What is 'Normal' When the World is on Fire?

I’m to that point of wanting to scream in a grocery store, or a park, or any other entirely benign location.

I don’t know how to do ‘normal’ when the world is on fire.

I don’t know how to do normal when children are washing up on beaches. Babies.

I don’t know how to meditate, do yoga, be fully present, when I know mothers are making snap decisions about what child to let go of first as their life, their safety, their whole world capsizes into the Mediterranean. "Will the older children need less help so let go of them first? Maybe the babies will receive more mercy so let go of them first?"

Can you image?!

I don'tknow how to do normal when humans in Africa are being killed for being gay. Where just being…is cause for death. Where fleeing is the only answer. Souls afloat across the dark continent. With only hope as their guide.

I don’t know how to stomach food when refugee camps are bursting at barbed seams. Hungry open mouths. Palpable fear. Displacement and death daily. Children. Families. Refugees who only want shelter. At any camp. In any country. Anywhere. Away from being hunted, stripped of dignity, raped, killed.

I don’t know how to breathe. My heart...overworked. Small humans sexually abused. Desecrated. Right this second. Right here. On my street. Just like I was. Powerless… then gone. Little lights dimmed to darkness.

My own child body and soul have been helpless and powerless to others’ wants. My own child mind manipulated by beliefs destroying my ability to think, know, and feel...for most of my life.

I’ve mothered to a point of sheer terrified exhaustion over my own medically fragile ill child.

I’ve lost almost everything, more than once…to fire, ignorance, pain, death, chance.

Now I know me. My once ill child is well. I have a roof over my head and food in my belly. I am loved by many.

But I know not how to manage the burden of knowledge.

Yes, we are enlightened. A true privilege and gift. But what do we do with what we know? I see this knowledge, this information, by way of pictures in my head. I see boats capsizing. Parents desperate with dying hope. Letting go of tiny hands, into the darkness. Into the sea. One last look. Gone.

I see lifeless little children attempting normal after a night of powerlessness. In the playground. Walking to school. Exhausted bones.

And on and on and on.

I see it.

I feel it.

I don’t know how to do 'normal' when the world is on fire.