Holding on to Hope

For one woman, it’s all she has

by KR

I opened the email and my heart sank.

“Hello, this is Naomi again. I’m sorry to contact you again but I’m very overwhelmed. I cry a lot, I don’t know how to continue like this in life. As you know, I'm trying to support my husband and my children. Would you be able to help me with food? Or electricity? I need to pay my bill and I can’t. I can’t even think about Purim or Pesach… I really hope you may be able to help, I am just completely overwhelmed.”

Naomi and I had corresponded in the past. From previous conversations, I knew that she was juggling so many hardships on a daily basis, alone, even though she wasn’t alone. Two of Naomi's four young children have Crouzon syndrome and so far, have undergone 14 (!) surgeries, sleeping at night connected to machines to help them breathe. Their medical appointments, which are frequent and expensive, take place in Haifa, but she and her family live near Rehovot.  They don’t own a car (the cost is out of reach) so each time they have to see their specialist they travel an average of 2.5 hours (each way) by public transportation to get there. 

Naomi’s husband has Crouzon syndrome, too. He also suffers from severe depression and is heavily medicated although, Naomi shares, it doesn’t seem to be helping and there are some pretty bad side effects. This prevents him from holding down a job so it’s up to Naomi to keep them all afloat…somehow. It’s a near-impossible task to complete when she can’t leave them to go out to work. She tries her best to stretch the few thousand shekels’ worth of government aid she receives each month to provide for her family. 

Her "basics" are luxuries

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