I feel overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world: Feminist Advice Friday

A reader wonders how to feel hope in a seemingly hopeless world.

A reader asks…

I am overwhelmed by the despair of the world. I’m in your support group, and love it, but I also feel so sad about how much violence women experience, and how much they’re willing to tolerate.

I’ve heard that I can’t look away from suffering, so I turn on the news and see bombs dropping everywhere and it paralyzes me with despair.

My community is filled with struggling people. There are homeless people sleeping every night in the local park. My friend’s baby was just stillborn, and as you’ve written about, many people have abandoned her.

I just…I don’t know. How do we live in a broken world? How do we find the courage to push for change even as powerful forces push back? Can you help me feel hope again? I am tired of crying every day. It doesn’t help that I have three little kids who take up most of my time, so I feel really powerless to do much that matters.

My Answer

I can’t make you feel hope again. Reading your letter, though, it’s clear that you know that hope is the thing that keeps us pushing toward change. You must have hope, which is why I believe efforts to demoralize activists, to convince us that the world will never change, are tools of our enemies.

Hope comes from within—from knowing that you are doing what you can, and believing that it can work.

I am here to tell you that, as a lifelong activist, I have seen hope work over and over, in seemingly hopeless situations. Does it fail sometimes? Yes. But if you look at human history, I think you will agree that there has been a trend toward improvement, thanks to the courageous actions of the most hopeful.

Things don’t magically change. They change because we change them. Progress is not inevitable. Knowing this has helped me continue pressing on even when things seem hopeless.

Empathy is one of the greatest gifts we can give the world, because it enables us to think deeply, and ideally to spur change. But it can come at a high personal cost: the price of empathy is feeling broken by how deeply fractured our world is.

But empathy’s dividends are massive. Empathy is what bends the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

I have a lot of thoughts on surviving as a changemaker in a broken world, because I share your bouts of despair. I cannot listen to the news without crying. In college, I couldn’t make friends because I opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and openly identified as a feminist; at the time, that was enough to make me a social pariah. So while you might feel alone, you are not alone.

A lifetime of activism has taught me that you cannot be useful to the world if you do not protect yourself. People who feel deeply about the suffering of the world are critical to ending it; that sadness you feel is a glimmer of hope in the darkness. So you must do all you can to keep that light flickering, rather than allowing despair to snuff it out.

Here are the strategies that have worked best for me.

Go on a strict media diet

I hear a lot that we “cannot turn away” from suffering. I agree with that. Some people, though, seems to think this means we must consume all available images of suffering, turning pictures of Palestinian children dying in Gaza into little more than snuff films.

I reject the notion that consuming every terrible image is activism. It’s an act of self-mutilation that encourages the normalization of violence.

You cannot be effective—as an activist, as a human, as a parent, as anything—if you are totally debilitated by despair. I believe that one of the reasons the media feeds us a steady supply of horrifying images is that these images will either desensitize us to violence, making us less concerned about what is done in our name, or overwhelm us with horror, making us so upset that we cannot engage in effective activism for change.

The mother grieving her child killed by a bomb does not need you to look at the video of her wailing in despair, or the picture of her dead child. She needs you to take whatever action you can, however small.

If witnessing images of horror, if watching the news, if arguing online prevent you from being able to sit back and rationally weigh options for making change in the world, then you need to go on a media diet.

I haven’t watched the news since 2016. When news of bombs dropping in Gaza comes on the radio, I change the station. I don’t click on sensationalized headlines, or argue with people about whether children deserve to die for the sins of their parents, their government, or for no real reason at all.

The result is that I am able to give more. I have more time to call my representatives, to protest, to donate money, to reach out to needy people in my community.

I urge you to turn off the news so that you can get to work on making real change.

Do what you can

You cannot solve every one of the world’s problems. You probably can’t solve even one.

You can do your part, though. You can join the chorus of people demanding better, making the chorus louder.

And often, you can change the world for a single person. Consider how giving $500 to a woman in desperate need of an abortion could change her world. Focus on maximizing the good you do in the world, and mitigating harm.

