My Open Broken Heart

“We can’t selectively numb emotion. Numb the dark and you numb the light.”

– Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

They tell me to try a little harder to care a little less.

Close that article to keep the truth out close the borders to keep those in need out close the windows to keep the smoke out close your heart to keep the pain out.

After all, you can’t save the world.

But what they don’t tell me is… how?

How do I remain unscathed by the suffering of the people I love the most? Do I look away from the violence inflicted upon my trans friends for simply being who they are? Do I ignore the stigma, politics and policy that threatens the livelihoods and lives of sex workers, myself included? Do I close my ears to the cries of my indigenous friends as they share their stories of intergenerational trauma, genocide and deep, heartbreaking, all-consuming grief?

How do I keep myself from noticing that the seasons don’t smell the same anymore? How do I stop myself from this feeling in my bones like they are melting along with the vanished glaciers of Greenland? How can I get the feeling of trauma and incomparable horror out of my nervous system when a few short months back, this country was on fire and horizon lines vanished as the air was thick with toxic smoke? How can I rid myself of the heaviness of grief that I feel for the  3 billion animal lives lost and the forests still silent, blackened and dead? How can I shut off when I’m shut inside by a global pandemic that is killing so many of the world’s most vulnerable people? How can I stop feeling sickness in my stomach and sorrow in my heart when I know the tortured animal flesh being sold around me and the guilt when I remember my own part in this unforgivable horror?

Why is their answer to shut off? Why is their answer to go inwards and insulate? Isn’t that kind of the whole damn problem? Aren’t we all related? Interconnected? Shouldn’t we keep our hearts open? When the world is full of so much immensity of pain, is it wrong, somehow obscene, to have a broken heart?

I understand the need to practice rest, to switch off for the night, to regulate how much horror we take in on a daily basis. I know how news cycles and social media works and I understand the trauma of consuming too much violence and darkness in a day. I understand the importance of tending to your family, to your home, to your garden and of being a light of hope and health to nourish, nurture and change what is within your power to change.

But the horror is here on the doorsteps of all of us, the horror is in the flocks of parrots now living in the city because they ran out of habitat in fire scorched regions, the horror is in the asylum seekers being held prisoner in hotel rooms on Bell St, the horror is in the cheap clothing I wear that was made by the hands of slaves, the horror is in my loved one who chose unemployment over being forced to work “necessary” retail during a global pandemic, the horror is in every aspect of our complex, intertwined lives and the devastating legacies and histories of our ancestors, colonisers and oppressors.

So I reject the suggestion that my caring is the problem. I reject the notion that I need to build walls around my heart. The world is on fire and I reject the conclusion that my attitude is the problem.

I believe with a passion that the only hope we have for salvation is if we realise we are all profoundly and deeply interconnected. Pain is universal, joy is universal. Remaining open to the darkness in the world will not always make me happy but numbing myself to the darkness of the world will definitely rob me of any chance at true joy. I walk this life with my chest cracked open and though this lets a lot of darkness inside, it also brings me experiences of the sort of deep love, joy, wonder and awe that can only come about from a radical state of softness and openness.

I’m scared, a lot. My heart is broken, permanently. But I refuse to close my heart because my heart is my moral compass, my guide, it warns me of darkness and compels me toward the light. My heart breaks with the world but instead of feeling that I should keep myself together, continue to function and thrive as an Instagram image of wellness, a bastion of happy and wholesome perfection I’m going to speak my truth and strive to not succumb to shame.

I am sick. My heart is sick. My mind is sick. This sickness is a response to the unhealthy, toxic, oppressive systems that are doing violence to us all. It is not my job to meditate my way into happiness, though I do meditate as a survival strategy. I am no longer going to deny myself my right to speak my truth to which I am rightfully entitled: Grief, horror, fear, tears, sorrow, rage. These emotions speak to the truth of the world we are in and these emotions galvanise me towards seeking real change, towards imagining a better tomorrow, towards fighting for a better tomorrow. Fully allowing myself to integrate these emotions without shame is helping me to discover something that I’ve always struggled with before…

Hope. Fragile. Precious. Utterly necessary. Hope.

So no longer will I allow myself to be shamed into silence because the intensity of my emotions makes people uncomfortable. We are in a climate emergency, the very existence of our species is at risk, the jungles and coral reefs and ecosystems of my childhood daydreams and adventures are vanishing, the peoples and cultures I once dreamed of visiting and knowing are suffering, the future of the children I know is terrifying and that is something which my heart cannot ignore.

My broken heart remains open and will do so until the day I die. Perhaps it is my weakness. Perhaps it’s also my strength.

“We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.”

― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

Climate Crisis Tips

I’ve not had much time for writing lately but I’ve been putting a lot of art on my website jngaio.com and making videos such as the one above exploring some of my anxieties surrounding the climate crisis through clowning.

If the land is sick, you are sick.

I just read this article: ‘If the land is sick, you are sick’: An Aboriginal approach to mental health in times of drought.

It made me think…

We were camping in outback NSW recently and the signs of drought were everywhere. The last time I’d been there, the land was abundant with strange and fascinating wildlife, lizards, butterflies, birds and plants I’d never seen before. Now it was just dust and underneath the worryingly dried out trees, I found the picked over corpses of baby kangaroos and baby emus.

I felt the reality of the climate crisis, I saw that we are truly losing these incredible treasures to the devastating affects of global warming. I thought about how Aboriginal Australians have been on this land for over 50,000 years, I thought of the book “Dark Emu” which demonstrates overwhelming evidence of how they had sophisticated agricultural practices that once made this land a fertile and abundant place and how in such a devastatingly short place of time, colonialism and Western agriculture devastated the land.

Not only were their people raped and murdered, not only was their culture silenced but the carefully tilled soil on their land was stomped down into compacted clay by the hooves of imported livestock, the grasses they made bread with were devoured… in a horrifically short space of time, colonialism and cultural imperialism transformed their verdant, fertile lands into something that was so much less.

And it keeps happening. They keep losing their lands because of our ancestors and because of us. Because of our mismanagement of the land our ancestors stole.

There has been a national crisis of Aboriginal suicides, over this summer, eight Aboriginal children took their own lives. Eight. Eight children killed themselves. Doesn’t this just make your heart break? Doesn’t this make your want to break down in full body sobbing? What drives children to such hopeless despair that they take an action that ends their own lives?

As I walked around the outback, there was dust, bones and silence. Too much silence. The climate crisis is not only taking it’s toll on the beautiful natural world around us but also the people least responsible for it happening. Taking action, demanding better from our politicians, our business leaders and ourselves… it’s our responsibility not just for the sake our our natural world and ourselves, but something we must admit that is a dark debt we owe as part of our colonial inheritance.

I love this country. I’ve lived here my entire adult life and I feel it in my bloodstream as much as my home of Aotearoa New Zealand, I also acutely feel my privilege and the understanding that for Indigenous and underprivileged people around the world, the affects of climate change are already here and they are utterly devastating.

as long as we breathe

While the ice is melting
and our lands are burning
and our forests are dying
and our oceans are choking

the fight for hope
is daily
the fight for life
is dire

When we were young my love
our old age was assumed
now I look at your face my love
and my heart fills with fear

hold on to my hand my love
the only truth is change
hold on to this life my love
as long as we breathe… we try