Strong Feelings

The pandemic broke our understanding of the world. How do we put the pieces together again? Samira Rajabi joins us to point the way—and it all starts with getting comfortable “sitting in the shit” with each other.Samira Rajabi is a researcher, writer, and assistant professor of media studies at the University of Colorado. Her work focuses on the intersection of trauma, social media, disability studies, and feminist theory, and her book, All My Friends Live in My Computer: Tactical Media, Trauma and Meaning Making, came out earlier this year.I think this impulse to compare comes from this sense that what you're going through is not legible to other people. So we often sort of demean our own suffering because we don't think that it's worthy in the eyes of society, or culture, or our peer group. I think the way to cope with that is to listen better. So rather than being in a space, where it's like, "Oh, you say you're suffering? Well, listen to my suffering," it's, "How might I hear what you're saying with a rec