We tend to recognise disturbance by what it leaves behind.

A broken building. A flooded street. A displaced family. 

But disturbance does not always arrive with the sound of something breaking. Sometimes, it is quieter: the gradual disappearance of a language between generations, the feeling of returning home after a disaster and finding that home no longer means what it used to, a room that protects the body but cannot provide safety, or a diagnosis that explains an experience without ever explaining the person who lives through it. It can even exist in the stories we tell ourselves about suffering — turning pain into something beautiful, frightening, fixable, or explainable.

This issue of ECHO explores these quieter forms of disturbance and what they leave behind. The Aftershock Within looks at the traces that remain after disaster, while A Room That Could Not Be a Home asks us to reconsider what makes a place feel like home. Symbolic Deification examines the contradictions in the ways women are placed on pedestals, reminding us that disturbance can also exist within the structures and stories we have grown accustomed to.

The purpose is not to always to resolve what unsettles us, but to pause, look closer, and ask what it leaves behind.