The Blogs: One Foot Here, One Foot There

Six months after October 7th, 2023, I wrote a note on my phone – it felt like an inventory list. I wanted to remember who I was at that moment. I didn’t edit it and still haven’t.

In the last six months since October 7th, I’ve been:

Defending Israel’s right to exist and defend itself
Triggered by many sounds that remind me of the sirens and booms I heard for the first three days of the war when I was still in Tel Aviv
Picturing where the hostages are and what kind of physical and emotional abuse they’re enduring
Terrified and saddened by how much of the world is antisemitic and wants Israel off the map
Trying to wrap my head around the fact that Jews feel safer in Israel, in a war, than in the U.S. and other countries
Avoiding photos and videos from the massacre that happened at the Nova Festival as a music festival lover who was supposed to be at a music festival miles away on October 12
Having conversations with people who I don’t agree with and realize I’m no longer aligned with
More attached to being Jewish and having Israeli citizenship than ever before
Trying to comprehend how at 11pm on October 6th, I wrote “ my apartment feels like a warm hug, embracing me, and reminding me that with all of the difficult moments in life, disappointment and fears — it’s going to be OK. I’m safe. I’m supported. I have everything I need.”
Learning who my friends are and watching many disappear
Fundraising and sending essentials to soldiers, displaced families and trying to be as helpful as possible from afar
Trying to comprehend how Israel wasn’t prepared for October 7th, and refused to listen to the warnings especially by female soldiers
Trying to prioritize my own mental health and well-being
Mourning the life I lived in Tel Aviv that I had no closure from
Missing my friends who are like family in Tel Aviv
Wondering how so many horrible people get elected as government officials
Missing the beach and the calm I felt as I stepped my toes into the sand
Longing for precedented times and exhausted by the constant horrible news
Horrified that hostage families continue waking up to another day their loved ones are
Trying to find my footing in a city that has always been home and has felt so unfamiliar and different since I returned
Stunned by how quickly people are to post, chant and protest about a cause that they feel “so attached to” but can’t speak to any of the actual issues at hand
Told by numerous practitioners how much stress I hold in my body
On antidepressants and had my dose increased
Trying to figure out how to rebuild my business and life when the world is crashing down around us and hostages are STILL held in Gaza

As this year’s anniversary approached, I kept returning to that note, as if reading it might unlock something new. Instead, it reminded me how heavy it still feels to carry all of this. When October 7th arrived again, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself, except sit with it – to remember, to feel, to honor.

Throughout the day, I found myself staring at the makeshift memorial I set up in my apartment. A yahrtzeit candle from the store where my non-Jewish best friend’s husband works — the same friend who’s been one of my greatest allies since 10/7. A beaded Magen David candle gifted by our mutual friend, an American Israeli. A photo of me watching the sunset on my 38th birthday in Tel Aviv — printed and framed for my 40th by another dear friend. The “We Will Dance Again” and “Bring Them Home” dog tags I’ve worn through so much of the past two years — the latter gifted by another non-Jewish friend at the start of the war.

Staring at that picture, I see an unrecognizable person. A different version of me. Someone I feel completely disconnected from.

She wasn’t medicated. She was ten pounds lighter and didn’t feel like she was constantly climbing a broken ladder, desperate to reach just one more step before falling back down (a metaphor I referenced in a voice note to myself on January 8, 2024, that I just listened back to – having no memory of recording.) She didn’t have a therapist suggesting she find new business in New York, to stop centering every part of her life around Israel.

That woman feared crowds because of claustrophobia, not because she imagined a terrorist attack and having nowhere to hide. She loved dipping her toes in the Mediterranean every day, no matter the weather — not worrying about whether she could reach a bomb shelter fast enough with her weak lungs. She didn’t check out people’s Instagram accounts after meeting them or getting connected to them to ensure they didn’t hate us.

She didn’t hear the sound of a motorcycle and immediately think it was a siren. Let alone the sound of a beeping washing machine or dishwasher, constantly feeling her anxiety increase in her body.

She didn’t have flashbacks to rushing out of a car as she approached the airport due to a potential bomb threat, not knowing what was happening, let alone not understanding the Hebrew that everyone was screaming.

She often felt politically aligned with most people she knew and couldn’t have imagined how many would one day stop talking to her because she stood up for Israel and innocent civilians. Because she was an outspoken Jewish person who had been living in Israel on that horrific day.

