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Never again has become shut the fuck up

My last 365 day trip around the sun is dominated by that shift. It's day 652 of the Gaza Genocide.


Another birthday just behind me. On a personal level I’ve renewed resolve around living life softer and harder, fresh perspectives and starting out as I mean to go on, this new year’s day of mine. I’m only partly successful. It’s still difficult and ultimately senseless to prioritise bed making and housework, like why give any priority to that stuff, when.


On 14 July Andrea Gibson died. I knew they were going to do that sooner than most of us, but it surprised me, and there they are, nearer and more prevalent than ever as they predicted, though in the way they are and in measure they couldn’t have guessed, despite their immense reader-follower base. For a long time my website held a line from them about choosing to live fully in the face of imminent but imprecisely timed dying. I thought there’d be time to post another line or two before that moment, but was mistaken. Their unoutdoable everything should deter people from trying to outdo them in tributes, but I’ve seen some efforts at that. Nah.


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[Calibrating Joy, acrylic paint on stretched canvas, 1020 x 1020 mm copyright solekart.com/Karen Sole]


Stardust and all that. Getting back to the garden seems the unlikeliest thing for humanity as we hit 652 days of the Gaza genocide. A genocide exceptional for its cruelty, transgressiveness, and effect on everyone, globally, among the contemporary catastrophes. The lie that people working together can create positive change is highlighted in constant live streams of unspeakable carnage, murder, Israeli perpetrators dancing on bodies, celebrating the death of Palestinians don’t get me started. In my lifetime, we the people took to the streets in our millions to stop US entry to Vietnam and Iraq to name just two of the hideous infractions of basic humanity and international law, and what happened? Nothing, niente, nada. The politicians carried on relentlessly lying, murdering, justifying, escaping The Hague. But we continue gathering, marching, protesting because we feel better moving beyond grief and rage to action, and mixing our exhale with that of people we trust feel as we do. It feels better if we get up stand up. We’ll keep doing it.


On a personal level, the 652 days have worn us down, though it seems almost Munchausen-ish to mention that in the face of the live streamed reality of life and so much suffering and death in Gaza. When I meet groups of familiar people we speak of poor sleeping: I believe the witnessing of the genocide causes this by contributing a huge weight of anxiety and grief. There are other signs of literal heart failure, too. We carry on, while we feel and see the disintegration of any moral sense among ‘world leaders’. It’s now illegal in the UK to hold a poster decrying genocide, or proclaiming Palestinian rights. But not in New Zealand.


Never again has become shut the fuck up.

But we don’t and won’t. And must not.


The anxiety is a lot about the world not falling apart so much as falling in with, protecting and enabling and arming the worst ideas, policies, and militarism. If you have peeked at my substack before, you’ll probably know that this is far from the first time I have mentioned the genocide. I wish something else was the foremost weight on my heart and mind. There are close rivals. They all intersect. but I can only mention the antidote to the despair: action, spending time with people who can hold sadness, so it becomes a human or universal pain, not a personal one. Shared trauma. It is not diminished by sharing, but becomes a little more bearable, even if it is actually unbearable, unspeakable, unthinkable.


In the same way each of us does, the world accumulates grief and trauma. The most recent is never over before the next crashes over us. That is clear, as we see the horrors of the Holocaust still rippling through generations of the perpetrators and the victims in equal measure and power. So too, the effects of the Nakba(s). And now, the tsunami that Israel created in 2023 is insistent, thrashing every shore. There is no way to avoid it.


But life insists on itself. Alongside the collective trauma, we find abundant joy and delight in the usual sustaining experiences. In my small orbit, babies born, (hello Alouette and Lily Mavi), exams passed (hello Emily), qualifications attained along with exciting work (hello Tahi and Clara). People travel and work and dance and sing and holiday, go to the gym, walk and run and swim. Kids climb trees, get cell phones, go to school. People fall in love. Luckily and miraculously I must say to all of that.

If we have nothing but each other we have so much. Andrea Gibson 13 August 1975 - 14 July 2025

Meanwhile, keep a watch on this.


We are stardust.

Thank you science. [Ref. Brian Cox, Neil de Grasse Tyson.]


We are golden.

We’re born that way.


We belong in our family system.

We really do.


Love flows in that system.

Yes, it does. It does.


Our trauma is stored in our cells.

No longer up for debate. [Ref.Dr Gabor Mate, Bessel van der Kolk]


We are resilient.

Or we wouldn’t be here now.


We can build more resilience.

The proof is all around us.


Factors that enhance resilience are well known.

Warm friendship. Staying fit. Eating well. Reading. Journaling. Thousands of therapeutic methods.


We’re all copping lots of trauma right now. We can work with that in constellations, too. If you would like to experience trauma and resilience informed therapy that works with multi-generations compassionately and pragmatically/phenomenologically, email, or message on my website, where you can also book a session directly. Other time zones i.e. not New Zealand, please contact me to arrange a time.





Karen Sole is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists, and of the International Systemic Constellations Association (isca-network.org), and a member of ANZCI, the Aotearoa New Zealand Constellation Incorporated. She took her first training from Yildiz Sethi yildizsethi.com of familyconstellations.com.au. Karen's profile can be found on the above organisational sites. She participates in monthly professional supervision, facilitator member constellations of ANZCI, ISCA, and informal international groups of experienced credentialed facilitators.

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