Between Sirens and Silence: A Journey Interrupted by War

Co-founder of the Trauma Informed Learning Alliance, an associate professor at USC’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, and a member of the Academic Engagement Network. She has worked in trauma-related mental health for over 25 years. 

In February of 2024, just five months after October 7, I traveled to Israel on an academic delegation as Israeli scholars were being boycotted around the world. For four days, we sat and listened to 12 hours of testimony a day from academics, researchers, first responders, and thought leaders. Stories of terror. Stories of death. Stories of resilience. My voice disappeared. I stopped speaking. I couldn’t find words for the pain I heard and held.  I was slipping away.

As a Jewish woman and an expert in trauma informed approaches, processing the trauma of October 7, I committed to joining a trauma mission, with fifteen other Jewish mental health providers, in partnership with the American Jewish Medical Association. I hoped it would be both a path to my own healing and a way to deepen my commitment to advocating for my community.  At this moment, when other communities I had previously stood with were not standing with me, I could do this; a mission of healing, of bearing witness. This mission was supposed to be different. I was supposed to find meaning and purpose. 

This time, I was prepared. I inquired during the interview for the trauma mission. We were going to have downtime. We were going to have processing groups. I was traveling with fellow psychologists. I would not disappear.

I planned a long journey: Los Angeles to Chicago to Madrid to Barcelona to Tel Aviv. But three hours into the seven-hour flight from Chicago to Madrid, I received a text.

Israel had just attacked Iran. Israeli airspace was closed, and all flights  in and out of the country were canceled. El Al, for the first time since 1982, suspended all operations due to the conflict. Israel was suddenly cut off from the world.

My heart started to race. I couldn’t sleep, even as the cabin dimmed and passengers around me drifted off. My body was in fight, not rest, mode. Tears streamed silently. I kept refreshing my browser again and again, desperate for updates. The Wi-Fi kept cutting out. Should I take the sleeping pill I packed? No, as I need to stay alert to find a way to get into Israel. Even during a war, Israel somehow felt safer.   I cried quietly into my sweatshirt.

When I landed in Madrid I learned that flights to Tel Aviv were canceled. I was paralyzed. Several colleagues from the trauma mission were already in Israel. Were they safe? Were they in bomb shelters? In safe rooms?

I felt helpless. Directionless. I didn’t want to be in Madrid. I wanted to be with my people—in a country at war. I didn’t want to be alone in the diaspora. I wanted to be there, showing up to bear witness.  I believed in the purpose of this trip.

Now, I was alone—a trauma expert in a foreign country, a bearer of others’ pain, now drowning in my own. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think. My mind was racing, and I couldn’t catch my breath.  I returned to a hotel I once stayed at in 2019 for something that was comforting and familiar. 

There was a strange juxtaposition in the messages I received. One friend suggested I visit a museum. Another said, “It’s good you’re there—rest, reset.” But what is rest when I feel no purpose, no meaning? When my entire nervous system is screaming to run toward the storm, not away from it? The room began to spin. “Vertigo,” a friend texted. “Drink water,” he said. I was sweating, pacing, spiraling.

A Jewish friend texted: Don’t wear Jewish jewelry. Don’t say you’re Jewish. Spain is like the States, he said.

So I was alone. And in hiding.

And then I remembered the grant. I was given funds to write an op-ed about the trauma mission in Israel. But I wasn’t in Israel. I was in Spain, lost. I panicked.  What is my purpose now?

I texted the grantor and panicked about the grant and the funding. She texted,  “Do not worry about the money even a little bit. Worry about your safety and knowing where you’re going to be in the next 24 hours.” I told her I’d shower, try to sleep for a few hours, and make a plan.

She texted back , “Drink red wine, have tapas, and write an op-ed about a trauma therapist experiencing trauma midflight. Write for your own healing and collective healing. Her words stopped me. Was that what was happening to me? I felt a wave of emotion—relief, confusion, purpose. She added, “Find a café. Sit down and write. We’ll get it published.” We were a “we”. I was not alone and now I had meaning and connection.

