On Pain, Powerlessness, Silence and the Choice to Voice

This is not my usual kind of post, but I feel a moral duty to write it. This is about the ease of convenient silence, the riskiness of speaking up and the transformative power of owning our voice.

I didn’t expect to write this post today, and, if I’m honest, I think I wanted to avoid writing it altogether. Like many others who write and speak in the space of learning (or in any public space for that matter), I am keenly aware of the double-edged sword of social media. Our opinions can inspire, teach, uplift, and we thrive on the positive feedback that comes from that. But when our opinions become controversial, the online backlash and toxicity can feel like a deluge, and who wants that kind of experience? So, too many of us avoid expressing controversial opinions. But isn’t that its own form of cowardice?

This is a preamble to say that I felt moved by a series of posts on LinkedIn by Attiyya Malik, a wonderful leadership development practitioner whose work I admire, who has been calling out the silence on professional networks around the atrocities currently happening in Gaza. Below is the post that spurred this article:

As I continue to make sense of my place in a world where I am witnessing genocide, the evidence of which to me feels undeniable, the weight is overwhelming. The people whose lives are being erased look like me and my children. And yet, alongside this grief, the ordinariness of life persists: the dishes, the washing, the daily routines.

Since my last post, I’ve been sitting with a persistent question: what is our role as leadership practitioners in moments like these? Surely, in society, we have one, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

What are the topics we allow ourselves to discuss, and what do we declare off-limits? Is there an unwritten rule about neutrality? If so, how does that sit with the fact that we speak freely about climate change, COVID, or in Australia, the Voice referendum? These are political and social issues, yet somehow the sanctity of all human life is deemed too hard, too fraught, to touch. Perhaps because to speak of one human truth means we cannot give equal weight to another and with every choice comes the loss of what is sacrificed.

We promise to build leadership capacity to mobilise people in the face of adaptive challenges. Perhaps the deepest challenge we face right now is that collectively, we do not yet embody what we teach. What would it look like if we did? What kind of courage, connection, or clarity might become possible if our practice held space for the hardest human truths?

The essence of leadership is not to retreat into safety, but to step into discomfort, to wrestle with what is complex, contested, and painful. If our work cannot hold space for that, then perhaps it is time to imagine anew what leadership development itself must become.

Who will have a conversation with me here to imagine what leadership needs to become?

As I read Atti’s post, I felt ashamed. I, too, am one of those who have stood silent on the horrifying suffering in Gaza. I have had many private conversations about it, but I have never written publicly about the topic. Because it is charged. Because I felt my opinion would only stir up negativity or be read as dabbling in politics, while making absolutely no difference. Because, having been born in a dictatorship, I still nurse a very old wound that speaking up against power can be dangerous and not even four decades of living in a democracy have completely removed that ancestral fear. But perhaps it is the acknowledgement of that old wound that makes it necessary to speak up. I do not take the freedom of voice for granted. Nor is the pain of the voiceless merely an abstraction to me - that pain has been a reality my parents grew up in and one I inherited as transgenerational trauma.

So here is my response to Attiyya’s post:

I am so happy you are writing about this, Atti. I've had similar conversations with friends and family, and asked versions of that same question - what keeps us silent? For myself, the main reason I've preferred to have these conversations in private is because I don't really believe having them in the online space can make much of a difference. I feel I would either be preaching to the choir, as people who already agree with my outrage would empathise, or I would be stirring up hateful comments from those whose minds won't change with my posts - and I have accepted I no longer have emotional space for endless debates and weaponised opinions. However, your post has challenged those self-imposed limitations. I am writing about this now.

So far, I've resorted to focusing on what I can do, which might make even the smallest positive difference.

A practical thing I'm doing is having set up recurring monthly donations to both Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) and the UN World Food Programme, two organisations whose work in Gaza I believe is vital. I've encouraged friends to do the same. I've linked both organisations above, hoping that others reading this thread might follow suit and donate.

I've also strived to bear witness to the unspeakable suffering of people in Gaza by not looking away. Most recently, Brandon Stanton from Humans of New York has been running a series of stories on MSF doctors working in Gaza right now – I have been crying every day reading them and shared them widely. I think we all need to read these, so we don’t allow ourselves to grow numb to the pain, because I believe the moment we stop caring is the moment when truly will lose our humanity. Here is a link to Brandon’s series on Facebook. And here is a link to a post in that series that truly and completely broke my heart. I have copied below the full text of that post and a caption from the original Facebook feed of Humans of New York (HONY).

