“The more important a call to action is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel about answering to it.” Steven Pressfield.

This is a post I do not want to write, but I know I need to. And I sincerely hope it brings comfort to anyone who reads it.

I strongly believe that the voices who should be listened to most right now are those of the New Zealand Muslim community. Secondly, we must listen closely to all those who suffer from racist attacks, both covertly and overtly, everywhere in the world. I acknowledge that I cannot speak for them, and can only say that I steadily stand with them. This is my story and my experience, which really is the only one I have any right to tell.

Many writers shared their reactions to the attack here immediately. The country exploded with outpourings of emotion and expressions of grief and solidarity… and opinions. The day after the 15th of March 2019, I had no words. I was in a state of pure irrational emotion. I wasn’t searching for answers, trying to figure out exactly what happened, or how it could have happened, I was just feeling.

The Day of Darkness

On the morning of the 15th of March I woke up feeling sick. As I was about to leave my house for work, I almost collapsed. I’d been feeling slightly off for a few weeks, in fact, and assumed it was a flu about to hit. So I called in sick. That meant that the moment the attack on the serene Christchurch mosque began, I got the news notification on my phone and unhesitatingly tuned in. Right away I knew it was extremely serious, and, as someone very empathetic and attuned to vibrational energy, realised that I was not sick but had picked up on the dark energy permeating the land that day.

Before any deaths were even announced I began to uncontrollably weep. Whether or not the killer was to be successful, the fact that this was happening at all in the place from which I’d come forth into being, was devastating. In the city I’d last visited to say final goodbyes to both my Aunt and Grandmother, a city I know and love and have spent a great deal of my life in.

To those who have never been to New Zealand my reaction would have seemed bizarre. These kind of terrible things, and worse, happen all over the world all the time. People are desensitised to them. Some of my American friends didn’t even put it together that I might be affected at all!

However, New Zealand, for many of us, felt like the last place on earth virtually untouched by such violence and hatred. When you step off the plane on arrival here you feel the light. There is a frequency of calm and love. Police don’t carry guns. There are NO security checks at provincial airports. That is how safe it felt. Overnight the country went from a sort of utopian zen paradise to on high alert with armed offender squads everywhere. We went from safe to scared. Especially our immigrant communities. Especially our Muslim citizens. It affected every single one of us, whether we said so or not.

That night I didn’t sleep. At 3am one of my best friends in the USA called me. She knows NZ and she knows me. She knew I wouldn’t be okay. I don’t remember much of our conversation as I was in such a state of trauma. But I do remember saying “I don’t want to live in this world anymore.” And I remember that she helped, and assured me New Zealand would become a better place for it.

Day One

When I got up that day I tried reaching out to everyone, my family and friends… knowing I needed support. Unfortunately most of them were reacting quite differently from me. I suppose the majority were not processing what had happened. Most of them had been at work during the attack, some had only just gotten the news.

In New Zealand we are accustomed to natural disasters. Earthquakes happen all the time. The Kiwi way is to suck it up and get on with things. After the last major earthquake and in the midst of evacuation announcements people actually just went back to sleep. It seemed a bit like people were reacting to this in the same way, the only way they knew how… Kia Kaha – stay strong, right?

In retrospect I’m glad not everyone fell apart the way I did. The country would have come to a grinding halt. But, at the time, I struggled very much to see no one reacting quite the way I was. I felt so alone. On the other hand, some people actually wanted to be alone that day. I desperately needed to connect. My very first gut reaction (which I posted on facebook) was to want to run outside and hug every Muslim I could find. My maternal instincts kicked into overdrive. I guess on some level I knew that wouldn’t exactly be socially acceptable, so I found a way to express my feelings which was.

