Through twenty plus years of working with people I believed that hope was “my thing”.
Being so connected with hope allowed me to offer hope, to look for creative solutions to complex situations, to have trust that things may turn out well.

And then came the 7th of October, and everything that followed in both Israel and Gaza. Then we left Israel for a world-wide journey that is still ongoing as I am writing these words.
Then came despair, unwanted, rejected, ignored, denied.

I “managed” to fully ignore it for almost two years. Essentially, I did everything I could to let it remain hidden in my Shadow despite the war, despite the loss of sense of safety and of belonging to my homeland and of my people, despite the reality of seeds of strife, hate and war being sown all over the middle east and the world, for years to come, despite the many dead, wounded and traumatised on both sides, despite the horrendous loss of life and destruction in Gaza…

I focused on what was possible under the circumstances, on healing myself and others, on my family, my work, on making the best lemonade possible from this bitter lemon.
It worked pretty well. We travelled the world, crossed both the Pacific and the Atlantic, I taught and worked with clients online and facilitated trainings and workshops at every stop.

The only problem (inside of me) was that I had less and less desire to create, promote, market, write and engage beyond the work itself.
When with clients and students, it was great. Doing more than the work itself felt, for the first time in my life, as a challenging, energy draining task. It didn’t get better with time, on the contrary.

While meeting with a dear friend who was my first facilitator, many years ago, I shared my lack of desire and asked for his perspective. He said that it feels like “they broke your hope”.
It didn’t resonate fully, because “who are they” and “No one can break my hope” kind of thougts.
However, it did lead me to look inside, straight into my heart.

And there it was, the despair.
I saw a small ball of black despair, a grain almost very close to the center of my heart.
I noticed a crack in my heart, leading to the grain of despair.
For the first time I noticed that my heart felt dry, as if the flow of life through it was somehow blocked or dampened.