“My whole life people have said to me: ‘You are too kind, too sensitive.’ When I interviewed for a schoolteacher position, the principal told me: ‘You will never be able to control the students.’ Because of this I built in my mind that I’m not a very strong person, you know? I decided to focus on my house, my family, my children. When the war started I was working as a data encoder; I spent all day on the laptop. But Doctors Without Borders said to me: ‘Kholoud, there is no one left to ask. We need you to help organize our operations in the North.’ And I’ve done it. I organized a network of people on the ground. Everyone in the organization knows me now, respects me. And I’ve done all of this while raising four children, and another four children who lost their parents. In December we spent fifteen days on the street because there were too many bombs. Nobody could sleep safely inside. I ate nothing during this time, zero. I just drank some water every two days. We were sheltering in a small corridor inside a school yard. My husband left us to look for food, and that’s when the bomb fell. When it falls close to you, you don’t hear anything. You just see the body parts flying through the air: the hand of someone, the leg of someone, the head of someone. My son comes to me and his face is blood. My daughter comes to me and she is clutching her chest. My other two children are holding their legs; I can’t tell how they are injured. There was no hospital left in Gaza City, so I brought them back to our house. Our neighbor is a doctor, so I asked him to come over. We discovered that one of my children had shrapnel in the head. The other three in the leg. There was no anesthesia, no stitches. We put something in the children’s mouth, and I held them down while he removed the shrapnel with the kitchen knife. You cannot imagine how the children were screaming. But we removed the shrapnel. And when we finished, I took the knife, and removed the shrapnel from my own leg. ‘Too kind, too sensitive.’ I heard this my entire life. But I can tell you: another person lives inside you. And if the world forces you, you will find her.”

----------------------------------------------------

Kholoud’s story is part of a series of stories I am currently doing on the Palestinian Staff of Doctors Without Borders in Gaza. I will be sharing these stories over the next several days.

From Médecins Sans Frontières / MSF: Kholoud Al-Sedawi has been with MSF (Doctors Without Borders) since 2019, progressing from Data Entry Operator to her current coordination support role. When most humanitarian workers withdrew from northern Gaza, Kholoud stayed and helped restart MSF's operations amid some of the genocide's most severe conditions. Her work focuses on restoring basic healthcare services where hospitals have been damaged or destroyed and organizing mobile clinics. While the situation remains dire, Kholoud's persistence has enabled MSF to maintain a presence in northern Gaza when most organizations could not.

I will also share that I have donated to the HONY Patreon for years and encourage others to do the same, because Brandon Stanton is one of the most courageous and generous voices who is managing to turn an otherwise toxic online space into a space of healing and witnessing and change lives for the better in the process.

Finally, as my last effort to step out of Silence and into Voice, I strive to speak my truth, to the best of my abilities, in every interaction I have - face to face or online - even when it feels risky - like writing this post feels risky. I challenge the leaders I work with to do the same.

I strive to be a good human in my own life. I speak to my child about these atrocities and about the ways in which the abused become abusers, and that wheel of pain keeps turning. I strive to raise a human who is herself willing to not turn away from others’ pain.

And I also strive to make peace with the overwhelming feeling of powerlessness, anger, sadness, grief and the painful awareness that everything I’ve written above is actually very little. I try (and often fail) to not feel guilty for the privileges of my own life – many of which have been afforded to me through the very lucky circumstance of being born in a particular place, at a particular time, to a particular family.

Thank you, Attiyya Malik, for your courage in challenging those of us who have kept silent in a way that feels inviting, not accusatory. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to align my walk with my talk and write this article. I do hope those of you who read it do so with an open heart and take it as an invitation to speak about painful truths online without jumping at each-other’s throats, to stay curious about your own assumptions and willing to learn about others’ and, finally, to do your little bit to right the wrongs in this world, even those that are hardest to face. Even a drop in an ocean makes a difference. I wonder what your drop will be?

Dive deeper

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article. If you are curious to dive more deeply into learning about Vertical Development and how it might impact your work and life, check out our online library of webinars and certification programs accredited by the International Coaching Federation. If you choose to become a paid subscriber to this substack, you will receive complimentary access to all our webinars and a 50% discount on our long-form online programs, including our “Vertical Development Practices for Coaches”.

If you are seeking to train as a developmental coach and get your first ICF credential, check out our ICF Level 1 Foundation Diploma in Developmental Coaching - next cohort starts in Feb 2026 (now running on both Americas/Apac and EMEA time zones). Check out the Program Page for details and reach out for an interview.

Spread the word…

If you want to do your bit to build a wiser, more conscious world, I hope you share this article with others who could benefit from the learning.

And, if you haven’t done it yet, subscribe!

Join your nerdy community and let’s keep on staying curious and learning from each other.