And Yet, Still—I Endure

A Testament of Grief, Betrayal, and Resilience

In the years since, I have walked through the valley of grief.

I buried my father.

I lost my son to a fentanyl-laced pill.

Soon after, my brother’s battle with cancer ended in silence.

These were not sorrows spaced out with mercy.

They came as an avalanche—unrelenting, merciless, threatening to bury me alive.

And yet, still—I endure.

Resilience is not born in ease. It is forged in the furnace of despair.

It is rising from bed when every part of you wants to remain in the dark.

It is running a business when your heart is broken.

It is holding your partner’s hand when sorrow would sooner tear you apart.

It is taking up the pen to write one more page, one more story, one more cry of meaning against the silence.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” — Viktor Frankl

In these years, I have written fifteen novels and countless Substack posts.

Not because the pain has faded, but because creation became my lifeline.

Every word, every story, has been my refusal to let grief dictate the end.

And yet, still—I endure.

At first, my community carried me. Friends, neighbors, readers—they wrapped me in compassion when I could not stand on my own.

But then another storm broke—not only of death, but of betrayal.

When Hamas unleashed its massacre on Israel—when children were slaughtered, women violated, families dragged into captivity—I turned again for compassion. Instead, I found silence. Worse: distortions, excuses, even justifications.

What shocked me most was not only the absence of empathy, but the inversion of it: friends, colleagues, and community members casting Israel as the cause of the destruction. Some even sympathized with those who would see it destroyed if given the chance.

This is not politics. This is the ancient poison of antisemitism, dressed in the rhetoric of justice. The same poison that fueled exile after exile, pogrom after pogrom, slaughter after slaughter. And now I have watched it take root in the very community that once carried me through grief.

To bury the people you love is agony.

To be abandoned by those you trusted is another wound entirely.

And yet, still—I endure.

Here lies my dilemma between bloodline and soul-line.

My bloodline is marked by loss—father, son, brother.

But my soul-line is chosen: the stories I write, the readers who walk with me, the partner who loves me through darkness.

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” — Carl Jung

Resilience is born here, where inherited sorrow meets chosen meaning, where bloodline grief is carried forward by soul-line purpose.

And yet, still—we endure.

But resilience is not mine alone. It is the inheritance of my people.

Out of Egypt we walked.

By the rivers of Babylon we wept.

Through Spain and Poland, through pogroms and Holocaust, through exile upon exile—still we rose.

Scarred, but not erased.Bruised, but not broken.Still here. Always here.

“We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle… we have no place else to go.” — Golda Meir

And yet, still—we endure.

The years since losing my father, son, and brother have been heavy with tragedy and betrayal.

But they have also revealed this truth: resilience is not the absence of suffering—it is the refusal to let suffering write the final chapter.

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” — Helen Keller

I am still here. We are still here.

And no avalanche of grief, no silence of betrayal, no hatred of a people will ever take that away.

And yet, still—we endure.

And so must you.

And so must we.

Through grief, through betrayal, through hatred, through exile—we endure.

Through sorrow, through silence, through fracture, through fire—we endure.

Scarred but unbroken, bruised but unbowed,

bound by blood-line, lifted by soul-line—

We rise.