This is part of a series, “Uprooted.” Each column is a curated monologue from an individual among the tens of thousands of internally displaced Israelis during the war with Hamas who were evacuated from the country’s northern border and the Gaza envelope.

I grew up in a religious family in the Dolev settlement across the Green Line in the West Bank. My parents became religious and looked for a religious community to live in. I don’t know if it’s because I grew up in a religious family, but I always sought freedom and tested boundaries. In 11th grade, I moved to a boarding school in Samaria where I understood that I had to keep my mouth shut if I wanted to pass my high school matriculation exams.

I married Adam from Kibbutz Misgav Am and we lived there, and then in Jerusalem, and then Rosh Pina. After that, we looked for a place to settle down and arrived at Kibbutz Tzivon close to the border with Lebanon. We fell in love with the place, especially Alonim Forest. When we’re sad, we go to the forest. When we’re happy, we go to celebrate with the oak trees.

That weekend, there was an ancient crafts festival at Tzivon Forest. On Saturday morning, I woke up early and decided to go to the forest alone to gather hawthorns. I grabbed a basket and went down to the stream alone.

It was one of the most perfect days of my life. I walked around the forest, sang to the trees, and felt full of light and joy. When I returned to the kibbutz with a bag of hawthorns, we started to get messages that something was happening in the south and the festival was being packed up.

I immediately called Liat, a close friend from Kibbutz Mefalsim who is like a sister to me. We communicate daily and we are homeopath colleagues. I wasn’t too anxious. During every military operation, I would call and tell her to come to us and she would always say, “You think we’re going to leave the house because of this?”

I called her and she didn’t answer. I messaged her, “What’s up? Maybe you should come over?” and she responded, “How would we come? I have terrorists walking around outside, where’s the army?” I understood then that the situation wasn’t normal.

She told me that terrorists had entered her sister-in-law’s house, her husband had gone out to join the emergency response team, and her son was sitting outside the house with his weapon from the army. It sounded ridiculous to me. I tried to calm her. I messaged her, “Keep going, talk to me,” and she said she couldn’t because she had to keep quiet and the terrorists were in the garden.

At some point, communication was cut off for a few hours. I called her kids and they didn’t answer. Other friends tried to get in touch with her and failed. All this happened while I sat on the patio in the back garden of the home I built with my husband. We plastered, mixed and sawed with our own hands and planted a gorgeous garden, and I was struck by the extreme contrast between what was happening there and the beauty I was sitting in.

Very quickly, I realized I was beginning to be tense. I was scared someone would lunge at me from the forest. All the beauty turned into a black-and-white film and lost its color. At 8 p.m., Liat wrote to me, “I’m driving with the children to Caesarea, I’ll speak to you when I get there.” At the same time, army forces came to us, too, with an artillery battery. In one moment, everything changed.

On Sunday, we got an alert for a possible terrorist infiltration and an order to get into our safe rooms. The moment I saw the word “infiltration,” I packed some things and took the kids, and drove to my sister in [Pardes Hanna-] Karkur. When I got there, I told her, “I’m leaving the kids and going back. There’s a reserve battalion at the entrance to the kibbutz. They might need me.”

I got back to the kibbutz and the first thing I did was go to the supermarket to shop for the soldiers. They were missing headlamps and I wanted to help. But then my sister called me and said, “You cannot leave the children here without you. You have to come.” I tried to explain to her that I had to help in Tzivon, but after a second infiltration alert, it felt like my blood left my body. That feeling has followed me since the beginning of the war.

And the word “infiltration.” It reminds me of rape. Brutal rape. It reminds me of the destruction and ruin of something innocent. It reminds me of the spilled blood of innocence. Something entirely innocent that was roughly destroyed.

When I went to see Liat in Caesarea after they escaped Mefalsim, I saw a group of survivors. For us, the drama is different. It’s not a result of infiltration. It’s like being uprooted from the base, or the ground.

Because there was no official evacuation, the kibbutz spread out at first. For the first week, we were with my sister, and from there we moved to Ashdot Ya’akov Ihud. When the evacuation became official, we moved to Kibbutz Alumot which has hospitality units. Many Tzivon residents were there. We lived in Alumot for a month and a half, and things got better.

We were able to walk along the paths and cry. No one thought it was strange. We could sit and get drunk and laugh about the whole thing and then sob a moment later. The people became our foundation. People I had no connection with became close to me. Even though I had lived in the community for years, I continued to guard myself. I hadn’t wanted to commit or to feel too inside or too outside, and suddenly the togetherness was in the air.

Being uprooted impacts you in small ways like sleeping in someone else’s bed or how making lunch becomes a project. In a situation like this, you hold on to the people around you, your friends. They are home. You want them nearby.

A few days later, I heard a difficult story from someone. I listened to the story and felt like I was on the brink of a panic attack. Something in the story touched a damaged part of me and everything rose to the surface. If I had been in a normal situation, I might have been able to contain it, but I had been uprooted and was far from home, the clinic and my closest friend. The pain was so strong, and I told myself to break. Let this break you.

I left the room at 11 p.m., went to someone from the kibbutz whom I had barely spoken to until that moment, knocked on her door and told her that I needed help. She didn’t ask questions, there was no need for an introduction, and there was no issue of politeness, she just came. With her help, I was able to understand something.

I feel like the war is a catalyst. An opportunity for change. It brought us all back to a sensitive and doubtful place and we cannot go on from here, holding onto the stories we tell ourselves.

