Ashrai Yoshvey Beitecha, Od yehalelucha selah. Ashrai haam shechecha lo, ashrei haam sheadonay elohav: Tehila le-david, aromemcha elohay hamelech, ve-avarcha shimcha leolam vaed. Bechol yom avarchecha, veahalela shimcha leolam vaed. Gadol Adonay vmhoolal meod, ulegdulato ein cheker: dor ledor yishabach maasecha, ugvoorotecha yagidu:

Our soldier came home. He came home alive. Israel, my people, are celebrating. For many of them it is a miracle. But there are people that are very upset and angry at the trade-off.  They feel betrayed by the government because some of the prisoners who were released had murdered their own family. They do not want these people to be back into their terrorists attacks and murders of other people.

I can understand their pain and their anger and their dread. i think that they are also trying to protect  the people, to not become euphoric, to not forget the other side of the story.

He looked like a deeply spiritual and traumatized human being. I think that because his soul is pure he survived. Could it be that once they caught him they no longer wanted to kill him? Could they see that he was gentle and harmless? I saw my boy and I felt that we have so much in common. And for a moment i felt jealous that he was going to get so much support. And then I felt guilty for thinking that. Torture.

When I came to America I finally felt  that I was being listened to. It was scary meeting so many doctors who looked at me and just had no idea what was happening in my body. And basically I was beginning to believe that I was going crazy, that I could not take it anymore, that I was for the first time in my life confronting the possibility that I might have to take my own life. It was a terrifying thought and I thought it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and ove and over and ovetrredghghdgywJHHHHHHHHJWSJHWUTYDWTYTTTHGJGHHHGHJKJHKJ BUT I was going crazy, acting strange, not being responsible, maybe a bit dramatic, maybe borderline personality disorder Cuz (and this is a funny one) every night i would tell the nurse that I want to be euthanized and that i am upset that i cannot get euthanized in my state and that euthanasia should be legal because people that are in deep suffering have a right to die. I was certain that I was not the first and would not be the last person who would be taken to a psychiatric hospital. So, I made sure to tell the psychiatrist that i want to be euthanized. I was in a severe state of anxiety, the depression had hit the end of the road and i had to talk about how devastating Pudendal Neuralgia is.  So I had to remain strong.  And my brother spoke to him on the phone and the psychiatrist told him that it is possible that i have border-line personality disorder. And that was very sad for me because once again I was not being seen or heard. They were reading me from their diagnostic text-books and i fit perfectly. i was constantly threatening suicide, i had a lot of attacks of rage in the beginning because i felt that my family were not helping me enough. I felt that my brother was slow in reading about it or researching about it. They said that they were confused by all the different diagnosis that i thought that i had. 1st , endometriosis and then interstitial cystitis.
My family are very good at avoiding the inevitable. When i told my mom today that I am very tired., she pounced on me and said "no, don't say that". she barked at me that i should have gone to the meeting i had scheduled with a pain theraipst. I have felt so insulted by some of the "professionals" who i met with. And I guess  that I am just generally exhausted. Today was a generally very very very exhausting day. I have been too active. While I gardened I started fighting with the roots of the huge tree in front of our house. Fighting as though to see who would win this time, the pain or the pain?
Yeah, so i am happy that our soldier has been freed. He is a sweet boy. A sweet Jewish boy like the boys from the ghetto, the boy that we jews all know of. There is a famous picture of a little Jewish boy with an angels face boy with his hands up. Crazy, six million of us slaughtered, mothers, fathers, sisters brothers...there are stories that tell that there were those that forced fathers to sleep with their daughters. Or mothers that were ordered to choose which twin she will send to the gas chamber and which one she will keep with her. I have so many questions and I am starting to get answers. Some women are interested in writing. It is something. And there are women who even painted and did art-work for me. Truly , that is how i feel that they did it for me. And i really appreciate that. And they seem to appreciate that. So, we have started communicating with each other, women who have been deeply and horribly traumatized by damage done to the Pudendal Nerve that lies within our pelvis.
I have been in pain for the last two weeks or maybe it is two and a half years already. We are all different and we all have had our nerves damaged from different things. One women suffered nerve damage from having a hysterectomy done. Isn't that what they used to do to us. If we were too hysterical they took out wombs. Do you know that in Tibet that is what the Chinese do to the Tibetan women. They take out their uteruses so that they will not be able to have children. I feel a little sick as I write this and the pain in everywhere is sharpened and the scalpel takes care of those women.
And in Africa, the female circumcisions, sorry, the female mutilations, that mothers do to their own daughters. What the fuck? And the daughters scream and cry and some of them are left with permanent nerve damage.
And in Rwanda, where men who had Aids organized themselves to rape the Tutsie women so that they would get aids. And they were raped by so many men at once, for hours and days on end. That they also were left with nerve damage.
Women have suffered from damage to the nerve that enervates our vagina since the beginning of when eve was sent out of the garden cuz she was a sinner, a manipulative sinner. And in India, women are raped and it is so shameful to be raped. And once a women is raped (again, my stomach is turning and i can feel the pain sharpen.) she is considered public property so men have a right to rape her again. She is worthless as a woman, no man will ever marry her, shel is better of dead. There are a lot of suicides in India. Some of them were called Holy. Holy suicides where the woman who is left a widow burns herself so as to be with her husband. People watch this and admire this great act of courage and self-sacrifice that a woman is doing for her man. In India many women suffer from burn-wounds where the mother-in-law is trying to kill her because she wants more dowry. Really sick stuff is going on and i don't understand how things like this happen. And my heart is broken for all of these women.
And I also feel for us. For the women who were told that they were crazy. For the women who were left by their husbands. To the couples who are deeply in love with each other and are profoundly supportive.
How do we survive such physical torture? What keeps us sane? And how scary it must have been to live at a time when our physical pain was called frigidity or hysteria? How many woman have been asked if they were raped, if they had suffered sexual assault? One very sweet obstetrics nurse asked me if maybe i missed my boyfriend and that is why i was in pain down there. i can go on and on and on. But in the end I chose to live. I chose to accept that this was what happened. And my mom helped me a lot. She fought really hard for me. Sometimes she also botched up, but we have forgiven each other and today i feel like she is my sister and she guards me and protects me. But sometimes she gets mad at me still like she did in the beginning. She doesn't understand that I should not be working in the garden. I planted the tulips for her. I bought them for me and for her. I guess that we both wanted to believe that I was getting better. But i knew that I wasn't when i started tugging on roots and fighting to pull them out of the ground. And i get hurt cuz i think that she should have told me to stop gardening.  And that today i am exhausted cuz i have my period and the pain is much more intense.
I think that me and our soldier, Gilad Shalit (he reminded me of the Dali Lama. Gentle and pure. I even thought of writing him a letter and inviting him to come stay with us here if he wants a vacation from israel. But truthfully my family is all deeply traumatized by these last two and a half years. I forgave them for not getting it. It took me a long time to untie all the knots that got so mangled...
And I wish that we could all help each other.