The one person who showed up for me that day was my former student and now friend, Amy. Although she didn’t quite get what I was going through, she was an absolute angel. She’d moved to NZ from China a few years ago. What she was experiencing was mostly fear. Fear and certainly empathy. And whatever I needed to do to process my pain, she was happy to do too. What I needed to do was express what was in my heart. I walked straight out the door that day and bought chalk. I didn’t know what I was going to write with it, but I knew I needed to show the Muslim people of Auckland that I was feeling it too.

While I was waiting to meet my friend I sat in front of Ponsonby Countdown looking at all the faces of the people getting on with life as if nothing had happened. I figured they were probably going through various stages of processing emotion, but would never show it. Testing my courage, I drew a big pink heart. Amy showed up and we hugged and headed off to get coffee. My coffee that day was a martini espresso with waffles. The waiter laughed at me and asked me what the occasion was. Once again, as if nothing had happened.

The more I saw people showing what appeared to be apathy/shoving down their emotions, the more fiercely I wanted to express what they were not. We left the restaurant and I told her I wanted to draw hearts on the footpath. We drew Kia Kaha NZ and hearts around it. A little girl and her mother stopped to look at it and smiled at me in understanding. That smile was enough to tell me I needed to do more.

I told Amy that I wanted to write something a bit stronger. She lovingly said “whatever you want to do is okay with me.” We headed towards the CBD where I knew we would find more Muslim folks. On a street corner we stopped and I wrote “Muslim friends, we love you, you are us.” Amy drew hearts all around the message. I had borrowed Jacinda Ardern’s words “they are us” and turned it into “you”. To me even “they” felt divisive. In the middle of writing it, two young ladies in headscarfs stopped to see what we were writing. They stood and watched until the message was finished. They gushed “Thank you, thank you, thank you. We love you too.” They took photos of the message and then asked to hug me. What perhaps they didn’t know was that those hugs probably did more for me than they did for them.

Side Note

I believe that guilt is the feeling we have when we’ve done something which is not in line with our values. It is a sign that something within us or about our behaviours needs to be corrected. Many people suggested to me that perhaps my reaction that day had been fueled by guilt. I reflected on it for weeks. Did I feel guilty or somehow responsible for what had happened? I came to the conclusion that honestly, no, I did not. I’m an ESL teacher. I’m not someone who has nothing to do with the Muslim community, or other immigrant communities. In fact, they’re a big part of my life.

When a lone wolf terrorist attack by a Jihadist happened in a Sydney coffee shop a few years back, I was living and working in Montréal. I was teaching, as per usual, multiple Muslim students. We talked about it together, about how they felt, and how sad it was that, as a result of this extremist, Muslim Aussie women were now afraid to go out alone. When the I’ll ride with you movement started I was the one to share it with them and they then passed it on. I knew and understood their pain then, as I understand it now. So my impetus to action was driven by nothing other than pure empathy, as well as sorrow for my own loss – a loss of fellow humans in my home where I truely believed they couldn’t have been safer.

Back to the Story….

The rest of that afternoon we wrote message after message. The same thing over and over again. The words felt like exactly the right ones. And much as it is when I write songs, I did not feel they had come from me, but through me. So many people stopped to say thank you. Many people took photos. Some said nothing but just stood in silence looking at the words. Some joined in and drew with us. Some said “We love you too” and continued walking. The people who thanked us were largely Muslim, but many were not. It was clear we were being thanked for both saying what was in other people’s hearts too, and for showing our support.

The one that touched me the most was an older gentleman. If memory serves correctly, I believe he was Egyptian. He stopped in his tracks and seemed so taken aback and moved. He asked me if he could take a photo and then gave me his water bottle to hold. As he was taking the photo he just kept saying “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You can’t imagine how much this means to me.” Then he told me how his wife was back home in Egypt and she was so worried about him being here in New Zealand (which had overnight become unsafe for him). He said he was texting her the photos of our message, to let her know he was safe and supported. I didn’t know how to respond to him. All I could say was “of course.”

