The past year exposed me to the full spectrum of emotions that exist on the soul's palette.
The morning of Oct. 7 caught me in a shelter in Kibbutz Or HaNer. I had been looking forward to that Saturday – I was supposed to meet my son Yotam at a music festival in Tel Aviv and listen to him perform. I was buzzing with excitement.
It never happened. Instead, Yotam was snatched from his home in Kfar Aza and dragged into the tunnels of Gaza. For the seventy days I waited for him in Israel, and up until the moment of writing this piece, I've been preoccupied with discovery.
Those first weeks of waiting, we stayed in a stranger's spacious, luxurious house with a pool overlooking the Jerusalem hills. This temporary haven allowed our family to be together. For three weeks that felt like an eternity, I discovered depths of inner strength I never knew I had.
I learned that I could hold onto the certainty that my son was alive, even without a shred of information. I trusted my gut, despite every day receiving messages of more bodies being discovered in Yotam's neighborhood. I decided that as long as I had no information about Yotam, the rumors wouldn't confuse me.
I discovered that I can continue to have a consciousness of security toward my country, despite the fact that on Oct. 7, it seemed that everything had fallen apart. I can continue to trust the military and intelligence, knowing deep inside that things will work out one way or another.
A few weeks ago, I was photographed with a bereaved mother, a friend from before Oct. 7, whose son was also killed in this war. We were photographed for a newspaper article in the vineyards near my home. Suddenly, I saw a butterfly and said, "Look, a butterfly, did you see it?" She didn't notice and didn't see it as it fluttered by. She insisted on seeing it and said, "But where is it? I want to see it." It's here; you just can't see it. It's here.
This was my approach during the time we waited for Yotam. The discovery that even when I can't see him, he's here – with certainty.
The moment we left our homes in the south and arrived in the Jerusalem area – first in Neve Ilan and later in Shoeva – I saw and discovered the people of Israel. At first, dimly, hesitantly, the people who would stop me on the street and tell me they were praying for Yotam. Women, usually with head coverings, hugged me with infinite love, cried, and said they wanted my Yotam to return. This surprised and simultaneously delighted me.
At the end of October – in a moving encounter at a girls school in Jerusalem, where I met the Guedalia family, a religious family from Beit Shemesh – I went through an emotional upheaval and a significant change in my entire perception of life. I met a bereaved mother, Dina Guedalia, whose son Yosef Malachi Guedalia was killed in Kfar Aza, close to Yotam's home. The encounter was overwhelming and moving because I realized in an instant that Dina and I – despite thinking we might be different, that there were fundamental differences between us due to her religious lifestyle and my secular one – share the strongest common denominator there is: we are both mothers, we both lost the most precious thing, we are both Jewish, and our sons were taken because of their bravery. One was a combat soldier in a Duvdevan commando unit, and the other a read-headed musician, secular, with mental health challenges, who wanted to be a combat soldier but couldn't.
This understanding stayed with me throughout the waiting period for Yotam. My stigmas about people and sectors broke down. My heart opened to love for all the people of Israel because I saw its beauty everywhere.
There was an infinite generosity from people who helped in every way – cooking, baking, clothing, financial and emotional support – endlessly. Just giving, hugging, loving, helping, and supporting. A huge window opened in my life to get to know my people, whom I knew less in the past.
Almost a year has passed since Oct. 7, and today I meet with different audiences in Israel and around the world. I speak to soldiers, youth in schools, secular and religious, hi-tech companies, communities in central Israel and the periphery.
I've been to the United States, Brazil, and South Africa, and I convey the same message to everyone: I've shed the burden of stigmas, the burden of categorization, the burden of "them" and "us."
I can love every person, even if they think differently from me, and know that they and I are part of the same people – the strong and existing people of Israel.
