Love will happen

Today, I split wide open

Author’s Note: References to gun violence, genocide, child loss, fascism and more. Proceed with care and support.

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Last night, I lay in bed with my son, our nighttime ritual.

A loud noise came from outside. Perhaps it was a car backfiring or maybe a garbage can falling over with the wind. I barely took notice.

“Was that a gun shot?” My child’s voice pierces my thoughts.

“No,” I say, strongly, on instinct.

He calls me on my feigned certainty.

“Well, how do you know?”

“It didn’t sound like one,” I lie through my teeth. Truth be told, I barely registered the sound.

“How do you know what one sounds like? Have you heard one before?”

This kid! He’s always known bullshit when he hears it. “From movies and TV shows. Never in real life,” I admit.

“Probably just a car or something,” he says, scanning my face. I can see he’s trying to rationalize to himself. “Right?”

“Right.” I give him a squeeze.

I feel the anxiety of a parent who feels they might be “doing it wrong.” (So, all parents?)

“But it’s always good to listen to your instincts and be curious,” I say. A lukewarm remark meant to assuage my worry that I’m making him think the world is all butterflies and rainbows, whilst simultaneously conscious I don’t want to put too much on his already worried brain before it’s time to sleep.

He seems satisfied by where we land and rolls over, my arm draped on his shoulder.

As we lay, side by side, I think about what I read earlier that day.

A survivor (Jessica Chapnik Kahn) from the Bondi Beach massacre wrote a hauntingly heart-breaking reflection of her experience, laying atop her child. It can be found in her Facebook post, and I’ve pasted sections of it below.

(Author’s Note: Please proceed with care and space for processing.)

…But the gunshots came closer and closer, and there was no mistaking it. This was a massacre. And it dawned on me that I was no longer preparing to survive. I was preparing for how I wanted to die, for where I wanted my thoughts to rest in my final moments.

In the meantime, I had been so obsessed with shielding my daughter, not having a single inch of her body exposed, that I had been pressing down on her with my full body weight. I suddenly realised she was not moving at all. At least ten minutes had passed since I had lain on top of her. I thought I had suffocated her. Then I felt her tiny sob from underneath me, like a small miraculous rumble from the earth, and it impelled me to speak loud and clear into her ear the only words that came to my mind:

Go inside yourself, my darling. Go into your heart, where all the love is. Stay there, my baby. Stay there.

I did not want her to die in the hell out there. I did not want her to die with the screams and the wailing and the shots and the sirens and the flying bits of flesh and bone that were spraying over us. I wanted her to die from the inside, in the magnificence of who she was, in the world of her choosing. No one could rip that place away from here.

And then, after an eternity, by some stroke of miracle, we survived.

I speak to you now, to myself, as I spoke to my babe on Sunday. Stay there, friends. In your hearts. It will carry us to where we have always wanted to go. To love.

Back in bed with an entire universe wrapped in my arms, my breath catches in my throat once again as I think of her words. I feel the blood drain from my face and my legs feel like they’re beginning to numb as another thought arises, the cruel reality: he’s getting bigger, taller.

And I can’t quite cover him fully anymore.

I reposition myself, imagining a scenario where I need to lay on top of him to keep a bullet from entering his body. Where would I put my arm? Would it be better to lay my leg here or here?

And then, the nearly unthinkable: what would I whisper into his ear?

I suppress a sob.

12.19.25 Me trying to pull myself together after sobbing in my car as the rain falls.

And here, now, I do the same.

These words are excruciating to write.

They are probably uncomfortable to read.

But they are truth.

They are what has been done to us.

This is what has been done to us.

And I am so sad.

And I am so heartbroken.

And I am so angry.

So fucking angry.

Enraged.

As the rain falls here, we keep going. Knowing full well that there is a heavier winter rainstorm happening this moment in the Levant. It’s destroying last vestiges of Gaza’s tents and homes. (I’ve seen the pictures and videos with my own eyes and don’t tell me I haven’t and then tell me again why you’re trying to hide them from me.)

Yet, the droplets on my windshield are quickly wiped away.

And with them a reminder that “ceasefire” is a hollow word.

Enraged.

I am here looking at a photo of my kid in a Grinch sweater while parents in Gaza cradle their children in bloodied sheets. I’ll see those photos later.

Enraged.

I know the name Matilda Bee, a soul slain while celebrating a ritual of her faith at Bondi Beach. I shouldn’t know the name of this precious child, the face of this precious child. Because why would I ever, ever know the name and face of a child growing up to live a beautiful life in Australia? I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t.

Enraged.

My heart clenches as I light my menorah each night. I push it into the window to display it, suppressing the need to feel indignant when all I want to feel is love.

Enraged.

I have been made to question my own humanity.

For I continue to live—seek and experience joy, even—while others perish. While others mourn.

Enraged.

Bawling my damn eyes out with hopelessness.

And this is what you want, isn’t it?

I’ve read all about it. I understand how this works.

You want me hollowed out, questioning my own complicity, a shell of a person with blood on their hands, feeling helpless and despondent and completely depleted by my own rage.

If I am this, then I am your good soldier.

If I am this, then I am too tired to cause chaos.

If I am this, then I am too guilty to do more.

The only thing better for you than for me to be asleep is for me to be wide awake and dazed.

And that’s what I am.

So you win.

Today.

And maybe tomorrow.

But soon after, I know what will happen.

I know what will happen because I’ve been here before.

Community will happen.

Love will happen.

Grace will happen.

And I’ll be reminded of exactly who I am and who we are and who we should be.

And then I won’t be wide awake and dazed.

In fact, I’ll be your worst nightmare.

Wide awake.

And WILD.

Yes, my heart’s been split wide open.

But my arms are wide open too.

And I am determined for them to stay that way.