The only strange reaction we had was a guy who stopped on his bike to say to me “What do you think about ISIS?” I didn’t know if he was trying to recruit me or was islamaphobic. Either way, I paused, mostly in shock to have anyone questioning us, and responded “If you think ISIS and ISLAM are the same thing, you seriously need to go home and do some reading.” He stayed put for a minute or so, watching us complete the message, and rode off again. Hopefully he went home to read.

I wanted to keep writing the message until every Muslim in the city had seen one. We’d gone to buy more chalk as the first box had already run out. As the second box was coming to it’s end, the muscles in my legs were giving out from crouching, my nails were all broken and my fingertips were starting to bleed from chalk breaking and the pavement scraping them. Amy gently pushed me to stop. She agreed to do one more big one for the cars exiting our carpark, and we were done for the day. She dropped me home, sent me all the photos she’d taken, and I immediately posted them hoping I would inspire some people to help me do more.

That night my sleep increased to four hours.

This guy asked me if he could translate it. As people were sending the photos back home, they wanted their families to be able to understand it.

Days Two to Seven

During the week that followed, I continued to go out and write messages on the street whenever I could. I also had to go back to work and provide normalcy for my relatively unaffected students, alongside compassion for the Muslim ones. All the while my sanity felt like it was hanging on by a tether. On the first day of class I walked in and asked if anyone needed a hug. I got one taker and a few laughs. That day I decided to prioritise my own needs. I still wasn’t done expressing my feelings. I took my class out to join me in writing messages. Then we had coffee and cake and watched youtube videos of some of the cool things people were doing around NZ to support the Muslim community.

My Omani students sending a message to NZ

As the days went on, I noticed an increasing number of people walking straight over the messages as if they couldn’t care less. Then I started hearing from acquaintances and friends that perhaps my actions could be perceived as selfish, that I was doing it for me, not the Muslim people. After all, where had my love been prior to this? People were angry and political. It was as if suddenly all the racism and classism that had always existed in New Zealand had been unearthed. And although previously I’d never ever considered myself to have a drop of racist in me, I started to question whether or not I had contributed to this evil somehow.

I realised that what had been a simple expression of love and solidarity had started to be interpreted through angry, judgemental eyes. As others were moving through their own grief, all of our reactions were vastly different. I had to acknowledge that my feelings were unique to me – a privileged, highly sensitive, pakeha Kiwi who’d had a particular experience working with immigrants. I couldn’t expect others to respond the same way I was, but at the same time, it remained difficult for me that they were not.

Ironically, while the global media was praising New Zealand for its incredible show of love and support for the Muslim community, I was only able to focus on what was lacking. In my life I still felt isolated due to the lack of emotion other people were showing. I felt they were perhaps even indifferent. If they were feeling things, I wondered where they were shoving those feelings and what damage that lack of feeling/processing would cause our society. By the end of that week when Headscarves for Harmony and our biggest vigil were to occur, I was 100% burnt out.

The instagram photos of my message had reached more than 2000 likes (now almost 3000) and I’d received 100+ messages of gratitude, but all I could focus on were the people who said racist things. Or the people who said nothing. I was keenly aware of religious acquaintances who seemed reluctant to show support for the Muslim community in fear of offending people from their own religion or culture. I became angry at all religion in general. While I gratefully accepted the blessings of the lovely Muslim people, I simultaneously wished that many could be just as loving without the religious vernacular and dogma. And I hoped that, like my Prime Minister, I was showing them that people who simply believe in love without division is all the world really needs.

On Headscarves for Harmony day, women were posting stories of their experiences on facebook. Every single one was negative with a slightly positive spin. People stared at them, moved away from them on buses. They were disappointed by how few other women had joined them. Global media made it sound like we all did it. But that was far from true. I was one of the women who didn’t join in. I was flying to be with my family that night and having read all the stories of the women who had done it, the idea of putting myself through further pain was just too hard.

