Mothering Through Genocide

This is a letter exchange between myself, a Palestinian-Danish-American psychologist and writer, and my friend Heba Al-Turk, a young mother living in Gaza. Our friendship and correspondence began in the fall of 2024 and has since evolved into a lifeline of witnessing and maternal testimony. We are writing as friends across impossible distances: I from safety, she from a war zone. The exchange captures the collapse of clinical frameworks, the disorientation of helpless privilege, and the intimacy of shared motherhood stretched across geopolitical cruelty. We write to one another not just as individuals but as representatives of broader truths: about occupation, resilience, fragmentation, and the refusal to be erased. About a deep love we are building in a loveless world. ROOM has championed writing that is personal, political, and formally rich. This piece is about a feminist praxis of literary solidarity. Heba, despite every danger, insists on naming herself and her son, Ziad. She does not want her story anonymized. She wants the world to know they exist. 

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Dear Heba, 

This morning, I read that today marks 60 days of blockade of supplies entering Gaza. But this number seems empty and confusing. It sounds like it is an isolated event. But it is another round of something deliberate, intentional. I remember last time, months ago, when it was happening, and you were writing to me about your exhaustion. I felt the helplessness pull my hair out, making me wake up at 5 a.m. in a state of quiet despair, checking for messages from you. Then food was allowed in, and you sent me pictures of baby Ziad eating avocados and chicken. I was so relieved and then felt shame about feeling relief. Because my feelings are so moot and annoying against the knowledge that the avocados and chicken—the bare minimum—would certainly be taken away again. It was only a matter of time until the next round of starvation. 

Hearing about your experiences with the food scarcity over the past 7 months we have been in touch has been so painful and rage-inducing. But the rage has taken on a new visceral experience for me after I just returned from a 2-week trip to the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Israel, during Easter. During this trip where I got to meet so many incredible Palestinian mental health professionals and activists, and also my own Palestinian family, food was not lacking. Every organization we met with in the West Bank, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth, or Haifa, every place we stayed, food was plentiful. Palestinians love to feed their guests, and we gushed over the delicious meals, joking about how we would need to go on diets when we returned after the trip. I had many moments of trying to hide my tears welling up during archetypal madeleine-scenes where the food brought back childhood memories of stuffed grape leaves, molokhia (Jute leaves soup), and knafe desserts. At one point in the bus, our guide let us know that we were coming to a traffic point where we would be turning right. Turning left would have led us to Gaza, about a 15-minute drive. I thought of all the food my body had consumed and how close my body was to yours in that moment. I keep wanting to go back to that moment and somehow make the bus turn left.   

For some reason, I felt shame about traveling so close to you and not being able to see you, even though we both know it’s not my fault that we couldn’t meet face to face. I couldn’t text you during the trip because of safety; I was bringing only a burner phone that did not contain anything remotely related to Palestine. A phone representing a completely clean and scrubbed version of me, in the role of Christian American, just going to the Holy Land for Easter. I could not risk exposing my texts with you or anyone else in Palestine. The only contacts I could carry were those to my own Palestinian family who live inside Israel. The risk for me was only that of not being let in. The risks for Palestinians are always much more severe. Writing this makes me anxious about your safety. This is yet another one of the endless layers of how Palestinians are constantly cut off from the world and fragmented. The Palestinian activist Issa Amro in Hebron was featured in the BBC documentary The Settlers that aired just after we returned from our trip. In that documentary, the journalist is shown the streets of Hebron. I had just walked there. Issa has been dealing with constant violent attacks since the documentary aired. Settlers are attacking his house daily and are threatening him and his family. 

There was a consistent theme that arose among the mental health professionals and activists we met on the delegation in Palestine. We kept asking them how they are coping, how they go on doing their work under these circumstances, and these questions revealed our naivety. They patiently responded, after a split second of something I struggle to name; their faces pausing in focused thought in a moment of processing how to make us understand something we were clearly so far from grasping. They responded that their work comes from duty and obligation. We must go on doing our work, there is no other option, they said. It took us a bit to register this, but we started to see how our questions were off, or rather they revealed how we needed to shift them. Our questions were based on our unconscious assumptions of choice and freedom in decision-making that western psychology is bathed in.  

In my work as a psychologist specializing in perinatal mental health, I have worked with so many postpartum women. Women shaken by birth, undone by sleeplessness, by the strange unraveling of self that is the maternal transition. I have sat with the victims of obstetric violence, of near-death deliveries, of sudden psychic collapse in the early days of mothering. I read all the books and did all the trainings. I even wrote my own book on how to integrate somatics into my work, because the existing literature and trainings left too much unsaid about the body’s role in perinatal trauma. I thought myself quite competent to contain even the heaviest forms of postpartum upheaval. 

