On October 7 I was a new mother to a small baby who was still being breastfed. A young woman with one clear goal: to give my child everything and build a life around her. Then, within minutes, our lives turned upside down. My husband and I both went out to fight. We did not stop for a moment to think, we did not ask questions, we did not weigh what was right to do when there is a baby at home. We understood this was our highest mission. We left our daughter behind and went to defend the civilians who needed us and our country.
That day I was in four different engagements with terrorists. For long hours the body functioned on autopilot, without fear and without time to process what was happening around us. Just fight, just survive. In one of the engagements I was hit by two bullets in both hands. Since then I have been dealing with severe nerve damage and pain that never stops. But in retrospect I understand that the real injury is not only physical, it is also mental and it affects my ability to be a mother.
When I came home I understood I would not go back to being who I was. I could not lift my daughter in my arms, an action every mother does without thinking twice became something my body simply could not do. The milk stopped, my body went into trauma. I looked at myself and did not recognize the woman I had become. Instead of warmth and softness I felt distance. There were days I did not want to be near my daughter at all because I was afraid I was harming her. I did not know how to separate the trauma and the pain from motherhood. Everything became mixed together. Every cry of hers startled me, every noise brought me back there.
Everyone around me looked at me and saw a heroic combatant returning from battle. I looked at myself and saw a mother who cannot be what she dreamed of being. I felt guilt over everything. For not holding her enough, for being too tired, too closed off, too distant. There is a very deep pain in feeling that your child needs you and you simply cannot be there the way you want to.
My husband and I have both been dealing with a complex mental state since then. The war did not end, it continues with us every day. There are days we cannot be around many people. Places that are completely normal for other families, like playgrounds, children’s shows or even family gatherings, sometimes feel impossible for us. The noise, the crowding, the constant hypervigilance, everything overwhelms us. Sometimes I look at other families from the side and think how things that once felt obvious have become a daily struggle.
Five months ago our second daughter was born. I was more afraid of this birth than anything else. I was afraid of the pain, afraid I would not be able to be a mother to two girls when I could barely hold myself together. During the pregnancy I was asked to stop taking some of the pain medication I had been using, even though it was the only thing that eased my daily suffering. During the birth itself the epidural barely worked on me because my body had become so accustomed to strong medications. And in all that pain, when I held her for the first time, I felt I had been given my life back.
In that moment I understood again why I fought. I understood the meaning of my life. After everything we went through, bringing another child into the world felt like victory. A victory over fear, over pain, over trauma and over everything that tried to break us. That birth was my personal victory.
I am still learning every day how to be a mother. There are days I feel I am managing and days I break down. I am still not the mother I dreamed of being before the war and maybe I will never be. But I learned that motherhood can look different after injury. It is expressed in small victories. Sometimes it is getting out of bed even when there is no strength, sometimes it is smiling at your child even when everything inside hurts, sometimes it is simply continuing to be here.
My daughters are the reason I wake up in the morning. They are the reason I take care of myself, go to rehabilitation and keep fighting even now. They bring me back to life again and again. Along the way I understood that much of recovery happens in the small moments, when someone understands you without needing too many explanations, when you meet people going through something similar, when you manage to go out with the children for an activity or simply feel normal for a moment. At the Beit Halochem center in Beersheba of the Disabled Veterans IDF Organization I found a place that made me feel less alone during the hardest period of my life. A place that reminded me that even if the road is long and complex, it is possible to learn how to live again.
I want to say to young wounded men and women who feel right now that their lives are over, they are not. You will have a life after this. You will love, you will laugh, you will build a home, you will raise a family. Even if right now it feels far away and impossible, that is our real victory, to keep living and to build a family.
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Amit Gur with her husband at a veteran delegation to New York
(Photo: Personal album)
And for those who already have a family, lean on it. Even when it is hard, even when it feels like you are drifting away from yourself and from everyone else. Family is the anchor. It is the reason to fight, it is the reason to return to life.
On October 7 I left home as a mother to an infant, I fought for her and for an entire generation of children who need a safer future. Since then I have been fighting a different war, the war to become a mother again, to become myself again. There are days when the pain wins, moments when the trauma is stronger than me, but every time I look at my daughters I remember why I cannot give up.
Because in the end, our real victory as wounded people is not only to survive the battle but to choose life again and again. To choose love, to build a family, to dream and to believe that even after we have been broken, we can still rebuild ourselves.