And she didn’t yet know she was about to leave Israel abruptly, not to return, giving up her home remotely for the second time in three years, having done the same during the pandemic.

On the morning of October 7th, 2025, in New York, almost exactly two years after waking up in Tel Aviv, I found myself revisiting those memories.

At 7:04 a.m. on October 7, 2023, my neighbor texted to say she’d heard the Iron Dome. I remember staying in bed for hours, refreshing the news and social media, trying to understand what was happening, as one by one, my Israeli friend and her family came to my apartment to take refuge. They didn’t have bomb shelters, and knew it was better to stay together. Friends and family from around the world started reaching out, people I hadn’t talked to in years but were aware that I was likely the only person they knew living in Israel at the time so they felt the need to check in. I became overwhelmed by the outreach.

That same instinct to show up for one another is what I’ve felt again, except it’s shifted.

Two years later, a few non-Jewish friends reached out with love, something I’m always grateful for. Over the past two years, I’ve lost a lot of people: friends, clients, relationships that couldn’t withstand the war. People who reached out on October 7th, and the days after but then I never heard from again because they no longer agreed with my values and our relationship has been broken. People I spoke to daily, weekly, regularly. And when I look back on my conversations with many of them from that time, I stand clear on what I said – still aligned and still true to how I feel today. I don’t regret a word I said because it was my truth, it is my truth.

But mostly I heard from Israelis and Jews — people checking in, sending love, reminding me I’m not alone.

I’ve never felt more connected to my Jewish identity. Still, I often feel caught in between — too American for Israel, too Israeli for New York.

I never thought I’d feel Israeli until October 7th happened and I no longer felt as connected with my “bagel-loving, culturally New York Jew” identity. But I don’t speak Hebrew so it’s hard to find community with the Israelis in New York.

Maybe I was naïve, but I never believed something like the Holocaust could happen again. Many of my Israeli friends say they saw it coming — I didn’t. Of course I knew antisemitism existed, and that there were terror attacks. But nothing could have prepared me for October 7th. And what feels hardest is that two years later, we’re still in it.

And yet, now it’s starting to feel real. There’s hope — a deal that will bring them home. I want to be celebratory, to breathe a sigh of relief, but I can’t fully let myself. The uncertainty makes me nervous, cautious, aware that joy is fragile in times like these. Israelis and diaspora Jews alike are anxiously awaiting the return of the 48 hostages, longing for a collective deep breath — one that allows us to begin our healing, as individuals, as a nation, as a people.

I can’t wrap my head around what it must be like to be a hostage, or a family member waiting, or one of the former hostages who can’t heal let alone function and move forward until the others are free.

I ordered Eli Sharabi’s new book, Hostage. I’ve watched his interview on CBS Sunday Morning and listened to him on the Unholy podcast. His resilience — to keep living after his wife, daughters, and brother were murdered by Hamas is unthinkable.

I wonder how I can move forward more, knowing he can.

His strength feels like both an inspiration and a mirror, reflecting how stuck I still feel. I’m hoping reading his book helps me find my own next step.

When I was in Tel Aviv in May, the middle-of-the-night sirens made it clear that I couldn’t live like that. The summer before the war began, I had already decided to move to New York — to lean into my life here. My life in New York. The place I chose to move back to.

Then the Iran war happened, and once again, my focus was only on my friends who are like my family in Israel. Since most of them stayed home during that period knowing at any point they’d have to run to a specific shelter that was deep enough underground to be protected. Having me on FaceTime and zoom – many said they felt I was there in Tel Aviv going through it with them. And yet, that wasn’t the case. I was feeling extremely helpless from afar. And when that war ended, it wasn’t like a step suddenly appeared on the ladder, letting me climb back up into a more stable life.

But even now, I still have one foot in each place. My body is here, but my heart is still there.

I’m still finding my footing. Still figuring out how I want to live my life. Still searching for a Jewish or Israeli community that feels aligned. Still processing what was lost and what I gained in the last two years.

I want simpler times.

I want to live in a world where the President isn’t only helping to bring hostages home for recognition. For praise.

I want to feel safe going to concerts and music festivals.

I want my go-to music media outlets to stop spotlighting musicians who spread hate and have no skin in the game.

I want peace.

Peace in Israel, peace for the world, peace within myself.

Mostly, I’m trying to make peace with the fact that I don’t quite recognize myself anymore.

And maybe that’s part of surviving, learning to live inside a new version of yourself, even when she still feels like a stranger.