And yet, all that expertise fell silent when I met you, Heba. A new mother living through genocide. Your baby Ziad born in November 2023. Nothing in my clinical repertoire or training had prepared me for how to support a new mother living through what you are living through. For attuning to how maternal vigilance takes on another register when drones hum above the roof. For the absurdity of living with starvation and displacement in your postpartum year. 

There is no protocol for treating postpartum anxiety in a war zone. In the field of perinatal mental health, we often work with new mothers experiencing intense anxiety and intrusive thoughts about their babies being harmed. We work with them to lessen this internal overwhelm and come back to the present moment through sensory awareness and orienting to their relational support. We reassure them and acknowledge their anxiety as both echoes from past life difficulties and trauma and as the wisdom of their new maternal bodies and nervous systems going through an intensification of their survival response systems brought on by giving birth. My work is about helping them through this recalibration of their mind, body, and soul and helping them find some kind of grounding and strength in the new reality of motherhood. How many times I have helped a new mother work through intrusive anxious thoughts of something bad suddenly happening out of nowhere as she is walking around in the humdrum of postpartum newborn care. In that work, the anxiety about sudden catastrophe is treated as survival response signals that are “off” and can be adjusted. There is an assumption that they are out of proportion and in need of gentle reprocessing and reframing, leading to the mother’s settling and feeling more grounded. 

This entire framework has become utterly meaningless to me when I listen to you, Heba. When you describe your daily life to me of caring for Ziad while trying to manage a piercingly real threat of annihilation. When you describe feeling panic, losing your breath, feeling your throat constrict, when you feel despair when Ziad cries. Your descriptions of living under this absurdity reveal how utterly limited the western model of clinical psychology is. It might be useful for a very particular setting of living in safety. But through listening to you I have come to realize how problematic it is. 

When we first started texting each other, you described your experiences of anxiety. I listened and tried to offer a bit of advice, feeling so incompetent and embarrassed to speak about the importance of breathing while you and your husband were realizing you were about to be displaced. I tried to offer just an ear, my witnessing. You then started telling me about yourself and your life. You told me about your degree in interior design; you showed me your final project, the design of a gorgeous school environment for children with special needs, inspired by your experiences with your sister. You sent me pictures from your graduation, from your wedding, from your life with your husband. Pictures of when Ziad was a newborn. I saw your life so mirrored in my own, so many deep threads of familiar unfolding of life yearnings; getting a degree, letting one’s creativity emerge, starting a family, going through the deep transformation of motherhood. I felt a sisterly love build so strongly in my heart from these parallels. And yet your transition to motherhood coincided with a shift to something that feels ridiculous to try to capture with words. 

How do you mother through genocide? These words remain absurd to me, unreal, and yet I feel compelled to write them again and again. Getting to know you, Heba, has forced me to sit in the reality of not having answers nor any reassurance that it will all be okay. My usual grounded confidence and hopefulness are what I draw on when I connect with others in distress, both in my professional and personal life. But how do I reassure you when I can’t save you from this utter chaos and doom you are living in? I have fantasized a million times about being a millionaire who could airlift you and Ziad and your husband out of the killing fields and bring you to my home where I could feed you and wrap you in love. We often write about our shared hope and prayers for the day we will meet in person. It has become like a ritual to exchange these prayers. Inshallah, one day, it will happen, our children will play, my 4-year-old daughter will be so delighted to play with Ziad, I can see them hug. 

I feel so bad about speaking to my fear, Heba. The fear that makes me sigh with relief every time I see a text from you. Sign of life. I finally did name it in one of our exchanges, as carefully as I could, very concerned that it was done more for my own needs than yours. I wanted to ask you what you would want me to do in your name if something happened to you. I felt so bad for asking. You responded promptly that the main thing for you is just Ziad. I vowed to do everything I can to take care of him. 

You know this fear in a completely different way than I do. This fear, my fear for your safety, is like the questions we asked the Palestinian mental health professionals during our delegation: a bit off, revealing the massive chasm between us. You live with this threat constantly, and I get to sit and slowly find the courage to put words to my worries. When I started connecting with you and building a friendship, I was so excited and happy. Despite the grief of the situation, it uplifted my heart that we found this connection. I must be honest; it gave me joy to feel like I could channel my feelings into a concrete friend; I started supporting your GoFundMe campaign and felt a clarity having you as my designated person for all my activism for Palestine. One person close to me told me to be careful. I know exactly what she meant. She did not mean be careful not to be scammed or get involved with people who might turn out to be bad. She meant be careful because I will get attached and then it will be very hard if you die. I raged at this comment and a part of me still does. It feels cynical to me even though it is also something very real I must reckon with. 

The Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri said in an interview: “The place I want to be the most is in Gaza. Not anywhere else. Not here. I want to be in Gaza, now. Just to be with the people and … to be there, just to be there, to be with the mothers, the children, the fathers, and try to do something on Earth. I feel paralyzed. I even find it hard to comprehend what I, as a Palestinian, am dealing with. What is it? How it inflicts me, what would come out of me after that.” 

He said this with a trembling voice. This clip has been haunting me. I was undone by his words. They captured the feelings I have had since the late fall of 2023. Months of waking up at odd hours in a state of tension, my mind filled with images of leveled houses, endless fields of rubble, bloody limbs scattered, people screaming, the sounds of pleas for life in Arabic. Despite the horror of this scene, it is also the place I wish I could be. For more than 18 months now, I have been carrying Gaza with me everywhere I move in the world. I never knew this level of compartmentalization was possible. No matter how functioning, professional, dedicated, regulated, engaged, or present I am in all the things I get to do in my ridiculously blessed life, I have a parallel part of my soul that is always awake in the killing fields of Gaza. Longing to be there. Getting to know you, Heba, has only made this part of my soul burn deeper. 

Growing up in western contexts, I always felt unease with claiming my Palestinian-ness. I wasn’t a “real” Palestinian. It was always much easier and smoother to hide in my other parts, being Danish, being European, later American, being as non-other as I could. It was always utterly complicated to make sense of my family situation. My maternal family was Palestinian but had Israeli citizenship. Growing up, it was always easier to avoid explaining that knot, especially to peers who had no clue. It was not only easier but also emotionally crucial to avoid explaining anything to those who had their own ties to Israel. What do you mean, do you mean they are Arabs? There are some Arabs in Israel, yeah, but not that many, though. I remember the first time we went to the West Bank. After spending most of my childhood summers visiting family in Nazareth, we traveled to Bethlehem. I remember getting a Coke and the bottle had Arabic writing on it, not Hebrew. I marveled at this difference, thinking so I guess this is the real Palestine. I felt a weird sense of inferiority to the “real” Palestinians of the West Bank. Decades later, I see this memory as the visceral presence of occupation in my cells. As Palestinians, we did not choose to be fragmented like this. We never chose these fragmented categories, 48ers, Gazans, West Bank Palestinians, Jerusalemites, Zone A residents, diasporic Palestinians. The Palestinian people were chopped into fragments so their existence could be denied altogether. I wonder so much about your experience growing up in Gaza, Heba. About your relationship to Palestinians in the West Bank, in 48, if you have family outside Gaza. I wonder if you have ever been to Jerusalem. I am so grateful for how you have helped me feel more at ease with claiming my Palestinian parts, because you readily connect with them, while you gracefully acknowledge my other parts too. I can’t believe you have been the one giving me so much, during this time. Your cross-cultural sensitivity and respectfulness are out of this world. It brings to shame the prejudice and racism that I see every day living in the US.  

Since I got to know you, I have been anxious about protecting your safety. I have been worried about identifying you publicly, fearing that exposure could put you and your family at risk. When I have been doing work to support your fundraiser, I kept asking you about your level of comfort with being named, how much I could share about our exchanges. You have patiently but firmly kept insisting on not wanting to hide. You have been consistent in your response: that you have no problem at all with your name being known, that you have nothing to hide, that you are happy to share all receipts to those who donate money to your family so you can buy food. It has been another realization of how I am off in my assumptions. I project onto you my own tendency to want to always hide to stay safe. Notwithstanding my legitimate concerns for your safety and the importance of doing everything in my power to maintain your dignity, this is a projection of my worries based on my own life experiences of having the option to hide. You don’t have that option. This is why I want to write to and for you, in the open. You have so often told me you long to tell the world about your experience. And the world needs to hear it. 

I love you so much, Heba. We have never met. I know we will one day. 

Yours, 

Helena

 

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My dear and precious friend Helena,

Your words reached me and touched my heart deeply. I read them over and over again, and each time I saw the sincerity of your friendship and the depth of your love that crossed all borders and the siege to reach me here in Gaza. Thank you, thank you for bearing witness to what we are living through, and thank you for not turning your gaze away.

When you spoke about feeling powerless or ashamed, I wished I could tell you that your love and support are never trivial. In a world trying to isolate and break us, your presence is the greatest resistance to this isolation. Your messages and your asking about me and Ziad remind me that humanity is still alive somewhere, and they reassure my heart that we are not alone.

