Surviving is not enough M OUR COVER STORY: the heartbreaking and inspiring story of a mother and her family living through trauma.
oran Hila Madmoni was born and raised in Beit Shemesh, but followed her heart 17 years ago to Sderot, the hometown of her husband. After three years of trying to get pregnant, and with the help of IVF treatment, Moran finally became a mother, first to Israel Meir, and then again three years later to Yedidiya. Along with being a loving mother, she was also passionate about her work. For years, Moran practiced NLP in a clinic treating victims of trauma, violence, and abuse, before changing fields to pursue her dream: she is studying Administration and Public Policy at Sapir College and aspires to study for a PhD in the field. The night of October 6, 2023, Moran had a terrible feeling; she experienced her first panic attack and didn’t sleep all night. At 6:29 a.m., already awake, the sirens and rocket fire woke her husband, two sons, and parents who were visiting for the Simchat Torah holiday. They went into their shelter room where they were cut off from the rest of the world. After a pause in the sounds of sirens, rocket fire, and gunshots, they went outside: the sky was gray from the endless rocket fire, the streets were completely empty, and all they could hear were gunshots. A veteran of the Yom Kippur war, her father immediately recognized that the gunshots being fired were from “Kalashnikovs,” or AK47 assault rifles. And they were close. Then they saw a terrorist on the neighbour’s roof. Moran would later learn that the gunshots they heard had murdered their nextdoor neighbour. The family went back inside and locked all the doors, windows, and shutters before going back to the shelter room. For the next eight hours, they were trapped there with no communication and no knowledge of what was transpiring around them. Once Moran’s safe space, her house turned into a kind of private hell. Moran hid her two sons in the closet under all the clothes. They urinated in bottles and put their excrement in plastic bags. Moran’s father already suffered from dementia, but now it was her mother who turned into a child, babbling incoherently. Suddenly Moran found herself the commander of this mission to care for her children and her parents, with her husband as head of security. When it felt like things had calmed down, they sneaked out of the shelter room like thieves in their own home. They turned on the TV to find out what was happening. Witnessing all the horrors, Moran went into a psychotic fit: screaming uncontrollably and pulling out her hair, before she stopped speaking completely and fainted. 18
ORAH SUMMER 2025
It was now Sunday. When Moran’s older son succeeded in waking her, they packed their bags and got into their car, debating whether their sons would be safer in the trunk or behind the driver and passenger seats. They decided behind the seats. The streets were eerily empty. As they were leaving Sderot, Moran saw the blood and bodies of the 12 innocent people murdered in front of the city library. Up ahead, she saw a dozen people in the street with guns. She hit the gas pedal, driving so fast she didn’t see they were Israeli soldiers closing in on the last terrorists in the city. At every turn, Moran saw pickup trucks with RPG launchers, tanks in the middle of the street, and people running. She kept driving until they reached her parents’ home in Beit Shemesh. There, she broke down. For the next six months, Moran and her family lived in a single hotel room in Eilat. Her eldest son stutters and has developed ticks; her youngest wets his bed, has panic attacks, and suffers from recurring nightmares about Hamas terrorists coming for him. He told his psychiatrist: “I feel like my soul is in heaven and my body is here on earth.” He cannot be left alone for fear of endangering himself. Moran’s boys were withering away before her eyes – and they weren’t the only ones. Moran would wake up screaming in the middle of the night. She would pass out from nerves and exhaustion. After a severe panic attack left Moran unconscious, her husband called the paramedics, who told them that sadly, this has become a common phenomenon. Then they asked if she would like them to take her to the hospital. Moran thought to herself, To where, the psychiatric ward? She realized she needed help. She was taken to the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine at Shamir Medical Center. Moran has completed the four-month hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) at Shamir Medical Center, comprised of 60 two-hour oxygen chamber treatments, psychology sessions, physical activity, and support from a nutritionist —a holistic treatment. As she says, “there is the Moran before, and the Moran after.” Moran’s husband and eldest son are set to begin HBOT at Shamir Medical Center in September. Her younger son still needs psychiatric treatment before he can receive HBOT. She refers to Prof. Shai Efrati, Director of the Sagol Center for Hyperbolic Medicine and Research, as the modernday Schindler, and Dr. Keren Doeynas-Barak, Head of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Program, as her angel. “Everyone told me I’m a superhero. But I say each and every one of you were involved in helping me sew my cape.”