Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast.

I'm Emanuel Von Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine.

Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Thank you. culture and spirituality. Hala Aaliyang is an award-winning Palestinian-American poet, novelist, and a clinical psychologist.

Her books include the 29th year and salt houses.

This essay finds Hala self-quarantined and isolated in her apartment in Brooklyn,

and more aware than ever of humanity's interdependence,

suddenly exposed as a raw, pulsing nerve.

With all of us inescapably together as we move through this pandemic,

how, she asks, can we make room for grief, empathy, and hope?

Two years ago, I had an ectopic pregnancy.

It was sudden and unexpected and left me reeling.

It happened during this time of year.

The weather was slowly turning, the day suddenly getting longer.

I sat in our new backyard and red and deep breathed and cried.

I scooted my chair to chase the sun across the lawn. I watched spring outside my living room window,

the women in their sundresses and sandals. Their joy felt a lifetime away from my bitterness. I waited. I waited to see if my

body would erupt. This is what these days remind me of. These days of waiting and foreboding,

I sit and wait, but there's one difference. This time, the whole city is doing it with me.

Even this is hopelessly human. To connect with any pain I have to turn self-referential. To

understand a global pandemic, I have to make it about me. One of the things I like least about myself is how insular I am in

grief. I give way pretty easily to self-pity and defeatism, like an over-baked cake crumbling under the

...