Finding the Beauty... in the Darkest of Times

(Posted last night on Instagram.)

I am searching for beauty on these dark days in history… days that will be discussed in classrooms… days I pray I am here to read about.

I am terrified. Quaking, emotionally. Trembling. Crying when I can. Scared. Horrified. What’s next? 

This isn’t another book about the Holocaust. This is deep hatred. The anti-Semitism from everywhere that I foolishly believed was mostly in the past is here. In my feed. The brutality, terrorism, vows of extinguishing my community: here. Again. Never forget.

I mean, really. Today was just supposed to be another Wednesday. Life wasn’t supposed to have brought these depraved developments. But assuming *anything* is stable in life is a mistake. 

There is always another shoe waiting to drop. 

It has dropped. 

But is this just the beginning?

I want to talk about books. I want to escape into fiction. Memoir. And I have. I want to remind myself that there are good people out there — even in our imaginations — that love prevails, that the human heart is vast. 

I read Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano — finally! — before interviewing her online in front of hundreds of people yesterday. I clung to every sentence over the long weekend like a rope pulling me out of a choppy sea. I escaped enough to come back and take in all the news again, fortified to bear witness. To process. To protect.

I am looking for beauty because there is just too much evil to comprehend. Because we need to remember the joy and crisp colors of a perfect peony when the world serves up massacres. Because reality is too disturbing to take in without buttressing ourselves. 

We will need to maintain emotions of steel for what’s to come. 

So I am reading. Working. Praying. Snapping. Crying. Grieving all those I didn’t know personally but who are familiar nonetheless. 

I hope you are all clinging to the tiniest bits of beauty in your lives, in the natural world, in love. 

We will never forget. But we will grow stronger and more beautiful. We’ve done it before and we will do it again.