Wrestling with hope

[written on the 18th of November]

Last year I went to the psychiatric hospital in Har Nof twice a week, to do my practicum as an Art Therapist. Twice a week I would get on the bus and tram, through a wondrous mix of Jerusalem residents and visitors, passing Jaffa street, the Mahane Yehuda Market, my former high-school and the central bus station - reminiscing about the past, thinking of the future, trying not to think about the terror and violence I once witnessed there growing up, rather thinking of hope and peacefulness if possible - I had a long day of work ahead of me, no time for anything but hope.

Twice a week I walked into a neighborhood so different from my own, an ultra orthodox community. Within it, I would walk into a place filled with the city's despair... filled with the worst possible stories of loneliness and violence and rape, awful childhoods and misfortunes and situations you could never imagine. Stories I mainly have to keep to myself and share only with my colleagues to protect the privacy and rights of my patients, and to do what we are there for - to help our patients. Like in Hadassah hospital, which I've actively supported for a long time, here too - once inside the hospital walls, religion, race or nationality didn't matter. Patients and staff come from all different backgrounds. Tolerance is key to doing our job, accepting anyone, any background, any emotion.... anything but violence.

Among buildings telling a tale of a bloody and painful past all of their own - the people I got to know there, staff and patients alike, taught me how one might, despite it all, look to the future. How - with such small odds, knowing the patient might return a month after release, a patient might get hurt, commit suicide, commit a crime - one still holds on to hope, still tries to make a change, still smiles, still laughs, still creates...! 

This morning I heard that four men were murdered a few steps from this hospital, in a synagogue, during prayer, and a fifth man was murdered while trying to protect others and prevent further casualties. May they rest in peace. 

It leaves me relatively speechless and scared for the future and for my loved ones.

It also makes me think of those I know and care deeply about, who were probably in the hospital at the time. It is quite a quiet neighborhood and I am sure they heard the shots. I think of the reactions of patients with anxiety disorders, patients who have violence in their family or background... The difficulty to move on and work as usual, even if you are an Arab or Jewish doctor, nurse or therapist. The high alert that must have kept them all inside the buildings. I know how strong a lot of those people are. I know they will put all their effort into getting through the day, and tomorrow, in that god-forsaken-psychiatric-ward, there will still be that unbelievable and inconceivable drop of hope. That inexplicable despite-it-all will to live. Those unimaginable slowly growing friendships and those underestimated low-payed workers who still have a glimpse of belief in their eye that they can make a small change in an old and crumbling system. The rare patients who, despite a lifetime tarred with horror and sadness, puff on their unhealthy cigarette, sip their cheap coffee, and dare to think of what they want to do tomorrow and even the next week, dare to imagine and then slowly even paint with a bright color as they wrestle with the idea that they might have a future... Wrestling with hope.

שנה טובה Shana Tova

Being there

My dear boy,

I know, you want to hold my hand. You want me to play with you, to explain to you, to be fully and completely with you, wholeheartedly. Yet I am partly absent. I'm sitting on the computer writing to the future you instead of playing with you and drawing for you, and with you, right now. I want to be, so so much...

The truth is, everyday I think of how to explain to you what we're doing right now. Where we were and where we are going, and why. Where do I start? Should I draw about the present? the past? the imagined? Should I dive into a fantasy world, connecting mine to your own, newly invented, characters and stories? Or should I go back to the start, tell you about history - and if I do, should I go one generation back, two generations, three...? One side, the other side, both...? my point of view, or yours?

I think about these things every day. I have ideas of words and drawings. Then I think of the other people I love, my friends and family. Then of a larger circle of acquaintances... So much to tell and to so many people - and then I'm off in my own world and not quite there, connecting to yours. Slightly ironic, isn't it? Trying to connect to you makes me disconnect.

I get overwhelmed by these thoughts and then I just cannot figure out where and how to start. So I stop, I just play or laugh with you. Or work while your Papa plays with you, and I wait for another day. Tomorrow... Next week... Next time.

We're both starting something new. A new place, new friends. Trying not to lose touch with home, with why and what. I'm scared too. I have my own dinosaurs and monsters and lions to be scared of, and to tackle. I want to be strong. To hold your hand firmly and fully be there with you. But I'm not. I cannot. I cannot always hold your hand.