I’d reached the point where I needed to preserve and protect myself above all. The most I was capable of that day when I headed for the airport, was to throw a scarf around my neck and firmly plant myself next to two fully covered Muslim ladies waiting for the plane to go to Christchurch, most likely for funerals. I wished I could have told them how sorry I was for their loss, and how I too had been grieving and crying all week, but I simply had no strength left.

Heading for the airport with my scarf around my neck – only because my Dad had pushed me to do so. This picture was taken for him. My Mum wore hers to church that Sunday.

Day Seven and Beyond

One week after my manic day writing all over the streets of Auckland, I was in Wellington with my nearest and dearest. The kids in my family had seen what I’d been doing in Auckland and wanted to help. I decided to write one last message in Oriental bay and they helped me by tracing the letters of the words and drawing hearts everywhere. I knew they could not fully comprehend what had happened, but they knew it was very sad and that many people were sad. Seeing their true empathy at only five-years-old, knowing that they were going to grow up in a country becoming less racist and more unified by the day, and as a direct result of the attack, was the beginning of my coming back into the light.

Oriental Bay, Wellington. A new normal.

Both my nieces go to extremely diverse schools. I’m not sure there even are technically any minorities because within those schools they’re basically ALL minorities, including the white kids. They see absolutely no differences between themselves. In fact, if you ask them where their friends are from they’ll look at you very confused and say “New Zealand.” (trust me I’ve asked)

A friend of my family, who also has a five-year-old son that goes to school with my niece, decided that in a neighbourhood jam-packed with immigrants, they needed to do far more to support each other. The day after the attack she and many other non-muslim women went to Mosque WITH the Muslim women who had been too afraid. And from now on they are holding regular “cultural share parties” with all the kids in two of the classes and their parents. They plan to share food and music and traditions.

While I can completely acknowledge that New Zealanders have had their heads in the sand about the racism which does exist here, I do agree with our Prime Minister that this is NOT the New Zealand I know. The New Zealand I grew up in felt safe and inclusive. My parents showed us nothing but curiosity and openness towards immigrants. And I always felt that Maori culture belonged to me too. Maori culture is one of the parts of NZ I’m most proud of. The mythology and spirituality of the south island Maori is in my blood.

While I’ve certainly heard different stories from other Kiwis, my experience was nothing but good. I learned the history of my country in a non-biased way. I fully understood the atrocities of colonisation in high school. So much so I was inspired to study post-colonial literature at University. I know I am very lucky to have had such a sheltered upbringing and to have moved in circles which have kept me away from the racism which exists here. I also know that my parents, and many others in New Zealand, have done an incredible job raising open-minded, loving, and compassionate human beings.

I have come out of my darkness now and I am finally really noticing the incredible acts of love New Zealanders have shown during these past five weeks. Mine was only one of thousands. I’m proud of our government and their swift action. I’m proud of all of us for our strength and warmth and the way we have been able to respect each other’s reactions and grieving processes.

And I have not forgotten that while I am rebuilding myself, stronger and better off for what has happened, the families directly affected by the attack in Christchurch are still deeply hurting. Some people are still in hospital, and their lives will be forever changed. Here are some links to ways you can give to them.

So, for now, what I am doing (as we all should) is healing myself fully. I am forgiving all those I need to forgive, letting go of anger, letting go of every last drop of hatred, and loving everyone more. If we all do that, what comes next can only be good. Before Jacinda even said it, I had already vowed to do my part to make New Zealand a better place, thereby leading the world to follow in our footsteps.

“The world has been stuck in a vicious cycle of extremism breeding extremism and it must end,” she said. “We cannot confront these issues alone, none of us can … The answer lies in our humanity. But for now we will remember the tears of our nation and the new resolve we have formed.”

“We each hold the power – in our words, in our actions, in our daily acts of kindness – let that be the legacy of the 15th of March,”

…said universal consciousness through Jacinda Ardern (our religionless leader who chose NOT to be sworn in to government with her hand on a bible.)