When our youngest daughter Arblush was born, I made a typical decision for a young mother with no awareness or experience. I chose to take care of the two sweet babies without assistance and without frameworks, while trying to finish my degree courses, returning to work two days a week in the clinic and with the pretension of using reusable diapers that I have to wash, fully breastfeed, getting around without my own car, and all this with a partner who came home from work after 19:00 pm every day. I didn't realize what a huge challenge I had taken on, relatively speaking. Everything is relative.
The human mind cannot avoid comparing suffering to suffering in such days. When so many people are so bad, the standards that fit the definition of "I'm relatively fine" have become very low. My emotional struggles seem insignificant compared to a soldier sleeping on the floor in a wet sleeping bag, or someone who has to take care of the children and the house and wakes up every morning anxious about knocking on the door, God forbid.
True, suffering is not competition, and acknowledging my own difficulty does not diminish the difficulty of others. Still, it has become difficult to share the challenges of life these days, because the difficulties of all of us are dwarfed by the number of women, including the mothers of small children, whose spouses have been under Order 8 for many weeks and are trying to juggle financially, emotionally and logistically, or in the face of parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, who walk among us with a hollow look of pain and beg us to bring their loved ones home from Hamas captivity. And no less than them and them, it is hard to hear the cries of pain and parting words of the families of the fallen, the fallen, the murdered and the murdered, from their loved ones and loved ones.
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The reason I remembered my experiences as a young mother is that after a few months of feeling exhausted, sad and guilt-ridden (along with the great joy and excitement of raising my wonderful daughters), I discovered Donald Winnicott's wonderful theory of "a good enough mother" and found it a source of comfort in the face of the feeling of "I'm not good enough."
According to Winnicott, a baby needs a mother who is present and attentive to his needs, yet it's okay for her to "fail" at that occasionally. In an order that is sometimes not available to immediately satisfy his needs. In this way, the baby learns to adapt to the world, delay gratification and regulate desires, and becomes a social creature that can integrate and adapt.
The theory reassured me. It helped me set healthy boundaries for maternal devotion and partially neutralized the internal criticism that scolded me for being a neglectful mother if I didn't have the energy to put together another puzzle or tell another story.
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A few days ago I asked myself: Am I too judgmental of the leadership? If I look at her decisions through Winnicott's prism, maybe it's good enough, if not perfect, leadership? What is a good enough prime minister? Maybe I'm expecting an ideal leader, like I expected myself to be an ideal mother, and that's why I'm so disappointed in him and the rest of his friends?
When Sheila and Arbel were tiny and I needed intense motherhood, I learned that beyond specifically responding to their daily requests, it was important to have a sense of security that I would instill in them. Let them feel protected and loved, even if sometimes I don't have the energy to go down to the playground again. In parallel, demanding that a prime minister make decisions that create a safe space for citizens, even if there are mistakes here and there, is neither "unnecessary criticism" nor "incitement against the government" – this is a legitimate request.
Since this government came to power about a year ago, we have been living in the worst personal and general insecurity that has ever existed here (I asked Elisheva, Leon's mother, who was born in Palestine in 1938 and really went through everything. She agrees with me). In the test of results, the government fails to provide a stable and safe environment for its citizens, and is mired in attempts to blame everyone who has ever taken part in the history of the Jewish people. Those who live and those who die, right and left.
This week I watched a video of students at the school in Yehud huddled in the hallway during an alarm, unable to access the shelter. Surprisingly, I wasn't surprised by the video. I wondered when the failures in protecting our children while they were in the frameworks would surface in the media. I asked myself: What if this happened in the Knesset, if ministers and Knesset members did not have a proper protected space? The answer is that this would not have happened, and it only illustrates the discrimination in meeting the obligation to protect citizens.
Later, I read about the punitive actions taken by a school in Ramat Gan against children who ran to shelter during an alarm, contrary to the order to stay in the classroom under the glass window. The sweet and smart children followed the survival instinct - a basic human response. They understood, despite their young age, that the directive approved by the Minister of Education was abandoning their personal safety to the system. What does a parent who isn't good enough do? Sets rules at home that do not take the child into account, but his own comfort, and punishes the child when he violates them. Where have we come when the education system, in its role as guardian in the absence of parents in the school space, punishes children for trying to defend themselves?
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The state is our neglectful parent, even the abusive. I am angry at the priorities of the prime minister and the ministers, at the outrageous distribution of funds and at their treatment of the pain of the evacuees and the families of the abductees.
One of the first things I realized as a mother was that I was responsible for the consequences of my actions and for my daughters, and that there was no point in sinking into the victims or telling myself why that person was making things difficult for me. I expect this minimum from my leadership as well. Any psychologist would agree that you shouldn't lie to children in order to like them or evade responsibility, because consistent behavior is the most important tool to instill trust in children.
The same thing happens with good enough leadership. It is important that its people refrain from manipulations that harm civilians, and from actions out of the interests of cronies. When the public discovers that they are being lied to – for example, when they promise to cut coalition budgets for the evacuees, soldiers, wounded and families of the dead, and in the end not only do not cut but present the data in a manipulative way so that we will be confused – it leads to mistrust. And government officials have no one to complain about for losing the public's trust, but themselves. Just like parents who lie to their children.
I came across news of such conduct from the Minister of Finance, just as I was finishing sharing in my story one of the never-ending requests by spouses of reservists to donate sleeping bags and warm blankets for their company - because they lack heating equipment.
When these messages came to me two months ago, it made me cry and scream at home until the girls would say, "Mom, enough." In the past month, anger and crying have been replaced by feelings of helplessness and despair. This is called "learned helplessness," and it also happens to children whose parents do not provide for their needs. They stop crying, shouting and complaining, because they understand that it doesn't help. They learn to live with a sense of despair and reduce their emotional experience.
Winnicott was a guide to me at that time of young parenting, in his beautiful distinction between satisfying the child's needs and being sensitive and responsive to the child's needs, meaning that you don't always have to agree to every request, but it's important to listen honestly and empathize. Thus, even a good enough prime minister should understand the emotional climate of the nation, and not accuse those who cry out painfully of treason or politicization.
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This week I read that the state refuses to fund a safe space for soldiers guarding Kibbutz Manara. That the authorities ignore the requests. It is incomprehensible that soldiers, the security agents of the state, are left without basic protection. This illustrates the state's detachment from its basic obligations, like a parent who does not understand the significance of responsibility for a child's life.
The country is far from fulfilling even partially the basic definitions to be considered "good enough leadership." She left us, her children, to manage ourselves in an emergency. Disappeared from home. This abandonment leaves deep scars in the fabric of social trust and cohesion, even if we hang the biggest signs in the world that read "Together we will win."
Examining the government's tenure through Winnicott's lens shows me that it is not me who needs to lower my expectations, but the country that needs to wake up and commit to providing its citizens with security and stability and a response. This is not even political criticism, but criticism of its failure to fulfill its basic duty in wartime: feeding soldiers, not profiting from donations, providing children with proper shelter and buying protective equipment for soldiers with our tax dollars. What did we just ask for? Good enough parents.
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