Monks, Murder, and My Mental Health: The Impact of Witnessing Violence and Moral Injury

The new year began somewhat hopeful for me. I had spent the last few weeks of 2025 trying to restructure my life in ways that might support a more balanced work and life rhythm, something that would allow me to operate within my capacity while still accomplishing what mattered to me. I entered 2026 believing that kind of preparation might be enough. Less than thirty days in, I feel exhausted in ways I am still trying to maneuver through.

I have not decided whether what I am feeling comes from the empath in me, the neurodivergent part of me with a heightened sensitivity and deep pull toward justice, or something far simpler. It may just be basic human decency struggling to come to terms with a reality I probably already knew, but can no longer carry without feeling the weight of it. Whatever the source, I cannot seem to shake the cumulative heaviness of what has been unfolding in the world.

Buddhist monks during the Walk of Peace. Photo by Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP

Lately, I've been witnessing two opposing happenings at the same time, both impacting my nervous system in differing ways. On one hand, I have found comfort and inspiration in watching a group of Buddhist monks walk from Texas to Washington, D.C. on a pilgrimage for peace. I have been moved by the way they stop along the way to speak about inner peace and its connection to collective peace, and by the people from all walks of life who meet them on the road, sometimes for only a few minutes, yet leave describing those steps as quietly healing.

A former classmate attended one of the monks’ talks and shared video footage, allowing me to hear their teachings firsthand. Listening to those principles, watching people pause long enough to walk beside one another with intention, felt grounding in a way that felt good and relieving. This is what the world needs, I kept thinking.

At the same time, I have watched video footage of Renee Good and Alex Pretti being shot and killed by US. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement officers within weeks of each other, with no sense of accountability following. Both were legal observers trying to bear witness to the treatment of immigrants, asking only that others be treated with basic decency. What they received instead was violence. Murder.

Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse for veterans and a legal observer trained in de-escalation, to use communication skills, empathy, and active listening to reduce the intensity of a situation and resolve conflicts without the use of force.

With Alex's murder in particular, I have been deeply disturbed and my body keeps responding to how familiar it felt. This has happened before. A group of law enforcement beating and pistol-whipping one man who was already on the ground, then walking away free. I’ve spent years understanding this kind of violence through the lens of racism, and that understanding has always been necessary. America has a long history of doing this to Black and Brown bodies, and there was never confusion for me about that. But what shifted for me here wasn’t that it happened to a white man. It was that race no longer explained the extent of what I was witnessing. The force, the excess, the absence of restraint didn’t feel anchored to hatred alone. It felt unbounded. What I was left confronting was something deeper than racism, something closer to a complete disregard for human life itself. And that realization has been far harder for me to process.

My heart feels broken in a way that is different from sadness. It feels like a threshold.  I can no longer make excuses for the level of harm I’m witnessing. I never believed the world or its systems were pure or just, but now, there's no room for denial or cognitive dissonance, the quiet mental maneuver of knowing something is wrong while finding ways to live alongside it without fully letting it in. That distance has collapsed. I feel like I’ve seen something I can’t unsee, not just in the events themselves, but in what they reveal. It’s less like discovering something new and more like watching the curtain fall, realizing there is no great and powerful force behind it, only people making choices. And I don’t think I will ever relate to the world, or to people, in quite the same way again.

It has started to affect my mental health, and subsequently my physical health. I feel it in the way my capacity has narrowed, in how much effort it now takes to stay regulated, to stay present. I am not overwhelmed by a single event. It’s about what sustained witnessing does when there is no sense of accountability to contain it.

The past few months have kept my nervous system in near-constant fight-or-flight. My body has been fighting, my health has felt in flight, and I’ve been doing my best to keep it together. Lately' I've been getting back into my plant girl era, as well as puzzles, painting and pausing social media, as a way to quiet some of the outside noise that has kept my system on high alert.

Caring for my plants reminds me that life can be tended slowly, without urgency or force. Puzzles give my attention somewhere finite to land, a beginning and an end I can see, which feels different from the endlessness of what I’ve been asked to witness. Paint-by-numbers slows me down in a way that feels regulating, offering clear boundaries and predictable movement when everything else feels uncontained. Pausing social media has given my nervous system a break from constant exposure, helping me stay oriented to my own life rather than absorbing everything all at once. I am not withdrawing, just placing boundaries around how much my nervous system can absorb without collapsing under the weight of it.

When held together, monks, murder, and my mental health are no longer separate things. The walk for peace, the violence I’ve witnessed, and the strain I feel in my own body are part of the same moment I’m living through. What I choose to take in, what I can no longer explain away, and how I care for myself in the midst of it all are inseparable. I feel different. I understand things differently. I don’t yet know what this shift will ask of me, but I know I’m no longer pretending not to feel it. I’m here with it. And for now, I am okay.