I’ll be honest with you.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking more about what I’m going to eat for lunch
than about a child in Gaza who hasn’t eaten for weeks.
That’s how cheap my hunger is.
It’s a choice, an inconvenience.
Theirs is a death sentence.
And yet my stomach growls louder than my conscience.
My job is to reach people like you.
To put words in front of you that make you care, that make you give.
And Forgotten Women has so many campaigns I could write about.
Safe toilets. Homes for widows. Wells. Businesses that feed children.
But I can’t look away from Gaza.
And here’s the part I hate admitting:
I can’t write about Gaza anymore either.
Because I’ve started to go numb. Like you.
I scroll past starving babies the same way you do. I pause.
I let myself feel that sting in my chest. And then I keep scrolling.
That’s what this war has done.
It’s made death feel ordinary.
It’s made children’s bodies feel… normal.
And if I, whose job is to never look away, am already going numb.
What does that say about the rest of us?
Still, I force myself to sit here. Because I know what it means if I stop.
If I stop writing. If you stop feeling. If we all stop giving.
It doesn’t just mean Israel wins.
It means a mother wraps her baby in a plastic bag because there’s no coffin.
It means a boy digs through rubble with his hands, searching for his sister’s face.
It means another child whispers “mama, I’m hungry” into a cracked phone.
As if a broken phone and a dead mother could feed him.
And here’s what terrifies me most:
That I can know all of this, see all of this, and still worry more about what’s in my fridge
Than about their survival.
That’s my confession.
I am going numb. Like you.
And numbness is worse than bombs. Because bombs kill bodies.
But numbness kills the only thing that could save them: our humanity.
So I sit here, trying to shock myself awake with words.
Trying to shock YOU awake with words.
Because the truth is brutal.
Every time we scroll past, Every time we sigh “not again,” Every time we feel less than yesterday,
a child’s voice goes unheard.
And if you were that child, alone in the dark, whispering “mama, I’m hungry”
you wouldn’t want my polished words.
You’d want my scream. You’d want my entire bank account.
You’d want me to never, ever stop shaking the world until someone saved you.
So tell me.
How do I write this without begging you to give like your own life depended on it?
Because theirs does.
Still trying not to go numb,
Hafsa