So, for now, I let you draw with me instead. I let your lines be the basis for my ground. I let you look with me into an unclear and blurry future. Trying to be there, trying to hold your hand, but not quite, not always there, not entirely. I let myself show a sketch, my vulnerable visual searches, to the world... Maybe that's what I can give to you right now; It's ok to not know. It's ok to be a little vulnerable. I'm still constantly, somehow, there.

Protection

How do I protect you? From flying rockets, from flying accusations? From fear... From heartbreak, from ignorance, from pain, from physical wounds, from heartful words, from innocence, sobriety, from hurtful words, from society. How do I tell you your identity without confusing, refusing to play by someone else's rules. Only fools think they know it all, but what will you feel you know? How do I protect you
from words
from rocks
from bombs
from herds
from disasters
from HATE and guns
from other people's sons.
How do I let you run and fall, without knowing much at all. I feel small. But I must be big. FOR YOU.

i.e. - Heartful - full of heartfelt emotion. Yes, heartful from one side can be hurtful to another, or to yourself... An interesting little word I found.

"איך אגן עליך? מרקטות עפות, האשמות עפות? מפחד... משברון לב, מבורות, מכאב, מפצעים פיזיים, ממלים שבאות מהלב, מתמימות, מהתפכחות, ממלים מכאיבות, מהחברה? איך אני אספר לך על זהותך, מבלי לבלבל, מסרבת לשחק על פי חוקים של אחרים. רק שוטים חושבים שהם יודעים הכל. אך מה אתה תרגיש שאתה יודע? איך אני מגנה עליך? ממלים, מאבנים, מפצצות, מעדרים, מאסונות, משנאה ומרובים, מבנים של אנשים אחרים. איך ארשה לך לרוץ וליפול, מבלי לדעת הרבה בכלל. אני מרגישה קטנה. אבל אני חייבת להיות גדולה. בשבילך."

Jerusalem, heartbreaker

More than six years ago I took a walk to the Jerusalem promenade with someone. It was early in the morning, perhaps 3am or later... Everything was quiet, only the lights of Jerusalem, east, west and north, were shining at us the way they always do, ever since they built this promenade, when I was a child. I told him that to me, Jerusalem is the ultimate heartbreaker... You can't help but loving her and being astounded by her, exploring her delicate mix of people and cultures, the history and its underground, simultaneously ancient and young beating heart. The passion and insanity it ignites. That subtle sense of hope, communication and renewal beneath rubbles of aggression whilst sitting on top of bubbling, hot, lava, constantly threatening to erupt. Those simple, small, day to day moments of compassion or creativity that you see in the street. People pushing and shoving, hating and loving. The millions of opinions that can enrich your mind and soul, anger you to the bone and tear you to pieces.

We stared off into the distance. That someone was the someone I married, and happened to have been born in Germany.

Looking back at that moment I realize how much this promenade has been present in my life, from my runaway adventures as a child with my best friend Timora, god rest her soul, and her sister Eliana, to having my scouts group named after a young girl stabbed to death right there. From walking in the magnificent Jerusalem snow with my swedish friend Daniel, thanks to whom I met my husband, to showing the view to my visiting Italian friends days before my wedding or having a mothers get-together with my little baby, my childhood friends and their little ones.

Last night I was trying to fathom it all. Before this latest acceleration of violence we were slowly telling people we are moving to Berlin, Germany, for a couple of years for my husbands' studies. Now packing up and dealing with the move and with all the feelings surrounding it just got that much more intense, surreal and complicated. Our decision had nothing to do with security, but with our own calculations and dreams for the future. I love my hometown. It still breaks my heart when it is this tense, and it still stays deep deep inside my heart all days of the year. You cannot take the town out of the girl, wherever I go.

So I drew this... last night. Then I didn't put it up on fb, I didn't want to "jinx" it, although it was meant to be more metaphorical than realistic. Well, now.... There have been many nights in which we heard fireworks in this neighborhood, they sound like shooting but we know they're not. This time I heard the real rockets. Clearly.