A Mother's Love Under Siege: Life in Gaza Through Her Eyes
It's 4 a.m. again. The electricity hasn't returned, but she doesn't need a clock—her body knows the rhythm now. The low hum of drones replaces lullabies. Her baby stirs in her arms, too tired to cry, too hungry to sleep.
In the heart of Gaza, under skies heavy with smoke and uncertainty, there lives a mother. Her name isn’t known to the world. She could be anyone—someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, someone’s everything.
But right now, she’s a mother surviving on strength alone.
Her Morning Routine Isn’t Like Ours
While many of us start our mornings with coffee and headlines, she starts hers by checking for cracks in the walls after the latest blast. Her children sleep in their clothes—just in case they have to run in the middle of the night. There’s no breakfast. Not because she’s too tired to cook, but because there’s no food left to cook.
She ties a scarf tightly around her head, not out of habit but to hide her thinning hair. The weight of hunger, stress, and fear has aged her. She takes her toddler by the hand and walks for an hour to a charity kitchen for one portion of rice—maybe pasta, if she’s lucky. No vegetables. No protein. Just enough to keep the body going.
Over 80% of Gaza’s population depends on these meals now. She is one of them.
Water—A Daily Gamble
Her next mission is water. She fills plastic bottles from a cracked community tap. The water is cloudy, but she has no choice. Gaza’s water systems are in ruins—bombed, broken, and dry. Most wells are contaminated. She boils what she can, but fuel is scarce. Electricity comes on for just an hour or two, if at all.
She’s lost count of how many times her children have gotten sick.
A Visit to the Hospital Brings More Fear
Her middle son used to need asthma medication, but now they only have one inhaler left. The hospital is overflowing—people lie in hallways, waiting for care that may never come. Six out of seven dialysis centers no longer work. People die waiting.
And yet, the hospital is still a place of hope for her. Not because it has all the answers, but because it has people who still try.
Hope Isn’t Gone—She Carries It
This mother, like thousands of others, keeps going—not because life is easy, but because her love is stronger than fear. She still whispers stories to her children at night. She still braids her daughter’s hair. She still believes in a better tomorrow, even when the present feels like it’s slipping through her fingers.
This Story is Fiction—but the Pain is Real
While this mother is a symbol, the facts are heartbreakingly true. Families in Gaza are enduring:
Widespread hunger and severe malnutrition.
No access to clean water or electricity.
Hospitals on the brink of collapse.
Children growing up with trauma, not toys.
They are not numbers. They are people—parents, students, dreamers.
So What Can We Do?
We may not be able to stop the bombs. But we can refuse to be silent.
We can share their stories. We can raise our voices. We can remind the world that behind every headline, there’s a human being just trying to survive another day with dignity.
Please keep Gaza in your thoughts, in your words, in your actions. Because when the world stops watching, the suffering grows louder in the dark.
Hope Can Cross Borders—With You
If this story moved you, don't let it end here.
While borders remain closed, your compassion doesn’t have to be. A small donation can help provide food, clean water, and emergency care to families in Gaza—especially to mothers like the one in this story, who wake each day wondering how to protect their children in a world falling apart.
❤️ Give what you can. Hope travels fastest when we carry it together.
👉 https://finnishhumanrights.org/donations-1
