I know how to be an army mother. Ask me anything. My four children have all served in elite combat units. Over the years I have become well-versed in the private dialect of acronyms and unit numbers. I have learned to read a text message for what it leaves unsaid. A mother becomes fluent in silence when her child is a soldier.

I did what mothers do. I cooked. I did laundry. I kept the refrigerator full for whoever walked through the door next. I baked chocolate chip cookies and let myself believe, absurdly, that this too was protection, that enough butter and sugar could stand guard between my children and the world. And I waited.

After October 7th, the waiting changed. My children moved between regular service and reserve duty, the way so many of ours have had to. Of course I worried whether they would come home. But a second question surfaced: what would come home with them?

I did not have to imagine the answer for long. Through my volunteer work with IDF veterans, I have come to know a young man who lives it. His name is not really Amir, but I will call him that here. He is around the same age as my own children. Twelve years ago he fought in Tzuk Eitan (Operation Protective Edge), and his life has been forever altered since. He is sweet and funny, with a disarming warmth about him, yet he cannot hold a job long enough to build a life. A supermarket line can undo him. A crowded bus stop can flood him with a danger that is no longer there but feels entirely present. Even the nights offer no relief, sleep is always just out of reach. Twelve years, and some part of Amir never left Gaza while the rest of the country moved on.

This is what PTSD does. It is an........

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