Mother's Healing Retreat: Description of a Retreat

February, 2007

In February 2007,  The Koby Mandell Foundation held a 2 day  women's healing
retreat for 19 women, mostly from the North, at the Park Plaza Hotel in Nahariya. Most of the women had their children killed in the war; most were reserve soldiers. It was very interesting because they were very grateful that it wasn't the Army that sponsored the retreat because they are very angry at the army. Many of them feel that the army betrayed them. Some had lost children to terrorism and they also felt that the government had betrayed them. Because of all of the corruption, people here no longer have faith in the government and they want to distance themselves from it.

There was one woman who came whose son was murdered by terrorists when he was 38. 20 years earlier she had a one year daughter who was run over. Now her 64 year old husband is dying at home of cancer. She said that 2 days of the retreat was like 12 years of vacation for her because of all of the demands. He called her crying. She said that he is crying all of the time and she was so grateful for the break and to be with other mothers like herself.

We also took another woman who has very bad Parkinson's disease though she is not old; it was hard for her to speak, but she did share and it was a good feeling to include her, and to let her cry and share her pain.

The women continually say that they wear a mask during the day. One woman said that she puts up a wall. One woman was a single mother of 5 kids. The soldier who died was her oldest son. She said that he called her all the time and called her his kodesh kodeshim, his holy of holies; as the oldest, he was like a father to the other kids, and now he is gone.

But there is a difference between these women and our usual clientele because these women looked better, were better dressed. Terror really does strike a lower socio economic class. Also these women knew that their children were protecting the country. There isn't the sense of shame and victimhood that there is with terror.

At the end the group got together and wrote the staff a beautiful letter and gave us flowers. There was tremendous appreciation for the work we had done.
We had 2 women come from America, Rhea Jacobson and Lori Zucker to do raneo sacral therapy which was amazing. Each woman got an hour treatment. And also each woman received a hand knit shawl/ scarf from an organization in
America, women kniiting for peace. The women said that wearing the shawl felt like wearing a hug.