05/19/2026
Our hearts are especially with the community at the Islamic Center of San Diego and with every family and loved one carrying the unimaginable weight of this tragedy. There is a particular kind of heartbreak that comes with violence touching your own community. Knowing that families will wake up tomorrow without someone they love. Knowing there are people moving through shock, grief, fear, and trauma that words cannot really soften.
Loss like this carries its own kind of ache, that settles deep into the body. The kind that makes ordinary things feel impossible for a while. The paralysis of trying to understand something that will never fully make sense.
We are grieving the long nights that follow tragedies like this. The silence after everyone goes home. The unbearable stillness of realizing the world has continued moving while yours has split apart entirely. We wish for those impacted to be met there gently, by people willing to sit beside them without demanding words, explanations, or strength before they are ready.
It is also difficult to separate moments like this from the larger atmosphere so many people in this country have been carrying for years now. The growing hostility toward communities already living under the weight of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and religious hatred has created a kind of constant emotional tension in American life. A quiet understanding that some people move through the world knowing they may not be safe simply because of who they are, how they worship, or how they exist. There is deep grief in that reality too.
Nothing about this feels distant. This is our community too, and the grief is moving through it quietly, touching people in ways that may not be immediately visible.
We do not have anything polished or profound to offer. Only our care, our grief alongside yours, and our deepest wishes that those mourning are given moments of rest, tenderness, and space to grieve what should never have been taken from them.
