I woke up at 6: A.M. to a vibrating phone. It was Saturday morning in Massachusetts. In Israel, it was already afternoon. The screen was filled with missed calls, text messages, and notifications from family and friends. Are you awake? Call me. Turn on the news. My stomach dropped before I even knew why.
At first, I assumed there had been another rocket attack or suicide bombing. Growing up in Israel during the Second Intifada, I was familiar with this routine. But as I refreshed my phone, the messages kept coming. Friends were asking if my family was safe. Videos began to appear online. Then more videos. Then reports. And then the horror. A video. A headline. A name. Another video. Another headline. Another name. Within moments, there was nowhere left to hide.
Throughout my life, I thought that I truly understood trauma. I am a third-generation Holocaust survivor, grew up in Israel, and married a man who lost his father on September 11, 2001. When our kids were born, we almost lost them both to medical complications. Yet, even as I dedicated my professional life to studying the psychological impact of terrorism, I did not truly understand.
I was glued to my seat, refreshing the news over and over. My coffee sat untouched until it turned cold. I couldn’t swallow. At some point I even collapsed on the floor, crying and yelling at my husband: “They even took the kids!”
I remembered watching my own children being intubated as part of the procedure that would ultimately save their lives. Seeing them endure a kind of pain they’d never experienced before, I was struck by an excoriating agony that reached the core of my soul as one terrifying thought ran through my mind: What if I lose them? Overwhelmed by the helplessness and hopelessness that almost stole my ability to speak, I wrote a guide for other parents facing similar situations, explaining what to expect and sharing coping skills for surviving the uncertainty. Helping others gave me something trauma tries to take away: a sense of agency. That simple act of doing for others helped me survive some of the hardest moments of my life. October 7, 2023, was no different.
Within hours of learning of the Hamas-led massacre, I posted my phone number to an Israeli Facebook group and offered my support as a trauma psychologist. Since trauma often leaves us feeling powerless, helping others was my way of reclaiming agency. Instantly, the calls started coming in. People were crying, panicking, looking for loved ones, trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. For hours, I held space for other people’s fear, helping them find calm while the ground was still shifting beneath my own feet.
Soon, other therapists followed suit. Then even more did. Before long, what began as a single social media post had grown into a network of support that changed my life. Looking back, I realize that was the first time I answered the call to transform my expertise into service. Not consciously, not courageously. Just instinctively.
But then came October 8, 2023. While October 7 changed my understanding of trauma, October 8 changed my understanding of people.
Like many Jews, I expected to receive compassion from non-Jewish friends and colleagues. I didn’t expect people to agree on politics. I didn’t expect a consensus. I simply expected a recognition of human suffering. I expected my phone to fill with messages from my non-Jewish friends asking if my family was alive. Instead, before most bodies were even identified and buried, before families even knew whether their loved ones were dead or alive, the world was already starting to justify the massacre.
Trauma is painful, but when people deny your pain, your history, your grief, or your reality, they communicate something profoundly damaging: your suffering does not count. This is the salt poured onto the wound, and it has a name: Traumatic invalidation. I found myself wondering whether it was I or the world that had gone mad. The facts were clear, the videos were everywhere and the horror and grief were plainly real. Yet so many voices insisted on a different version of reality. The betrayal, in turn, hurt almost as much as the trauma itself. Friends disappeared. Professional colleagues went silent. Communities I thought I belonged to suddenly felt uncertain. I felt unsafe, unseen, and targeted. I felt alone. All alone. Experiencing a particular kind of helplessness as an Israeli living in the U.S.—knowing my country was bleeding, my family was there, and my friends were there while I was thousands of miles away—I wrote to a friend, I have a big hole in my heart. It is the size of a country.
For months, I oscillated between helplessness and action. Sadness told me there had been a loss, while fear told me there was danger and anger demanded a response. I was feeling guilty as my children were laughing in the next room while other parents were desperately searching for theirs. Trying to stay afloat in my everyday life, I took care of my kids, answered emails, attended meetings, cared for my patients, and supervised my trainees. Hugging my children tighter than ever before, I breathed in their scent wondering why my chest hurt as I watched them walking off to school. When I didn’t know what else to do, I leaned harder into helping others and myself—meeting strangers, listening to their stories of invalidation and pain, finding a new community of people who gave me strength.
Gradually, I realized that the work I had been doing for years was no longer enough. The moment called for something different, and I could either wait for someone else to answer the call, or I could answer it myself. There was no single moment when I decided to change the course of my career. No speech. No revelation. Just the quiet realization that I could no longer remain on the sidelines. Expanding my therapy room beyond its four walls, I turned therapy into testimony, research into advocacy, and teaching into bearing witness. Somewhere between grief and responsibility, the career I had spent years building became my calling.
I organized mental health support. I trained clinicians and educators. I spoke at hospitals, schools, universities, and state commissions. I published research papers, advocated for the release of the hostages taken by Hamas, and stood beside survivors. I wasn’t simply studying trauma or teaching post-traumatic growth anymore. I was living them.
While October 7 changed my understanding of trauma, October 8 changed my understanding of people.
As I began writing and speaking publicly about traumatic invalidation, messages started pouring in from around the world, each a reminder that naming an invisible wound is, in itself, an act of healing. People thanked me for giving language to experiences they had struggled to explain. In trying to make sense of my own pain, I gave thousands of others permission to acknowledge and put words to theirs. What started as a response to my own grief grew into advocacy, public speaking, research, and policy work. The awards and recognition that followed have been meaningful, but the greatest gift has been discovering the vulnerability and courage that led to connection, calling, and hope. The pain never disappeared, but neither did the purpose it revealed.
I often teach that resilience is not the absence of suffering, but the ability to continue living despite suffering. There is, however, another possibility: Post-traumatic growth. The idea that trauma, while never desirable, can become a catalyst for transformation. Not simply bouncing back, but leaping forward and growing into someone you might never have become otherwise.
Today, I have a new and more complex understanding of my identity and my community. I see courage through new eyes. I can comprehend what it means to stand up when doing so comes at a cost. Most important, I understand that hope is not a feeling. Hope is a choice. I now realize that, as a Jew, I know something about surviving darkness. I know something about carrying grief while continuing to build. I know something about refusing to surrender my humanity.
The morning of October 7, 2023, was the moment the world changed. But my own Hineni moment came later, when I recognized that despair was asking me to become smaller, quieter, and more afraid. Instead, I chose to become louder, reclaim my space, and act with more courage than ever before. Not because I felt brave. Not because I had certainty. But because responsibility had become unavoidable. I have learned that courage is not the absence of fear, but the decision not to let fear have the final word. I often think about my grandparents; they survived a world that tried to erase them. My children deserve a world that refuses to erase them again.
Somewhere between those two generations, I found my answer.
I aim to embody the wisdom of Pirkei Avot: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.” I cannot heal every wound or change every heart. But I can answer the part of the work that is mine. Every lecture, every article, every difficult conversation is my way of having that final word. Every patient I sit with, every child I help protect, every act of bearing witness is another way of answering the same call.
Here I am.
Hineni.
