"I have a broken heart and a broken soul": Rachel Goldberg-Polin on life in the shadow of bereavement
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was murdered in Hamas captivity, spoke at a conference marking 30 years of Israel's National Health Insurance Law in Jerusalem. She described coping with bereavement, the difficulty of facing societal expectations to return to normalcy, and the danger of "toxic positivity" – the attempt to rush to assure a trauma survivor that "it will be okay," instead of allowing them to express their pain.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was abducted to Gaza on October 7, 2023, and murdered in Hamas captivity after 328 days, spoke today (Wednesday, September 9, 2026) at a conference marking 30 years of the National Health Insurance Law in Jerusalem. In her remarks, she described the daily struggle with bereavement and the gap between her external appearance and internal pain. "I have a broken heart and a broken soul. I have a dagger stuck in my chest, why don't you see it?" she said. She clarified that coping is not a simple story of falling and growing, and warned against "toxic positivity" – the attempt to rush to assure a trauma survivor that "it will be okay," instead of allowing them to express the pain. According to her, trying to convince a person not to express emotional trauma can become an additional injury. She described how each family member – herself, her husband Jon, and their daughters – experiences the same disaster differently, using the image of four people in the same car hit by a train, each with shared and different injuries. She called for approaching someone who has experienced trauma by trying to understand what they themselves need, rather than assuming what we would want to receive in their place.