the weight of it all. Every time I feel the pull to surrender, to collapse under the immense weight of my grief and exhaustion, I remind…
This collapse of the boundary between inside and outside, which induces in the spectator a sense of profound spatial disorientation, is paradigmatic of the collapse of the parameters that sustain a basic sense of reality in experiences of catastrophe. In…
This is an argument based on faith that there is right and wrong—and that at some point things will be different. Faith that no occupation lasts forever, oppressed people eventually reach independence, and justice will prevail. Faith is hard to…
I understand my subliminal acknowledgment of this absence as the source of my uncontainable sadness when I look at his image. I recognize the seed of that absence in my younger self as well, when in the grip of my…
[…] The interesting thing about dementia is that there are those moments of clarity, where the afflicted person comes to life with all the vitality of the past. It is so short, like the blink of an eye.
[…] Many of us recognized the need to unblinkingly face the people we kill by our complicity in a racist system, a system that could make such an unabashed murder possible. Many of us started a long-overdue process of mourning…
[…] Watching the rituals of fascism, these people can see what the Leader does not want to be seen. They can look at him and through him. Their eyes seem to be everywhere. In the United States, we can sense…
The story of Afghanistan, my young women informants have taught me, is yet more complicated even than a battle between communism, democracy, and Islamic forces or a battle over women’s position in society. Stories upon stories, I have learned, compose…
[…] In my dream, a vampirish presence is approaching fast to feed on me. It dawns on me that this is an unconscious representation of those for whom my heart bleeds. On waking up, shame replaces terror. Besides one’s identification…
Seeing and being seen are also obviously essential to individuals. They form a part of the psychopathologies addressed in psychoanalytic treatments, ranging from a need to be invisible to a need always to be seen. Pointing out the similarities between…
Reflecting on the moment, this wasn’t simply the first time I was more honest with a client; it was the first time I was more honest with myself. These thoughts had been brewing for some time, but I had never…
I grew up in the blue state of Rhode Island, where my father was active in local Democratic politics. I voted mostly for Democrats but registered as an Independent. While I never missed voting in a presidential election, I didn’t…
Inside and outside of sessions, I am a speaker of different languages. The slang of Bronx classrooms and Castle Hill housing projects spices my English, and a New York accent peppers my sentences. For clinicians unversed in the lexicon of…
