🧖‍♂️ The Week I Disappeared — and What Brought Me Back

This past week knocked me flat. A seven-day migraine cluster — like a storm behind the eyes — left me barely able to stand, think, or speak. Just a fog of pain, confusion, and exhaustion. These crashes visit a couple of times a year since Long Covid, plunging me into dark depths and pulling tight on all my support strings.

Most days, I was curled in bed, sleeping fifteen hours. In the half-light between naps, I clawed for something steady — a film, a poem, a breath of self-trust. Slowly, gently, the first flickers of strength returned.

I found myself in the garden, clearing weeds — both from the soil and my mind. The depression, the doubt, the ache of futility — all loosening, just enough to breathe again.

To re-enter the world, like a snail from its shell, I turned to stories. I visited the local screening of Palestine Queer Cinema — a tender, furious act of resistance. To see oppressed communities express themselves in bittersweet, defiant ways is always humbling. Art as lifeline. Art as protest.

That night, I cycled home under a warm sky, falafel in my belly and an owl gliding silently above me. A small miracle. Beauty returning. Proof I’m still in a beautiful world.

Revived, I joined the blockade at Wageningen University, where students shut down the main building to demand an end to ties with Israeli institutions complicit in the genocide in Gaza. The sun shone on peaceful resistance and support swelled, particularly around the finale DJ set!

I hesitated before filming a short video there — being an “influencer” is hardly cool in our circles. And social media, for all its reach, can feel like a parasite on our already anxious generation. But I had to speak out. To capture our struggle. To bring good vibes, and maybe a few more people in.

It’s necessary because across Europe, universities continue to fund, legitimise, and collaborate with apartheid. We have to say “no more”, and shout “never again”!

Then came the news this morning: the UK government plans to designate Palestine Action — a courageous, peaceful direct action group I know and love — as a terrorist organisation.

So a group that exposes arms dealers enabling genocide is being criminalised for daring to disrupt the war machine. Meanwhile these merchants of mass death walk free, live lavish and twist our humanity.

It’s obscene. The ban is chilling. It must be named for what it is: authoritarianism.

But it doesn’t break my spirit.

It reminds me this path — this work of resistance and repair — isn’t a sprint. It’s a long, uncertain pilgrimage. And we must walk it with care, with love, and without burning out the very heart we’re fighting to protect.

I’ll keep standing up. Just not at the cost of falling down.

So for now, I’m pressing pause. On meetings. On deadlines. On the thousand small alarms of movement life. I’m resting. Writing. Letting the light back in, slowly.

Rest is resistance too.

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