The Never-Ending Yom Kippur Loop

And then I felt I had to make a choice.
To heed that fear as a warning, to take it from my ancestors like an inheritance. To shrink and keep myself invisible

Or to open. To feel the enormity of their loss flow through me, and carve a space wide enough for all of the grief that is equal to the love and equal to the loss – theirs, mine, ours. 

When I opened myself to that grief, 
more flooded through – sorrow for the border, for the amazon, for the abuses of our government. And in that flood, a rage was ignited. And that rage uncovered a single root – love, with the power of nature herself.

And I hear her, nature herself, cry out in urgency for us to feel!  

How is it that greed and corruption and destruction have become so normalized, while our pain remains stigmatized and marginalized?! How is THAT our normal? 

There is no transformation without feeling.
There is no greater madness than a never-ending loop.
There is no space to process grief unless we build it – together
And there is no reparation unless we do.

That’s what I heard from her grief.

Nessa Norich is a writer, director, and performer living in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn. Nessa uses live performance and ritual to reimagine the stories that inform the beliefs, values and preconceptions about our reality and our ability to alter it. Her original plays have been performed internationally at the Edinburgh Fringe, Showbox Festival (Norway), British Film Institute, all around New York City and at the New Orleans Fringe. Nessa also directs and acts in film and can be seen on HBO’s High Maintenance. www.NessaNorich.com