After today’s paddle out, my friend and colleague and I had a very deep conversation. We are both Jewish, both have lost family to the holocaust. After the joy we experienced in the water, we both felt the pull, back to the pain around us, that has been taught to us by our families. Engraved purposely. Passed down generation to generation.

Gabriella’s paternal grandfather was on the last boat out of Europe during World War II. Her great grandfather was a prominent Jewish doctor in Berlin leading up to this tortuous time. He had prepared two cyanide tablets for the expected day when the Nazis were to come. When they finally did, he took his pill and died immediately. His wife died 3 days later in a hospital after taking hers.

There are records of this

They were meticulous in their extinction. End all aberrance.

Her great uncle died while riding a bicycle in Berlin in 1938. He was shot in the head and died instantly.

There is a record of this too.

My family have no records. My mom travelled to Hungary to try to find the village her family was from, and it had been wiped off the map. Just erased.

As we sit today, there are children in cages, families being separated. They are not very far away from us either.

It makes me think of the people who lived near the camps. They were living their lives, suffering as well, in a war-torn country not of their choosing. They were not all Nazis. They lived in fear as well.

Still, they were not being terrorized and starved and forced to labor in the cold, only then only to be cruelly gassed and burned.

Think about it. Just 3 blocks away someone is screaming bloody murder and living through a nightmare we cannot even fathom, and another family sits down to a war time rationed dinner and turns on the radio. That nightmare within those fences has so much power that it impacts us many generations after.

The people who lived outside the gate, ate war-rationed meals and lived on. They went quietly, forgetfully.

We went violently, systematically,

And we made sure to never forget. It is our mantra. Never forget.

We were in a fence once. We knew that there were people outside that knew we were there. Why couldn’t they help us? Why wouldn’t they help us?

Now we are them.

Outride the fence, feeling helpless.

Having the ability to take a morning like today and spend time with Mother Ocean feels wrong. We should be suffering too, we think. It is not okay to be content when 85 missing immigrant children were just found in Georgia.

But what can we do?

I don’ know. Obviously, we vote. Do we go try to help in more direct ways and face arrest? Do we really risk anything significant? I don’t know if I would, I feel bad about that. “I’m too chicken” I told my daughter. I tend towards fleeing as my survival id.

The easy answer and simplest one is that We can help each other, those in our sisterhoods, friendships. We can reach out further to friends from years past to get re-acquainted. Donate money to worth causes. Support and be supported.

But I can’t help but feel that maybe there is more I could do.

I put the flower in the water during the ceremony today when the wave was coming in, as directed, I was told that meant I was asking for something.

What I asked for was advice and support as to how to navigate living in this world right now. I both await and seek out the answer at the same time.