Women have been suffering from so many different forms of genital and pelvic pain. You want to tell me that we are ashamed of our own private parts? Nope, I will tell you that we aren't. And that maybe finally the world is ready to hear our suffering. But then, all of us have felt abandoned or betrayed by friends or family. God Bless All Of Us; may those that are in pain unite and begin to tell our stories. At least we are not alone anymore. We are beginning to reach out  to each other. We can hear each other and we care for each other. We can  help each other heal cuz we can understand each other's souls.
And there are beautiful men among us as well who are also fighting hard to resist the call to suicide and who are expressing such levels of care and compassion that it truly is beautiful. We still feel very misunderstood but what is important is that we are beginning to understand each other. Friendships are a big part of surviving. If our friends can really travel the way with us. I have one friend who just glided along with me. So we have a lot of work in terms of educating. How do you begin to educate. How do we create awareness.
One thing I learnt from Wangari Maathai, an African woman who fought a beautiful fight is that we are much stronger when we are united and that we can help each other. That is a lot. I wish that I had known about this group earlier. Can we support each other so that we won't give up hope? In order to survive we have to be united. Maybe that way, someday we will also have a flag, a beautiful flag all our own. Wangari Maathai fought with so much love in her heart and there were people that were sure that she was crazy.

Anyway, I really recommend reading her book. It is called Wangari Maathai, Unbowed, One Woman's Story.