So here I am, in a corner of a tapas bar in Madrid, sipping red wine, nibbling jamón and pan con tomate, and writing. The lighting is soft. I’m surrounded by books. And yet, I am crying. Quietly. 

Other friends suggested I stay a few days in Madrid, then perhaps visit friends in  London or France.   But part of me still wants to be in Israel. I still want to be there with those who are running in and out of shelters. One friend in Tel Aviv texts: “Missiles are being shot down. Safe rooms are our new Shields of Abraham.”

Airspace continues to be closed and flights cancelled. It’s clear that I will not be joining the mission. Today, I decided to take a walk and, to my surprise, stumbled upon an Israeli perfumery. The moment I stepped inside, I felt an unexpected sense of relief. I began talking with the woman behind the counter, and when she told me the owners were Israeli, I felt it again—that quiet comfort of safety of connection. 

I then realized it was Father’s Day. Twenty-five years ago, I visited the Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Madrid with my dad. He suddenly died four years ago, and in that moment of memory, I knew where I needed to go. I set out on foot, determined to find the synagogue again.

An hour later, in the 93-degree heat, I arrived—and there it was. The same door I remembered from decades ago. I asked an elder standing by the door, if this was a synagogue. He said yes, but it was closed. I stood there for a moment, taking it in. Then I took a photo and sent it to the same  Jewish friend who had lived in Spain. His reply came quickly: “Stay away from Jewish and Israeli places. They are repeatedly targeted throughout Europe.”

His warning was sobering, but it also made something else clear: despite the fear, the danger, and the distance, our connections as Jews in the diaspora still hold deep meaning. That sense of belonging—whether in a perfumery, a memory, or a locked synagogue door—can be profoundly healing. We find pieces of ourselves in each other, even across continents. And in those fleeting moments of recognition and remembrance, we are reminded that we’re not alone.

We never heal in isolation. We heal in connection. And while I sit here alone, writing from exile with jamón and Rioja instead of alarms, safe rooms and bomb shelters,  I know this: This is trauma. This is historical trauma. This is generational trauma. I may not have been in Israel, and may not have been able to participate in the Trauma Mission, but what I was experiencing connected me to my peers and my people, across borders and circumstances.

Even in this dim café, I write for our healing. I write to survive. Because trauma doesn’t always wait for a safe landing—it finds us midflight, without warning. Our nervous systems remind us long before our minds can catch up: something happened. Something is still happening. And the body, unwilling to forget, keeps score in every breath, every pause, every sleepless night.

In what I now recognize as a response of generational trauma, I decided to visit a Hammam in hopes of calming my nervous system. Before October 7, I wouldn’t have thought twice about such a decision. But now, I found myself scanning the room, silently hoping no one would know I was Jewish.

The space was dim, lit only by a few scattered candles. I couldn’t see clearly, and I didn’t understand the instructions being given to me. Everything felt disorienting—like I had entered a tunnel with no clear way out. My chest tightened.

And then the tears returned. I couldn’t stop thinking about the hostages still being held. The darkness of the room mirrored the helplessness I felt. I wanted to leave. I wanted to run. I needed to breathe.

And still, my experience pales in comparison to Jessica’s. We were supposed to meet in Jerusalem for the Trauma Mission. She made it into Israel just before the airspace closed; I did not. Now, she’s grappling with an impossible choice—whether to bring her daughter into Jerusalem or escape by boat to reunite with her in Greece. At night, she runs in and out of bomb shelters. Last night, she described being packed into one with dozens of others in 100-degree heat. I didn’t know what to say, so I simply suggested she tap—one of the only grounding tools I could offer from afar.

I may be far from home, but I’m not alone. In every text, every memory, every stranger’s kindness, I am reminded: we heal in connection. And for those of us scattered across time zones and traumas, that connection may just be our greatest form of resistance.