Elizabeth Joy

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Elizabeth Joy

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15/12/2025

I’ve been struggling for months now to try and articulate the chaos we’re all descending into, or, perhaps more accurately, we’re all being dragged into by our deranged and despotic ruling class. I’ve tried to put what’s happening into words over and over again but I’ve been unable to encompass not only the horror of it but also the sheer lunacy of it. The batsh*t craziness of it. Every time I’ve sat myself down to write - because I feel I must write in order to make sense of it, in order to retain some semblance of sanity - nothing would come, it was all just buzzing, blooming confusion.

Until one day, sitting in front of a blank screen, all my paid and unpaid work done for the day, the phrase ‘the centre cannot hold’ - from Yeats' famous poem 'The Second Coming' - popped into my head and off I galloped. Hopefully this will be as cathartic for you to read as it was for me to write ... It's good to get things off your chest sometimes!

14/12/2025

I went along to the Ōtautahi rally for Gaza for the first time in way too long yesterday. And even though it was only a couple of weeks before Christmas and the media would have us believe there's a 'ceasefire' in Gaza (There isn't - Israel has broken the ceasefire over 500 times and killed hundreds of Palestinians) there was still an amazing turnout - lots of people and even a couple of fabulous activist dogs! (check out photo #2)

Huge respect too to all of the wonderful humans who organise and marshall these rallies and to all of those who put their bodies on the streets every week - week in week out, rain or shine - doing the hard mahi on behalf of all of us. Huge respect too to all those who attended the National Protest in Wellington on Wednesday December 10. One of our speakers on Saturday was an impressive young woman (whose name I unfortunately didn't catch) who participated in a protest in Parliament on December 9 and got trespassed for 2 years for calling our government to account for complicity in genocide (see photo #5).

05/11/2025

Just in case anyone out there is still labouring under the delusion that all this started on October 7, 2023. Honestly one of the stupidest Zionist talking points if you know anything at all about the history of Palestine-Israel - but I know there are still a lot of people who, due to not knowing that history, still believe it.

31/10/2025

In lieu of my latest Substack post, which I had been hoping to have finished by today (the universe had other plans), here is a broken shell on an old deck in one of my favourite places in the world - Golden Bay.

The world right now, seems even more broken than this shell (essentially the theme of the Substack) and I'm struggling not to despair. But those of us here in the West have absolutely no right, and no time, to give in to despair - we have to keep doing everything we can to keep the pressure up on our rotten, cowardly governments to sanction Israel and we have to keep raising our voices about all the other injustices Western countries are involved in or responsible for which - just saying - is 99.9% of the injustices currently going on in the world right now.

22/10/2025

Me at work … look hard at the photo and you’ll spot me reflected in the window of Mrs Bottomley’s Flowers. Two of my clients - Munns the Man’s Store and Cosi Fan Tutte - are located in the beautiful Tannery Emporium - and I usually meet my other clients for mentoring or photography sessions there too - so I’m lucky enough to get to spend quite a bit of time in this very beautiful place.

I took this photo in the middle of photographing some fashion for Cosi Fan Tutte - some beautiful knits by famous Scottish Knitwear company ERIBÉ & also a nice wee jacket by Aussie fashion house The Shanty Corporation - all beautifully modelled by the always stylish Karina.

I’ve got a lot on at work right now so I don’t have a lot of time to write - I’ve been working on my current Substack for weeks and I feel no closer to finishing it. I try to write regularly on Fridays but last week I just had too much on. I’ve got a couple of singing things coming up too so I’ve been doing a LOT of note-bashing to get the rep into my head. Too much to do - too little time!!

13/10/2025

Another ceasefire in Gaza. Praying this will be the one that will hold - but I have to admit I don’t feel optimistic. Israel has made it clear from Day 1 what its aims were - they wanted revenge, yes, and they claimed they wanted their hostages back though their actions denied this claim, but what they really wanted to destroy the will of the people of Gaza, to kill as many of them as possible and drive the rest away so they could take their land. Zionists are all pointing their fingers and asking why people aren’t celebrating this ceasefire. It’s because we don’t trust Israel - that’s why. For nearly 80 years they have had exactly the same aim and they have done exactly the same thing - they want the land, all of it, from the river to the sea, and they want the Palestinian people gone.

That aim has not changed despite this ceasefire so while we are happy for the respite it provides to the battered bodies and souls of the people of Gaza we can never really celebrate until Palestine is free and the people there can all live in one free and democratic state - a state that treats every one of its citizens with dignity and respect, a state where everyone who lives there can be free from oppression, injustice, and brutality.

I don’t know who took this photo but it encapsulates so much about Gaza, about the resilience of the Palestinian people, about the horror of finding yourself in the gun-sights of power, about the terrible, terrible toll Israel’s expansionist, racist, supremacist goals have taken on all those who get in its way.

✊🏻🇵🇸❤️

18/09/2025

“I only wish that the truth has a tongue …”

ً 🇵🇸

07/08/2025

A frost-rimmed world on our walk earlier this week. Today - milder but with a Southerly change on the way. Trying to maintain my sanity in a world that seems to have gone mad. It is so important to take the time to notice beauty and to feel joy - however small, however fleeting. It feeds your soul and keeps you from losing your footing amidst the chaos.

03/08/2025

I’ve been ranting on Substack again ... link in bio will take you to my home page. In my latest article I explain (using a hearty dose of mental-health enhancing sarcasm) some of the methods our Western media and politicians use to blow smoke in our eyes about what’s going on in Palestine so that as many of us as possible remain confused, befuddled and even a little bit bored about those people who are ‘always fighting over there’.

And the reason they work so hard at this is because if the majority of the population knew what Israel had been up to for the last 76 years - never mind what they’ve been up to since October 7 - then Israel, and its Western backers, simply never would have gotten away with it.

21/07/2025

Two of the special beings in my life walking in the Hanmer Forest last weekend - hubby Kevin and our 11month old Airedale pup Figaro. Kev has just retired from 34 years lecturing at Lincoln University so we decided to celebrate by going on a wee trip away - our first for a long while. Our daughter and her boyfriend came with us and we had a lovely time walking in the forest and wallowing in the hot pools. Precious times ❤️

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