Catching our breath

Across Israel, we're catching our breath and realizing how much we've been holding.

These last few weeks have been a whirlwind of closing chapters.

H*stages we were worried we would never see again like Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Alon Ohel, Rom Braslavski, Matan Angrest, the Cunio brothers, the Berman brothers, and more- they were returned home, were brought back to their families, their communities, and began the healing process.

H*stages that had been k*lled were also brought back, like Omer Nutra and even Hadar Goldin, who after 11 years, was buried back in Israel yesterday.

Remember before Simchat Torah, when Trump was in the Knesset and declared that the w*r was over? I don't think any of us believed that his hyperbole actually meant it was over or finished. Every citizen of Israel knows how much we still have at stake, and what is still left unfinished.

We don't have any disillusionment about the work that needs to be done.

We still have many of our soldiers away from their families, holding borders, and doing a lot to ensure the security of Israel.

Still now, every so often, we hear explosions off in the distance, or w*rplanes over our heads. The news report it lightly, but it doesn't feel the same. I mostly find out because friends in different cities message each other, "Did you just hear that?"

I am noticing that the further we get away from the last few months, the more I'm aware of where it still resides within my body.

The quieter it feels, the more I feel sensitive to loud sounds, and the thought of going back to those places, of b*mbshelters, and s*rens, and t*rror, and b*ttlefield d*aths, makes me worry that I can't go back there.

Maybe I've been burnt out, and I'm only now beginning to realize what we have gone through in the last two years.

I doubt I am alone in this. We know that bodies that are functioning on adrenaline through traumatic moments often crash when it's finally safe to do so.

I was talking with a friend this morning, and we were talking about the news, and new whispers of "inevitable" w*r with Iran, and we both said the same thing. "I don't think I can do it again."

She pointed out that "If you had told me a few weeks ago, I would have said, yalla, let's go. Once you are in, you are in. But when you are reminded about what quiet feels like. Peace feels like... It's hard to imagine having the strength to go back."

Now, obviously, none of this is up to us.

We don't get to choose peace or w*r.

We do get to choose to live here.

Which I would choose over and over and over again.

In every lifetime.

We are living on the forefront of Jewish history, and this is exactly where I am supposed to be.

But.

Living history is rough.

It tumbles and tangles you into eras of change you can't control.

All you can control is the way you cope; each person in their own way.

The reason I am writing this is to remind you that if you feel this way, too, you aren't alone.

Maybe you haven't had words for it yet, and it's been slinking underneath your skin, waiting to be acknowledged.

If so, I'm extending a hand to you to say, ya, I'm not really OK either. I don't think there is a Z*onist in the world that is at the moment.

I keep replaying the past in my mind, and I can't believe any of it happened.

The Iranian W*r is like a fever dream. The H*stage crisis of the last two years, an inconceivable nightmare. The rise in antisemitism. The losses are a shock to a system that is trying to regulate but can't integrate all of this.

And yet, here we are.

Still getting up each morning, packing lunches, going to work, checking in on friends, catching prayers on the winds of change.

That’s what resilience looks like when the headlines move on: ordinary life that insists on continuing.

Sometimes I think the real aftermath isn’t going to be in the news at all.

It’ll be in the body.

In the way our shoulders tense when the garbage truck rumbles down the street.

In the lurching of our stomachs when someone drops something upstairs.

In the ache that reminds you how much it cost to survive.

If you’re feeling that too, the exhaustion, the confusion, the strange stillness after the storm, please know you’re not alone.

We’re all trying to remember what calm should feel like.

Even when we aren't really there yet.

To heal while the world keeps spinning.

To close p*inful chapters while we begin to write new ones.

To believe, somehow, that the story isn’t over.

It’s just beginning again.