17 Comments

I’m here with you, feeling it all. Your words help give space. Sending tight arms of care and love.

Expand full comment
Oct 11, 2023Liked by Jena Schwartz

I don't have any words. I am sending you my opening and closing, opening and closing heart. Love, Monisha

Expand full comment
Oct 11, 2023·edited Oct 11, 2023Liked by Jena Schwartz

Your words "Still I can't cry..." brought this to my mind, Jena … of those thoughts that lie too deep for tears. In solidarity and in despair, I send my love to you, Jena.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

William Wordsworth

Expand full comment

💔 no words

Expand full comment
Oct 11, 2023Liked by Jena Schwartz

Thank you Jena. Grateful to be wrapped in the tallis of your words.

Expand full comment
Oct 11, 2023Liked by Jena Schwartz

Jena, On the news last night, an anchor in NYC said to a reporter on the ground in Israel, "I hope you're taking some time to process all this." He answered honestly, "No, I am not processing any of it, not yet, not at all, because if I began to do that now, I couldn't go on." His honesty and vulnerability in that moment undid me, just as your post this morning does. How do we "process" evil? There is no answer, and yet somehow your words, the way you both shatter AND take the half and half from the fridge, keep us grounded in our shared humanity, in the horror and in the need to put one foot in front of the other. This morning, with my own strong coffee at hand, I feel a powerful need to just reach a hand out, to say that although I'm often swept up in my own concerns here, I always pause to read your words, am always grateful for them, always feel a kinship, always feel a sense of ongoing conversation (even though I mostly fail at keeping up my end of it). The space you keep here, the thoughts you share, the pain and sorrow and rage you write through -- this is love and goodness in action. I'm with you. xoxo

Expand full comment

Thank you for having an open heart and allowing us to bear witness to your beautiful heart, even when it hurts.

Expand full comment

In the midst of senseless tragedy and trauma that defies words, yours, my friend, offer beauty, truth, and hope. Thank you.

Expand full comment

💔💔💔🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾

So much sorrow.

Ceaseless prayer.

Sending you so many hugs, dear one.

How will this end?!?

How will peace begin?

Expand full comment
Oct 11, 2023Liked by Jena Schwartz

Jena💜I am once again so grateful

That you are putting words (with narrative I can bare and relate to ) to this atrocity that i more often that not, come up with no words.

Love

Lisa

Expand full comment
Oct 11, 2023Liked by Jena Schwartz

stunning Jenna. The form enables us also as readers, to breath, take in the horror, breathe, move on.

Expand full comment

As an "other", yet a human being I can not help, but be touched and cry for what has happened and how it echoes round in circles around the world. May you be blessed and be able to find that spot where you are able to be of service. For evil may slay Innocents, but Goodness" or what we call God survives and will triumph. God bless and keep you

Expand full comment
Oct 11, 2023Liked by Jena Schwartz

I feel like I have no words, no way to express how I feel without, perhaps, screaming?

Expand full comment
author

I'm with you, fellow Schwartz.

Expand full comment
Oct 11, 2023Liked by Jena Schwartz

It feels weirdly lonely? Isolating? No one else in my life besides Jews are even mentioning it. Like it’s not consuming their thoughts. It’s just another terrible thing in the news cycle, and that’s if I’m thinking generously.

Expand full comment
author

The lonely is real. Reaching my hand to yours.

Expand full comment

And mine to you.

Expand full comment