Witness to resilience: Yarden, Ilay, and the stories of their hostage siblings

There have been numerous times over the last 11 months when it has felt difficult to breathe.

Tuesday night was one of those moments.

I was listening to a presentation when the video and pictures of the tunnel where six precious, fellow Israelis were murdered last week were released to the media and popped up on my phone’s news updates.

Just seeing an illustration of how deep the tunnel runs underground and a picture of how narrow and dark it is was enough to knock the air out of me. How did they breathe down there? The thought of the claustrophobia, the humidity, and the stench made my own breathing feel more labored. And that was before I allowed myself to think about the overwhelming, life-threatening fear that must have hung over each hostage. And about what their families, and the family members of all of the remaining hostages, are going through, having to imagine the same.

It is hard to breathe when you imagine having no air.

It is hard to breathe when you think of others taking their last breath.

It is hard to breathe when you feel so crushed by a mix of pain, fear, and despair.

For a few moments, my stomach churned, and I felt myself gasping for air.

But then my lungs began to fill with oxygen.

It was the fresh air that was being pumped into the room by Yarden Gonen and Ilay David.

Yarden and Ilay are the siblings, respectively, of Romi Gonen and Evyatar David, who were both kidnapped from the Nova festival on October 7^th and taken hostage by Hamas terrorists into Gaza. Yarden and Ilay had come to Gush Etzion to share their families’ stories and to engage in dialogue with the community.

For the last 342 days, they have been plunged into an endless nightmare of agony, uncertainty, instability, longing, and debilitating concern and worry.

And yet, Yarden and Ilay began their talk by stating how privileged they feel.

Ilay spoke about how lucky his family feels that they have videos of Evyatar’s kidnapping. He described how they benefited from the clarity of knowing early on that day what had happened to Evyatar, while so many other families had no idea for days, weeks or months about their relatives’ whereabouts. Yarden reiterated a few times how privileged she feels to have spoken to Romi for the last time only minutes before the car she was fleeing in was ambushed. Yarden got to hear Romi’s voice, to tell Romi how much she loved her, and to make sure her sister knew how deeply she was cared for. So many others did not have that opportunity.

Both emphasized how grateful they feel that their siblings were taken alive on that fateful day, and not murdered along with close friends who lost their lives.

The packed room was silent. You could hear a pin drop. As they spoke, you could feel people slowly exhale.

Coming face to face with the resilience of others gives us strength. Seeing and hearing from people who push through adversity literally gives us air.

In their powerful book, Option B, authors Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant discuss building resilience and moving forward after life’s inevitable setbacks.

After Sheryl’s husband, Dave, passed away suddenly while they were vacationing, leaving Sheryl widowed with two young children, she thought she would never recover and that her kids would never be happy again. She turned to Grant, a close friend and a psychologist, and asked what she could do.

Grant knew from observing people that it is possible to find strength in the face of real hardship. He thinks of resilience as the strength and speed of our response to adversity.

According to Grant, resilience is not something that we have, but something that we build over time by changing how we process negative events. A skill set that we work on throughout our lives. It’s something that we can build long before we face any kind of tragedy or difficulty. It’s about learning what it takes for us to find strength in a tough situation and then being able to apply those skills when they’re most needed.

Both in the book and in this interview, Grant shares how severe adversity brings real perspective, which is about finding appreciation, recognizing that life could be worse and realizing how fortunate we are to have the good things that we still do.

Sandberg writes: “Shockingly, one of the things that really helped me the most was focusing on worst-case scenarios. Predicting a bad situation was usually easy for me; it’s a fine old Jewish tradition. But during the early days of despair, my instinct was to try to find positive thoughts. Adam told me the opposite; that it was a good idea to think about how much worse things could be. ‘Worse?’ I asked him. ‘Are you kidding? How could this be worse?’ His answer cut through me. ‘Dave could have had that same cardiac arrhythmia driving your children.’ Wow. The thought that I could have lost all three of them had never occurred to me. I instantly felt overwhelmingly grateful that my children were alive and healthy — and that gratitude overtook some of the grief.”

Listening to Yarden and Ilay, I felt that same sense of “wow.”

“Wow” that siblings experiencing so much suffering can simultaneously focus on what they are grateful for.

“Wow” that siblings who have every reason to be bitter and angry, to shout and to vent, can come and speak with a deliberate goal of bringing others together.

“Wow” that siblings continue to draw strength from their sister and brother in captivity and refuse to give up the fight on their behalf.

And “wow” that on a night when so many were gasping to breathe, we were privileged to be the recipients of so much fresh air.

In this very difficult time, they remind us in very real and raw ways that even with all the pain, fear and feelings of despair, focusing on what one is grateful for has power.

The power to be resilient.

The power to face each day with renewed strength to to fight for the causes we believe in.

The power to help us breathe a little easier.

May Romi, Evyatar and all of our hostages be back here with us soon, breathing some desperately needed fresh air.