Liz’s post really spoke to me this morning.  I am heart-sick about what has happened and is happening in Japan.  But, I’ll admit freely here–I can’t watch it.  I haven’t watched the news in days.  I quickly scroll down on the front page of the NY Times.  It’s not that I don’t care and can’t be bothered–it’s that I don’t have the emotional or intellectual capacity at this point to pay attention.  I think back to 9/11 and how all encompassing it was.  Then Hurricane Katrina and then Haiti and the tsunami in Indonesia and so on.  Tragedy after tragedy.

Then I think about what is happening in Ethiopian adoptions (which I haven’t had the capacity to write about) and it’s all too overwhelming for me right now.  I am overwhelmed by my own life.  Does that make me uncaring?  No.  Does that make me selfish? No.  But I feel shame that I haven’t paid more attention.  That I haven’t given money.  That I can’t give money.  That I can’t pay attention.  I am just trying to hold my own shit together as I finish this damn PhD, raise my kids and keep my marriage healthy.  I feel for those suffering.  I wish they did not have to suffer and I can’t watch them do it.  What emotional energy I have, I need to save for those close to me who lives I do affect.

I am sorry for your tragedy Japan.  I wish I had more to give you than my sympathy.