As I may have mentioned in previous blog posts, I am interning at in the development office at NATAL, the Israeli Trauma Center for Victims of War and Terror. Today, I walked into my boss’s office to show her the Passover campaign proposal my friend and I created. I couldn’t help but notice a drawing on the wall. I could tell from the stick figures and the coloring outside of the lines that it was done by a small child. I asked my boss, Melanie, what the drawing was supposed to be. She said that a young patient drew it when his psychologist asked him to draw a picture of his home and his family.
I remember doing a similar exercise in grade school. Our teacher gave us the same assignment and I still remember exactly what I drew: a square house with little stick figures (my parents, my sister, and me) playing in the garden.
However, the drawing on Melanie’s wall was very different. The house was in the midst of an explosion. There were Qassam rockets in the sky. And the stick figures had worried looks on their faces.
Unfortunately, this vision of home is all too common in Sderot, a small city in the South of Israel. Located less than one air mile away from the Gaza strip, Sderot has been the target of rocket attacks for almost ten years. As if that’s not disturbing enough, try to digest this: research from 2011 concludes that more than 70% of the children in Sderot suffer from at least one symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
That’s right. Seven out of ten children.
Here is where NATAL comes in. The organization has two hotlines, one for adults and one for children. They send all sorts of materials down to children in cities in Southern Israel with stress balls, beach balls, coloring books, etc. NATAL’s mobile unit sends therapists down to these cities on a regular basis so that anyone who needs it has easy access to psychotherapy.
In the development office, my main job is to raise awareness about NATAL and the impact of trauma on one’s life. Next week, I’ll devote a blog entry especially to NATAL’s efforts to help women. If there is anything trauma related that you’d like to learn about, please comment and I will try to address those questions specifically!
I have been so impressed with all of the services that NATAL offers to victims of trauma. NATAL’s symbol, the mosaic tree (pictured below) has been a huge inspiration to me. The red/brown part of the tree represents a traumatic event. The blue branches represent the process of healing, where the traumatic event is still a part of you, but you live again. Hence the name NATAL, or “to be born.” Thank you, NATAL, for helping people realize that they can live again.