The Ruination Day:
A Letter from the Broken Heart of Myanmar
Photo location: In Bucahenwald Memorial in Weimar,Thuringia.
The Ruination Day
A Letter from the Broken Heart of Myanmar
By Wai Sandar Kyaw
I was a journalist from Myanmar, a single mother of two children, who carries both personal and national pain, I like to share some of my thoughts and feelings with everyone willing to know what’s happened and is happening in Myanmar or with someone who cares about our emotions.
One evening last weekend, I read an article from The Economist titled The Ruination Day”. It’s all about Mr. Trump & America. It intends that the time is calling out a Ruination Day in America under the ruling of the Trump government. I remembered the song by Gillian Welch, called Ruination Day. Then, my desire guided me to play the YouTube:
“April 14th, the day of the Titanic…” — Gillian Welch, Ruination Day
At the end of this song, my thoughts are with my home country and my prayers with the people of Myanmar and my family members who have been suffering from the devastating earthquake as well as civil war.
Every country has its ruination day. Ours began on the morning of February 1st, 2021. The daytime collapsed, dreams shattered, and darkness came to rule. The generals moved silently in the night, but the noise they unleashed has not stopped since.
For Myanmar, that day marked the start of a long descent. We fell — from a fragile hope to deep despair. What had begun as a slow and painful journey toward democracy was crushed in hours. And yet, for many of us, the loss was not abstract. It was personal. It meant death, prison, and fear. It meant silence replacing songs, exile replacing home.
As I write this, I think of Gillian Welch’s Ruination Day. The song is not about Myanmar, but it speaks to that quiet, heavy grief we carry — when a nation dies not in fire alone, but in the slow, daily erosion of hope.
Ruination Day” is a haunting and powerful song by Gillian Welch, full of historical weight and emotional depth. The title alone carries a sense of irrevocable loss, of something sacred being shattered — and that resonates deeply with what has happened to Myanmar since the coup in 2021.
But let me be clear: Myanmar is not yet finished.
We may be battered, but we are not erased. From the jungles where youth take up arms, to the cities where artists still resist, to the mothers like me — raising children in exile, telling them stories of what was and what still could be — the heartbeat of this country still echoes.
This is not just a lament. It is a warning. A memory. And a promise.
In a world entirely of noise, our story risks being forgotten. But I refuse to let that happen. I write this to say: We are still here. Our ruination day may mark a fall, but it also marks the beginning of something else — a reckoning, a reawakening, a revolution of spirit.
Even my thoughts ended up because my son called me to come and join to control his homework. But I have continuously whispered the end of the song…. That is ruination day.
That's the day...
The day that is ruination day.
……When the iceberg hit
Well, they must have known
That God moves on the water Casey Jones.
Casey Jones…