Some strategies for doing this include:

• If you have financial resources, give as generously as you can, especially to individuals.

• Pick something you’re good at. Then use that to make the world better. I’m a good writer, and I use my voice to call attention to the causes I care about. I’m not a good athlete, so I don’t waste my time on fundraising marathons.

• Dedicate yourself to one or two causes. None of us can do it all. Instead, pick one or two things where your voice can really make a difference.

• Support people who are doing the work you can’t. My friend Alexis Morgan is a brilliant scholar who has, most recently, taken to educating people about the genocide in Gaza. I don’t have the knowledge she does, so I choose to follow her and elevate her voice. Another friend, Desiree Stephens, is a talented voice deconstructing colonialist bullshit. As a white lady, her lane is not mine, but I tell everyone to read her. I support my friends who are doing the work; I speak out when those friends face abuse. Doing this is so important.

Practice nuance

Many of us respond to the horrors of the world with black and white thinking. When the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks happened, my country responded by bombing randomly throughout the world, killing at least a million people in a terrorist act many times worse than what we experienced. Not only was this evil; it also helped nurture the next generation of violent extremists (and I’m talking about both those in the Middle East and the violent extremists here at home who have so much hate for those living in the Middle East).

I now see a similar thing happening with Israel’s war on Gaza. I’ve had friends tell me that killing children is somehow justified because Hamas teaches Palestinian children to hate Jews. I’ve had friends on the other side tell me all Jews are Zionists, or insist that antisemitism doesn’t matter or is a distraction.

Intersectionality demands that we stand against all forms of oppression, rather than unthinking allegiance to our “side.” War is not a football game, and neither is politics. We must be willing to see the wrongdoing on our own side, and to stand firmly against it. We must stand against all oppression, calling it out whenever and wherever we see it.

I recently lost a bunch of subscribers for saying it’s wrong to kill children in Gaza. And then I lost a bunch more for saying antisemitism is a real and serious problem in the United States, and that the far right actually weaponizes it in service of genocide in Gaza. This is not some great act of bravery on my part; it’s the bare minimum. We must all use whatever platforms we have to encourage people to think better and more deeply, while also extending compassion and empathy.

We must also be prepared to look at our own darkness, to acknowledge when we get it wrong, and to try to do better. It’s the only way we can ever do better.

Do not be quiet

I have spoken to a lot of people who want to be nice. Most decent people want to be nice. The question is: to whom?

Our broken culture weaponizes nice. When your boss makes a racist joke, or your neighbors try to oust the community mental health center, don’t stay quiet in service of being nice. Because you’re being nice to the powerful, who are being decidedly brutal.

Align yourself with the oppressed, and be nice to them.

You will lose friends. But you will gain integrity. Speak out, every time. When someone else speaks out, lend them your voice, too. Be the beacon of hope in the darkness in every corner of the world you occupy. Your voice can change the world.

Know that activism is not always visible

In my region of the world, there’s an ongoing fight to prevent the destruction of a forest in an historically Black neighborhood, and the building of a center where police will learn increasingly brutal tactics. The government has been extremely aggressive in forcing this center, which no one wants, down our throats.

My husband is one of the main attorneys working on this case. It is time-consuming and difficult work.

Our nanny recently told me she felt guilty for mot doing enough to stop Cop City.

My husband was downstairs writing the brief that could stop Cop City at the very moment she said this. He would not be able to work without her, and neither would I. She is doing extremely important activism. Moreover, she’s been teaching my kids about social justice for years.

But we like to give credit only to the most visible activism, the most extreme. We all have a role to play.

For many mothers, motherhood is the most important activism they will do. Raising a generation of radical, enlightened, emotionally healthy beings will change the world. And if that is all you have time for during this season of life, that is more than enough.

Every step toward a better world matters, and raising a better and kinder next generation may be the most important step at all.

I addressed a similar question, “How can I do more for the cause of feminism?” earlier this year.

Readers, do you have any additional tips for surviving, thriving, and making change in a broken world?