Nour’s diary, our psychologist in Gaza : « I heal, I break, I hold, I fall apart »

Today we’re sharing with you the twelfth episode of Nour’s diary, our psychologist living in Gaza.
Thank you, Nour. We are not forgetting Gaza  ❤

“How do you keep going? How do you keep helping others when you are hurting too? Have you ever broken down? Are you able to continue?” These are the questions I hear over and over again, from journalists, friends, colleagues abroad, even strangers online.

And honestly, I ask them of myself, too.

For over 21 months, I have been living through a relentless war in Gaza. I am a mental health professional; but here, that title is far from enough. In Gaza, we are not afforded the privilege of being just one thing. I am a therapist, yes. But I am also a woman navigating loss. I am a mother trying to protect her children. I am a daughter grieving loved ones. I am a war-weary health worker, a fractured soul carrying the weight of others. I am a witness to unspeakable crimes. I am a caregiver to the wounded, while carrying wounds of my own. I am all of these roles at once, inseparably intertwined. I heal, I break, I hold, I fall apart.
From the very beginning of this war, I have lived a triple existence. I try to help heal a community drowning in trauma, even as I mourn my loved ones, even as I rise from the rubble of each new bombardment. I try to preserve my voice, to keep testifying, even as fear claws at my throat every day. Today, as I write this, I am living through some of the darkest days of war. I will not be ashamed to say: I am hungry; and My hunger is not an accident. It is the outcome of blockade, policy, and deliberate deprivation but the shame does not belong to me. It belongs to the world that preaches humanity and human rights while Gaza is bombed, starved, and silenced.

Who am I now? Am I still a “therapist”? Or am I also a victim, a refugee, a grieving daughter, a mother in fear, a humanitarian worker clinging to hope with bare hands?

I’ve learned how to teach my children to be patient with hunger

Since we began working in displacement camps, we have never once practiced our profession under normal conditions. Hospitals have been bombed, medical teams have been killed or arrested, Clinics evacuated, Roads made impassable. And yet, we persist; not only out of professional duty, but a deeper moral one. We kiss our children goodbye each morning, terrified it might be the last time. Then we begin the day’s sessions, in tents, in corners of shelters, or among the ruins.

My view of myself has changed, all our lives have changed. I have lost everything I once called normal. I’ve learned how to mourn while walking forward, how to bury my dead in my heart and keep serving the living. I have learned how to flee death, how to carry anxiety for 21 months without pause, how to pray for friends trapped under rubble. But I have also learned about endurance. I’ve discovered a strength I didn’t know I had. Is it because there was no other option? Perhaps. But more certainly, it is because faith in God; and in the dignity of our people, is a power that carries us through the unimaginable.

I’ve learned how to survive in a place unfit for life. How to store water for days. How to go without basic needs. How to teach my children to be patient with hunger. A friend told us that her young son, like most children these days, had complained of hunger. But when he saw the sorrow on her face, he quickly apologized with tearful eyes, saying, “I’m sorry Mama, I’m not hungry. Please don’t be sad.” He was only trying to protect her from pain; by denying his own. Should any child in the world ever feel guilty or apologize for being hungry?

What does neutrality mean in the face of atrocity?

Every day, I sit with people shattered by loss. And still, I am not outside of their stories. I live this war too. I suffer the same grief, carry the same wounds. A 15-year-old boy once told me he wished he had died with his family. My heart broke with him. A mother confessed she could no longer feed her children. She whispered, “I can’t go on” I thought, quietly,” me too”.

This is what we call compassion fatigue, when the endless witnessing of suffering starts to wear down your soul. When you feel you have no more to give, but you keep showing up anyway. It’s paired with burnout, the chronic emotional exhaustion of working in grief-stricken, resource-less, relentlessly dangerous environments.

We do not counsel from calm offices. We try to plant hope in overcrowded tents and bombed-out schools. Children speak of missiles the way others speak of breakfast—so casually, so routinely. And yet, in the middle of this horror, mental health workers are still asked to remain neutral. But what does neutrality mean in the face of atrocity? Am I supposed to pat children on the shoulder and say “you’ll be okay” when I know they’ll never forget the smell of blood? How can I talk about safety to those who now see danger in every sound, every shadow, every color?

The truth is; sometimes we don’t speak at all. In some sessions, silence is all we have. But presence can be enough. Being there, bearing witness, sitting with someone in their grief without needing to fix it; that can be healing too. A child’s smile after days of crying, a woman finally resting after a storm of panic, an elder’s gratitude after being truly heard; these are the moments that help us keep going.

What warms my heart is how we hold one another

We are not alone in this heartbreak. Around me are colleagues whose strength humble me every day. Each one carries a story of unimaginable loss; yet still shows up. Our dear colleague, a gentle and kind doctor, lost his entire family in a single strike. Despite his deep sorrow and pain, he continued to work and care for those around him. Even in his own grief, he held us up, supported us, and reminded us why we continue. Another colleague lost his daughter. Another, her husband. And all of us” every single one “have lost everything we once had: our homes, our streets, our memories, our loved ones. And yet we come; tired, grieving, hungry; driven by something bigger than sorrow: a deep, quiet love for our people. They pour what’s left of their hearts into their work.
Sometimes, circumstances force us to evacuate a clinic, and heavy guilt settles over us; because we know how much people depend on us. But this guilt is not a weakness; it is the measure of our love. This heartbreak is the fuel that keeps us going.

What warms my heart is how we hold one another. How we check on each other in the middle of the chaos. How we mourn together when one of us is lost. How we share our exhaustion, our pain, our helplessness and somehow, still manage to breathe hope into each other. “This will end,” we say. “God will restore what’s been taken.” We remember the most hopeless among us: “one day, we’ll look back and say, we survived”. We carried each other through.
I look at my colleagues and see courage wrapped in sorrow. We lift each other up, remind each other that this will end, that justice will come, that our people deserve life. So how do we keep going? Perhaps the better question is: how could we not?

To stop would be to let the darkness win. We may be exhausted, but we are not broken. Not yet. Because Gaza is not only a land of pain and rubble; it is a land of fierce resilience, a place where humanity insists on shining through even the deepest horror. We are still here. And together, we will heal. As the poet Elia Abu Madi reminds us: “To despair, I believe, is a betrayal: Of those who lived with hope or died still dreaming.”

Nour Z. Jarada, a Gazan Mental Health Manager at Médecins du Monde