An intimate birthday party for a distantly related cousin. To my left at the table, a family member, mother of three, from a kibbutz bordering on Sderot, as in “that’s rather close to Gaza.” The kibbutz was saved from terrorists on October 7, a story of its own. But my relatives spent that day, without electricity in their home shelter for over 12 hours until able to flee to Ashkelon to a set of grandparents. Officially, they were evacuated like their entire kibbutz until March 2024. The family of five lived in two different hotel rooms in two different cities during that time. They visited us a few months after the evacuation. We invited our granddaughters who had visited the kibbutz and played with the evacuated kids in their home and pool in the summer of 2023.

At the birthday dinner, the mother and I laughed and hugged and talked and listened. She told me how she sought help, ultimately finding the strength to ask for it while drowning in feelings of guilt – feeling less than deserving of the right to struggle with the experiences of that day. She didn’t lose a family member. She didn’t lose a close friend. She just spent........

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