An Ouch That Became Healing
“My son was actually upset with me,” Iris told us this week. Why was he upset? Because he felt less loved than his brother and sister were. Everything was harder for 20-year-old Yotam who grew up struggling with many disabilities. He sadly said to his mother, “You don’t notice my efforts, how hard I’m trying.”
Can you imagine your child telling you such a thing, Iris asked us. How could you possibly respond? Such painful, honest words from your child who’d often battled with deep depression. It landed like a dart in her heart. But Iris wanted – she desperately wanted – her son to feel heard. To feel lovingly listened to. This wasn’t at all how she felt, but it was how he felt. So, swallowing the huge lump in her throat, she tearfully beheld her beloved son and uttered three words, “You are right.”
Yotam would be taken Hostage on October 7. After 65 days, he did what nobody could imagine. He heroically escaped. But then he was tragically misidentified and accidentally killed by the IDF. Anger and agony naturally followed. But there was more.
Iris had been a different kind of Hostage-mother. She hadn’t joined gatherings or rallies. She hadn’t followed newsfeeds. She sensed that their conjecture would take her to darker places. For her, uncertainty about Yotam’s plight was okay. She chose instead to imagine a more hopeful circumstance. She trusted her country’s leadership – even though she didn’t vote for them – and those fighting to bring Yotam home. Iris was able to do something superhuman. When she learned how devastated the IDF soldiers became by their terrible mistake in taking her son’s life, she released them from blame, rallied their spirits, strengthened support for Hostage-families, and re-awakened national resolve.
How did she do it? Perhaps a glimpse can be found in a blending of messages from this week’s Torah and Prophetic portions. We find Moses’ misery over the people’s pointless murmurings leading him to utter darkness “If this goes on, then kill me rather than exposing me to such misery” (Num 11:15). Yet the Prophet imagines, “inviting each other to the shade of vines and fig trees” (Zech. 3:10). Maybe it’s precisely in the darkest hour when, by looking up-and-out, we can become certain of the dawn. Certain of the capacity to turn agony into a song.
A therapist had invited Iris to imagine what her son would’ve said to her. Here’s what this loving mother felt sure Yotam would say. “I’m a fighter. I fought to stay alive. I released myself. But it was a dangerous war zone. I did something really hard. I didn’t let Hamas murder me. I died as a free person.”
In other words, Iris realized she’d “noticed his effort.”
Her son’s painfully-honest claim hadn’t merely pierced her heart. It had also liberated her. It taught her what her son needed more-of from his mom. And that, ultimately, is what helped to heal her and for her to heal others. Consider, perhaps, how an ouch can, with trusted-help, be remade into something healing.
