Grief. Nervous Systems. And What We Choose to Feed.

Sitting With What Bondi Has Stirred

For the most part, I choose not to give my energy to spaces that generate and perpetuate fear, division, and conflict. And, like many, I’ve been sitting with what unfolded in Bondi just a few days ago. Feelings and thoughts are moving through me, and it feels necessary to share them. 

This piece is not a political or religious commentary or critique. It intentionally steps outside those lenses and instead invites personal reflection, self-awareness, and compassion, held within a wider view of our shared humanity.

I want to preface all of what follows with a full acknowledgement that I write from a place of privilege and relative safety. This position allows me to witness both the event itself and the dialogue that’s emerging largely as an observer. What I share here does not, for a single moment, intend to diminish or deny the pain, the horror, and the ongoing, very real fear and unsafety being experienced by many right now.

What I express here is intended solely to bring awareness back to self - to the one place we do have some capacity to create lasting change. Perhaps none of what I share will resonate with you right now. Perhaps it may even feel unhelpful or too confronting. If that’s the case please ignore, delete, or do whatever feels right for you. Whether it feels aligned or not, I do hope you take up the invitation to look more deeply into your own heart and notice where division and separation still live within you - because they live within all of us.

Violence, rage, and rigid certainty are not new. They unfold across the world every day. Often, we are able to keep a degree of distance from them - because they are happening somewhere else, to someone else, beyond the edges of our immediate lives and local communities. And yet, these same forces are present here too, moving through our families, our systems, our institutions, and our relationships, often in quieter, more contained ways. It is usually only when they erupt visibly and violently, when the scale becomes impossible to ignore, that we collectively begin to pay attention, and to feel the impact.

Moments like this don’t just shock us cognitively. They move through the body. They disrupt what we thought we knew about the world, unsettling our sense of safety, trust, and stability.

Events like this register first as disturbance and instability. The nervous system responds before the mind has language. What once felt familiar can suddenly feel uncertain, as though the ground beneath us is shifting.

This is a very natural response to shock. When violence occurs without warning, our systems orient toward protection. Distance does not exempt us from impact.

You may be noticing: 

– heightened alertness or depletion 

– emotional swings that arrive without warning 

– difficulty settling, sleeping, or concentrating 

– a lingering sense of unease 

– a pull to withdraw, or the opposite - to stay constantly informed

These responses are not pathology. They are the imprint of trauma and a nervous system under stress.

What occurred was devastating. Lives were taken. Families and communities are now carrying loss that cannot be easily resolved or explained. This deserves to be acknowledged and held with deep compassion and care.

Alongside this, I’ve been sitting with a more difficult invitation. One that requires maturity, restraint, and genuine inner work.

Healing requires the capacity to hold complexity. To stay present with multiple truths at once, rather than collapsing into simplification.

We can honour those who were harmed without dilution.

We can name the violence as unacceptable without hesitation.

Can we also recognise that those who acted through violence were not isolated beings? But acknowledge they were sons, parents, siblings, and partners. Their actions now reverberate through families who are also grieving, shocked, and living with consequences they did not choose.

Compassion that excludes these realities is incomplete.

To be clear: extending compassion to the families of those who caused harm does not negate accountability. It does not excuse what occurred. And it does not ask us to feel safe with what is unsafe.

It asks us to widen the lens enough to see that violence fractures entire relational systems - not only the lives directly taken, but many others who are now carrying shame, sorrow, confusion, and social exile alongside grief.

This is where the work becomes confronting.

When violence is enacted from rigid certainty - from a sense of absolute rightness - it often emerges from deep internal division and unaddressed pain. Meeting this truth requires honest self-examination, not moral distancing.

Cycles do not end when we designate “good” and “bad” and stop there. They end when we are willing to address the conditions - personal, cultural, systemic - that allow rigidity, radicalisation, and dehumanisation to take root.

It means recognising that compassion, when practiced fully, is not selective. It extends to victims, to perpetrators, and to the families and communities entwined with both.

Without this breadth, we risk perpetuating the very separations we long to see healed.

It requires us to stay present without collapsing into outrage or distancing into moral superiority. It requires us to look honestly at how disconnection, unmet needs, radicalisation, and unprocessed trauma move through individuals and cultures.

Cycles do not end through punishment or tighter laws and restrictions. They end when the conditions that generate them are addressed - internally, externally, personally, collectively and systemically.

To extend compassion only to those we identify with is not compassion. It is allegiance. And allegiance, while human, cannot interrupt systemic harm.

This does not mean bypassing grief.

It does not mean suppressing anger.

And it does not mean collapsing boundaries.

It means recognising that prevention is relational work.

Consciousness work.

Nervous system work.

The slow, often uncomfortable task of tending what we would rather disown.

It is an invitation to recognise that lasting change is shaped not only by external measures, but by how deeply we are willing to engage with the conditions that give rise to harm - including disconnection, isolation, unaddressed trauma, and the ways we relate to power, identity, and belonging - within ourselves first, and then as a collective.

Violence is not an anomaly separate from humanity. It emerges where fragmentation has gone unattended.

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So alongside mourning, I offer a few steadying invitations:

Attend to the body before analysing the world. Safety begins there.Before trying to understand, explain, or make meaning, orient to the body. Notice where you are right now. Feel the weight of your feet on the ground, the support of the chair or earth beneath you, the rhythm of your breath. Simple sensory anchors - warmth, pressure, slow movement, touch - can help signal to the nervous system that this moment is not the same as the one that caused the shock. Regulation does not erase grief; it creates enough safety for it to be felt without overwhelming the system.

Stay in connection rather than retreating into polarity.Trauma and stress often pull us toward isolation or certainty. Notice if you’re withdrawing, hardening your views, or consuming information in a way that leaves you more activated. Gently choose connection instead - a trusted conversation, shared silence, therapy, community, or being in nature. Healing is relational. We metabolise grief more safely when we are witnessed, rather than alone with our interpretations.

Notice where blame offers relief - and pause long enough to become curious.Blame can temporarily soothe helplessness by creating a sense of control or moral clarity. When you notice the urge to assign fault - outwardly or inwardly - see if you can pause and ask: What am I feeling underneath this? Fear? Powerlessness? Grief? This is an opportunity to gently access the feelings beneath the thinking, to question rigid or absolute thoughts, and to soften the story you’re telling yourself just enough to allow other possibilities to exist alongside it.

Choose responses that expand capacity and compassion.Pay attention to what widens your ability to stay present - slower breathing, less exposure to distressing media, movement, writing, ritual, or time in the natural world. From a narrative lens, you might ask: What story am I reinforcing right now - one of inevitability and separation, or one that still allows for care, repair, and human complexity? You don’t need to force optimism. Simply choosing responses that keep your heart and nervous system open is enough.

These practices are not about bypassing pain or “doing grief correctly.”

They are ways of supporting the body and mind so that grief can move, rather than becoming frozen or projecting.

—----

Care is an active practice.

Awareness is something we live, not something we declare.

And responsibility begins in the moments we are most shaken.

I hold deep respect for those whose lives have been directly harmed, for the families now grieving unimaginable loss, and for all those impacted in visible and invisible ways by what has occurred.

Everyone has been affected in some way.

And how we meet this moment matters.

Because how we make meaning from moments like this shapes what we amplify next.

When we choose presence over reactivity, responsibility over projection, and care over collapse, we interrupt cycles, moving ourselves and our communities toward healing, and the repair of the social fabric we all live within.

If this time is stirring something heavy or unsettling, please reach out for support wherever it feels most helpful for you. We are not meant to metabolise this alone.