Actually, a wish was formed: to leave behind all the crises that shaped my life. Now you’re in a sensitive place, you’re uprooted. Your physical structure was taken from you and your mental structure, which you worked so hard to build was taken with it. We were naked in front of each other as one community.

On the other hand, I found myself becoming the “village doctor.” I took a folding table, a chair and a computer outside, and created a homeopathic questionnaire for anyone who felt they needed it. I handed out extracts and it helped. We became woven together. Everyone gave what they had and took what they needed.

Adam, my husband, is an architect. He opened an office in our unit in Alumot so he could keep working. There was a living room with a couch and a bedroom with three beds. There was no space to breathe, and when it rained, the two dogs came in, too. We washed dishes and did laundry in the shower.

We understood that we couldn’t continue living like that for very long and we needed a house. We found one that belonged to friends in Rosh Pina that was up for sale and they let us live in it for discounted rent. Moving there and leaving my friends and community was a crisis for me.

Ya’ara (9) is learning in a program set up by the Forest School which was closed when the war began. A little after the evacuation, a new small extension of it was opened in Kibbutz Ginosar, and Ya’ara goes there every day.

Ofek (13) goes to a school in Rosh Pina. It’s an elementary school where kids from Har VaGai School, which had been evacuated, go at the end of the day. Before the war, he went to the school in Kibbutz Sasa. In short: It’s a mess.

Because the external activity is so extreme and destructive, I have the opportunity to choose what I want to grow. It’s like going back to my garden that spores have already seized and the plants have gone wild.

I think that the most meaningful thing now, and in general, is the relationships. You must understand that everyone is a tree, but we’re a forest together. The forest knows how to give. Trees look after each other. A tree bears fruit and someone else eats from it, enjoys it and grows.

I don’t want to go back to the pretend alone. I don’t want to go back to being the lone tree on the hill. I don’t want to go back to the quiet I became addicted to. I want to go back to motion.

I love the house and the earth, but I don’t want to go back to the inner alienation. I want to go back to the common motion of a community, whether it’s as a homeopath, a mother, a wife or a friend.

Before, I wasn’t involved in the community. I laughed at myself for working under the moon’s auspices — you’re not committed when you’re not seen. Now, I want to move toward the sun, the light and the good. A lot of good has come out of people during this time. We need to understand that nothing will work for us if we’re isolated.

I’m willing to argue, but I’m not willing to be angry and hate people. The solution has to come from the forest, from the understanding that togetherness heals, and that’s what we have. We can take our home and our earth.

We still haven’t been compensated by the state for the evacuation because there was some problem with the Tourism Ministry and the checkout from Alumot. So in one day, they take your walls, your protection and your security, and what you have left is the togetherness and the understanding that we are connected and need to find a way.

In Tzivon, which has seen battles and internal wars between the expansion and the kibbutz and on other issues, there were also many artificial dividers. We saw that when our homes were taken from us, we held onto each other. Meaning, that the divisions were not real.

I think that our hearts don’t really know barriers, and if we talk “naked” we can meet. That’s the thing I most want to take with me from this evacuation.

Being sucked back into the normal, Israeli, classic life. Living only to pay the mortgage. I’m scared that reality will kill the seed that has started to grow in me.

I see in the news how people are fighting and the government is cursing each other, and it’s disgusting. I’m scared that we’ll forget everything we learned. I want to hold onto that little seed, look after it, and say, “I’m not willing to give up on you.”

I want to take note of how I speak, how I present things, and how I get angry. Do I burn bridges and break the dishes or do I express anger in a way that leaves a path open to me?

My community, even though it’s far from me now. Work. The family. I work over Zoom as much as I can.

Recently, I published a fantasy book. It was meant to be printed, but then the war began and there was nowhere to store books, so for now, it’s only available in digital format.

The book is called “Boteo Pal – The Iron Seal” and it’s about a girl who works in a brothel and dreams of getting to a place far from her bed, her mistress and her commitments. Her escape itself is a journey of where I came from and where I am going and it’s the first book in a trilogy that I’ve been writing for 10 years. I’ve been working for a long time on allowing myself to break out in different parts of my life, and the book is a sort of archetype.

Of course. There’s no prettier place. Sometimes we sneak home for the weekend to sleep in our beds and light a fire in the fireplace even though it’s not so nice that the kibbutz looks abandoned.

Since the beginning of the war, I’ve been haunted by all sorts of bad news. Adam’s brother’s wife and son have been diagnosed with cancer. On October 8, Lt. Col. Eli Ginsberg, Adam’s childhood friend from Misgav Am, was killed in the battle for Kibbutz Be’eri.

Two weeks ago, Shmulik Zur, who was a neighbor and friend of ours in Rosh Pina, passed away. He was a disabled IDF veteran from the Yom Kippur War and passed away the day the buildings collapsed in Khan Younis. He was an example of the fact that a full life can be lived in a wheelchair and that suddenly your choice has influence.

That’s what Adam and I want: To be a healthy and happy family. Not just for us, but because we’re connected to the togetherness. We want it so that if someone is in need, we can give or take strength from someone else in a moment of weakness.

I just thought of a metaphor from the house in Rosh Pina. It hadn’t been lived in for a long time, and the greenery had gone wild. One day, I took shears and pruned the whole garden so that the sun could get in. That’s what I want to do. Make room for the light.

Since the war began, many people have talked about leaving the country, the south or even Tzivon. The war showed me that I wouldn’t choose any other people. Something is complete in my question of belonging, and as someone who left religion and Judaism in anger, that is new to me.