i’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, i love you.

releasing 2024 with love for its contradictions

In 2017, a few months after I moved to Palestine, I crossed paths with a Palestinian musician in London. We had a beautiful, fleeting chemistry. In one of our exchanges, he said to me without explanation: Love was born in Palestine. It’s a saying that has lingered in my mind for years, one I return to often and feel an intuitive affirmation that what he said is truth.

When I returned to the US in 2021 after five years in Palestine, I felt lost. Something along the lines of reverse culture shock combined with an unshakeable what now feeling. The adjustment from a job that was equal parts demanding and rewarding to a restful sabbatical was jarring. But it was more than that—the disorientation was something intangible, something akin to a sudden absence of love.

Some things are defined by their absence. The Hirshhorn Museum in DC.

I reached for bell hooks’ All About Love. I knew that to begin processing my experience in Palestine, I would have to expand my definition and understanding of love. I wrote in the margins of the book, underlined key sections, and transcribed some passages onto notecards. Thinking about love as a choice and practice, as devotion to community and land, rather than a mere feeling—all of it helped me understand the bond that I developed with Palestine, and by extension, my sense of self.

Wisdom from All About Love continues to live rent free in my head. Lately, the description of love as the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth has been top of mind. As I reflect on 2024, a year where I was straight up diagnosed with a nervous breakdown and post-traumatic stress, I think about how the long and laborious work of recovery is a process of spiritual growth.

Witnessing a live-streamed genocide, one that I am intimately intertwined with, shattered my heart and soul. The grief of watching an annihilation of a people and place so dear to me became overwhelming and unbearable. Eventually I drowned in it. I look back on an essay I wrote exactly six months ago on June 27th, in the height of my breakdown, where I said:

I know that the world is bending towards liberation, but the pain of getting there has become unbearable for me. At least for now.

Then there are the personal losses — those I have pushed away and those who have pushed me away. Micro griefs compounded with macro griefs. It’s all too much.

Today feels like a day where I can’t outrun my grief anymore. All the outlets I poured myself into have dried up. I’ve lost the energy to post on social media, or to keep up with organizing, to stay on top of the news and developments, to strategize and implement. I can see now the ways I’ve been unhealthily coping—overworking, overindulging, undernourishing, and trauma bonding. I can see now the ways that the trauma I thought I was managing has been slowly creeping its way into my thoughts, behaviors, relationships, and self perception.

Six months later, I am somewhere else. The grief is just as large, just as heavy. But what’s different now is that I am strong enough to hold it—I have grown bigger than my grief.

My heart hurts just as much when I look towards Gaza and see images of frozen babies who did not survive a wintery night in a tent, or another five journalists deliberately assassinated, or corpses in the streets being gnawed on by stray dogs, denied the right to a dignified burial. My anger is just as searing when I hear elected officials continue to give cover to Israel’s crimes, despite leading human rights institutions like Amnesty International declaring this assault on Gaza as a clear act of genocide. My disgust is just as bitter when I see the world carry on like nothing is amiss.

My reactions and response to the ugliness, terror, and hypocrisy of this world remains the same. What’s changed is me—my disposition, my faith, my power. My maturing ability to distinguish between cynicism versus realism, idealism versus hope. The space I’ve created for levity, knowing that moments of lightness and laughter are not betrayal. What’s changed is knowing when to be unwavering in my principles and when to be tender with the nuances of the human experience.

A moment of wonder in an afternoon to myself at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain.

I end this year feeling grounded in my ability to hold our world’s contradictions. I am horrified by this terrible world, and enchanted by its limitless beauty. I am appalled by the world’s silence on Gaza, and deeply inspired by the human capacity for collective good. I am humbled by how little I can do to make a difference in this world, and galvanized to stretch the limits of my power and influence. I am terrified for the future, and enamored by its promise.

The ability to hold these discomforts, to make a home in the grey area and bend towards love and compassion like a vine seeking sunlight—this is spiritual growth. Holding strong in my commitment to Palestine through its deepest pain has midwifed this spiritual growth. This is love. True, true love. And, for me, it was born in Palestine.

Loving Palestine in its days of relative peace to its era of brutal annihilation has made me who I am. To survive my devastation this year, I was forced to learn self care, self love, and self compassion. I learned to forgive those I naively thought could save me from my pain. I learned to forgive myself for my moments of terrible weakness.

Loving Palestine has forced a strength I never knew was possible for me. Letting my heart shatter for Palestine allowed it to be re-assembled into something bigger, something stronger. I leave this year focused, determined, and resolute in my worldview—clear on the role I can play to push us towards something better, clear on the roles for others to play, and clear on what’s left to a higher power to hold. I leave this year more intact than ever not in spite of my devotion to Palestine, but because of it.

Love was born in Palestine and we are all failing to protect it. The love that goes beyond human bonds, the love that connects us to earth and the cosmos. The love that nurtures spiritual growth, the kind that allows us to be humble and strong enough to hold our world’s paradoxes. Love was born in Palestine and I’ll fill the pages of a book some day soon to show you what I mean.

Gaza’s miraculous coast.

We are all so indebted to Palestine. I am so indebted to Palestine. I am devastated by 2024. I am amazed by 2024. Borrowing words from my friend and teacher Chetna from her year-end reflection, my parting words to 2024—and forever words to Palestine—are this:

I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.

If we parted ways this year over Gaza, good riddance. If you persisted with me this year—witnessed me in the hardest year of my life—held me, loved me, motivated me, challenged me, were silly with me, even hurt or disappointed me:

I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.

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I had the lovely privilege to discuss life, creativity, and Palestine with my friend Besan Abu-Joudeh on her podcast. Check out the episode here: