Today, the remains of the last hostage were recovered and brought back to Israel. Today on January 26, 2025, 843 days later, October 7, 2023 is finally over.

People are posting that sentiment all over social media. That it’s over. The hostage crisis is over. I posted it myself, in the context of recognizing the agony of how long it’s been.

However, the bitter truth that anybody with PTSD will tell you, myself included, is that it’s never over. There’s no such thing.

Logistically speaking, this hostage recovery effort is done, yes. Yellow ribbons can come off and hostage posters can come down. The IDF and Israeli government can shift their focus to other (not all unrelated) endeavors. Sure. Okay.

But the trauma. The pain. The memory. The anger. The grief. The loss. The agony. The fear. The paranoia. The hypervigilance. The anxiety. The uncertainty. The resentment. The concern.

It’s never over.

We will do what we can to heal. We will help each other, and we will help others in need. We will move forward.

Forward, yes, but not on. Not exactly. We carry our pain with us, on days when it sits quietly as a passenger, and on days when it takes over and drives the bus, full of road rage.

Trauma changes the chemistry of the brain. We are permanently altered.

The Jewish world has woken up, you see. The smokescreens of politeness and political correctness are gone. We have awoken from the slumbering delusion that such virulent and violent cruelty against us was largely in the past. We see now that at the end of the day, there is hardly anybody we can count on, outside of ourselves. We have learned that the only answer to being hated for our Jewishness is to lean just as hard into said Jewishness. And we know, more than anything, that we will never be hapless victims of that hate ever again. We will do all we can to ensure we are never caught unawares again. It is possible that a day may come when we go down, but, we will unequivocally go down fighting.

The hostage crisis is over. Baruch Hashem. But the fight?

It’s never over.

You know what? It’s that particular bit that gives me hope, more than anything else.

May the memories of all we’ve lost be a blessing, and may they give us strength to keep fighting for the hope that maybe, just maybe, we will someday have peace.