😢 The Struggle Between Grief and Your Daily Routine: Anas Al-Sharif's Murder and the Cognitive Dissonance of Loving Gaza
How do you keep moving when your heart is shattered and your life refuses to stop?
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There are moments in life that shake you to your core, moments where everything you thought you knew—about your work, about the world, about what you’re capable of—becomes irrelevant. Last night, my hero, Anas Al-Sharif, the most courageous journalist IN THE WORLD, was targeted and assassinated by Israel and America. They bombed his tent, killing him and every Al Jazeera colleague still in Gaza. To be honest, I’m crushed. Anas wasn’t just a journalist; he was the voice of Gaza, and in so many ways, the voice of truth when the world chose silence. He was a loving son, husband, father, and friend to many.
But 30 minutes after I saw the body of Anas, a man I was so desperate to meet in person one day, my daughter needed to go to volleyball practice, and I had to figure out dinner for my family. I had to keep moving. The dissonance of this reality is so jarring. The emotional devastation of losing a hero, a friend, a beacon of truth—while still carrying on with the regular demands of life—cuts deeper than I can express.
Have you experienced that before? You see and experience what may be the worst thing you’ve EVER seen, then you have to do the dishes. You have to help with homework. You have to meet with teachers at school. As an illustration, as soon as I finish this article I have to run errands for my kids. But on the inside, I’m dying.
🎧 The Dissonance of Grief and Routine
It’s not something I think most people can understand unless you’ve lived through it. The emotional wreckage of seeing and feeling the devastation of Gaza, the murder of Anas Al-Sharif, a man whose work was not just courageous but relentless, principled, and unwavering, crashes down on you. You mourn. You rage. You feel hollow. Yet, in the very next moment, life demands that you keep going. For me, it was making sure my daughter didn’t miss her practice. For others, it’s going to work, taking care of family, living life as if everything is normal when the world around you is anything but.
Something about it feels so wrong, but I have no clue what we can do about it. I am still a dad and a husband and a son, even when I’m devastated and I sometimes struggle to balance the two.
This feeling—the conflict between the weight of grief and the pressure to maintain some semblance of normality—is cognitive dissonance in its truest form. Grieving the loss of someone who meant so much, and yet still having to walk through your day-to-day life, is like living in two worlds at once. It’s a survival mechanism, a necessity to keep functioning in a world that refuses to stop spinning, even when it feels like everything inside you is falling apart.
⚖️ The Struggle to Keep Going
The morning after Anas’s assassination, I felt as if the weight of it would swallow me whole. The news, the images, the loss—it all came crashing down. But then, in the same breath, the demands of everyday life crept in. I had to be there for my family. I had to keep the house running. I had to play the role of father, husband, provider. The contrast between these two realities felt almost like a betrayal to the depth of the grief I felt for Gaza, for Anas. How do you reconcile these two truths—the immense weight of loss and the mundane tasks that demand your attention?
This is something that those who love Gaza, and love the oppressed people of the world, have learned to carry. The weight of grief doesn’t just stay with you; it’s a constant companion, and yet life doesn’t wait for your pain to subside. The world demands that you show up, that you keep moving, even when your heart is broken. How do you continue to live when the grief is so raw, so deep, and the pain is unrelenting?
💔 Anas Al-Sharif: More Than a Journalist
Anas Al-Sharif was not just a journalist. He was an embodiment of what it means to bear witness to truth, no matter the cost. He stayed in the North in Gaza when no one else would. His work—uncensored, relentless, and unyielding—wasn’t just about reporting; it was about holding power accountable, exposing atrocities that the world refused to see, and doing it with an integrity that inspired everyone around him. His death isn’t just the loss of a person; it’s the loss of a principle—a commitment to truth, to justice, and to Gaza.
We’re now left to carry on his work in his absence, but we also must confront the emotional toll it takes to keep going. It’s not just about the tasks of daily life. It’s about carrying the grief of losing a hero while trying to survive in a world that doesn’t stop.
🌍 How Do You Keep Going?
In the hours following Anas’s death, I found myself asking: how do you keep moving forward when the world is so cruel? How do you continue to function in a world that steals so much from us?
The answer, I suppose, is simple—life doesn’t stop, and neither can we. But that doesn’t make it any easier. The cognitive dissonance of feeling torn between the weight of tragedy and the necessity of living your life is something that many of us fighting for Gaza experience on a daily basis. But we continue because we have to. We continue because that’s the only way to honor the work of heroes like Anas.
And so, as I try to process this loss—this unbearable loss—I will continue. And I want you to continue. Because what else is there to do? We must carry the weight of this grief, honor those we’ve lost, and keep moving forward, even when the pain is so heavy. As long as this genocide exists, we must never quit, but we must find pockets and spaces to grieve when we can, heal, then move forward.
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Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun.
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I hope sharing my heart here, transparently, connects and resonates with some of you. It's all so awful.
I appreciate you expressing this duality. I often think about my children grown up and realizing wow my mom kept going despite her grief surrounding Gaza and she kept speaking about it and parenting us and living life. It feel sometimes like I’m leading two lives.