What if this pain is necessary?

I have been tuning out the media lately. This makes me feel guilty. I think, I should be reading the news, digging into the injustices, the violence, the work we need to do. But I can't process. It's like there is a block. And so I depend on political analysis from those I trust.

Part of me thinks this is ok, when I sit with it, when I weigh the guilt against the resistance to taking this violence into my body. I know what I know. It is unlikely to shift. The shifts I feel, that I want to tune into, are at a minuter level. I feel presence, I feel truth. And I feel into who I am and what I need to do, now, at this moment, as related to that presence and truth rather than to the news.

We have language for this now. We say, self care, radical rest, we talk about being triggered.

But part of me is deeply ashamed. I feel like a fraud for using those words even with myself. I look around the apartment I share with my family. The joy we have. The laughter and warmth and honesty that permeate our relationship. The filled fridge. The abundance of clothes and shoes. And I think: I don't deserve to feel triggered. Is this shielding myself indulgence or "real"? And what is “real” in this connection?

Instead of shielding myself, is the discomfort with violence and injustice one of those feelings I should to walk up to, to truly feel and be in? 

I don't know. Now and forever. I don't know. I sit in the morning. I breathe. I sit with the pain of this broken community that we are, as humans. I know I need to feel it to know that there is a path out of it. I trust that we can be us again.