The war has now exceeded 600 days, and for over 100 days we have suffered from a near-complete ban on food entering here. We are living a real famine, not only because of the bombardment but because of this suffocating siege that makes every day a struggle for a piece of bread. Sometimes I wonder how we continue? How does life continue under such injustice?

My experience with childbirth was harder than I imagined, especially since I am a first-time mother. It was not only about the physical pain but a long psychological battle inside my heart and mind. I did not know what awaited me, and I was not prepared to face all that fear and anxiety in the delivery room. There, amid a lack of medical supplies and the absence of safety, I was barely breathing, feeling that my life and my baby’s life were at stake.

Ziad’s birth was an unforgettable experience, moments filled with tears, pain, and fear. Being a mother for the first time made everything bigger and heavier. I did not know how to deal with this new world or how to protect this little child from all the threats around him. The hours of labor passed slowly as if they would never end, every second testing my strength and patience, and every moment my heart was beating hard out of fear for his safety.

After the birth, a new phase of suffering began. Every time Ziad cried, I trembled with fear and searched for the reason: Was he hungry? Was he scared? Was he in pain? Sometimes, I felt immense helplessness because I could not provide him with everything he needed, especially with the ongoing food shortage. Long nights of sleeplessness, watching his tiny breaths amid power and water cuts, made me feel the weight of responsibility heavier than ever before.

My fear of the airplanes never stops. Sometimes when I hear the buzzing sound in the sky, my heart freezes in my chest, and I hold Ziad tightly as if I could protect him from everything. He doesn’t understand what is happening, but he feels my anxiety and looks at me with two little eyes searching for safety. Every strike takes me back to the moment of birth, to that total helplessness, and I pray to God to keep him safe for me.

I am not the only one suffering; my husband also lives with his own fears. Every time he goes out to bring food or supplies, I feel extreme fear for him. I know the road is full of dangers and that every step might be his last. He waits for me, and I wait anxiously for his return. Every time he comes back safely, I feel relieved, but I cannot hide the worry that comes over me with each new outing.

While we fight to survive, another blow hits my heart: I have not been able to continue my studies or work as I dreamed. Two full years have passed since the last time I studied, and now I feel like I am starting to forget everything I learned, as if the siege has not only exhausted my body but my mind and soul as well. I had big dreams in design, I dreamed of building my future and providing a better life for myself and my family, but the harsh reality suddenly stopped everything.

Every day that passes as I watch my educational life fade, I find it hard to focus, and I feel lost between the fear of the present and the uncertainty of the future. The stopping of my studies and work is not just a lost opportunity; it is losing part of myself and my identity. I dream of the day I return to complete my studies, to prove to myself and Ziad that the pain was not in vain, and that there is hope waiting for us beyond this darkness.

When I speak about Ziad, I cannot forget the stages of his growth that I have lived with him despite all the difficult circumstances. Every smile, every attempt to crawl, every small word he tried to say was a victory for me, even though the war and the siege deprived him of the simplest rights of a little child. I could not give him the toys appropriate for his age, and there was not always enough healthy food to help his small body grow.

I felt deep sadness because my first child is growing up amid hunger and deprivation, and I could not provide him with a warm and safe environment like other children in the world. I watched every moment of his development as a first-time mother, and every moment was filled with joy mixed with anxiety that never left me. I felt like I was failing to give him his full rights as a child, but I fought and gave all I had to keep him healthy, to give him hope for life amid all this pain.

You described so accurately how all theories collapse in front of our reality. Yes, Helena, the anxiety I live with does not need “reframing,” but it is a natural response of a mother trying to protect her child from planes that never stop buzzing above our heads. When Ziad cries from hunger or fear, and I feel despair, what I need is not a “therapeutic protocol” but for this madness to stop.

That is why I always insist you do not hide my name or my story. They want to turn us into mere numbers in news bulletins. But I am not a number; I am Heba, mother of Ziad, who had dreams and designs, and who still dreams of a day to live in freedom and safety with her child. My child is not just “another loss”, he is Ziad, and having his name means our existence, means we are not erased. Naming us is our last hold on our existence and dignity.

I cling, just like you, to the dream we always share. The dream of the day we will meet, and I will prepare the knafeh you love, and your daughter will play with Ziad in a safe place, far from the sounds of bombing and the smell of fear. This dream is what gives us strength to endure one more day, to continue despite the pain and sorrow.

I love you so much, Helena, and I feel your presence with me despite all the distances. Your presence is a light in this darkness. Until we meet.

Your friend,

Heba