So much cancer support is about ‘masking cancer’: how to wear your makeup and etch your eyebrows so that no one can tell that you’re ‘sick’. How to wear your wig so that no one can tell you’ve lost your hair. And, in the case of prostheses, how to hide your mastectomy. I’m so tired of hiding the truth of cancer. Why is the onus on me to look like I ‘don’t have cancer’, in addition to going through cancer treatment?

The scenes unfolding in the streets of Jerusalem, disturbing as they may be, should be seen and understood in context of decades of continuous dispossession and dehumanisation of Palestinians. A context marked by a violent rhetoric of displacement and replacement whereby those who are Indigenous to place and land can simply be replaced, erased, and removed without hesitation.

The Christchurch mosque attacks have conjured waves of support and solidarity and shame. These are important and heartwarming, but they are not enough. Every attack of this kind opens floodgates of racialised violence. It legitimises and emboldens.

I don’t remember the second time I heard about the Nakba, but I can see its traces every day. I see it when my friends are separated from their families and arbitrarily denied movement on their own land. I see it when soldiers enter private homes in the middle of the night just because they can, terrorising children.