{:author "Nourhan Mousa",
 :date "2026-08-26",
 :description "Before this nightmare began, our life was simple but filled with warmth and stability. Our home was a sanctuary where my children felt safe. They attended UNRWA schools—bright, talented souls with big dreams for a peaceful future. My husband holds a university degree in Early Childhood Education, and despite the scarce opportunities in Gaza, he worked as a teacher whenever he could. I, too, graduated from Al-Aqsa University with a degree in Education.",
 :image
 {:path "/img/shuttered-dreams-and-frozen-hope.jpg",
  :alt
  "Nourhan andmembers of her familly walking through a camp in Gaza",
  :width 540,
  :height 1200,
  :type "image/jpeg"},
 :inferred-meta true,
 :tags ["Family"],
 :title "Shuttered Dreams and Frozen Hope"}

## The Fight to Keep My Six Children Alive in Gaza

![Nourhan andmembers of her familly walking through a camp in Gaza](/img/shuttered-dreams-and-frozen-hope.jpg)

My name is Nourhan. I was born in 1989, a woman who once had simple dreams, but today, I am a mother fighting an invisible, agonizing war just to keep my six beautiful children alive.

Before this nightmare began, our life was simple but filled with warmth and stability. Our home was a sanctuary where my children felt safe. They attended UNRWA schools—bright, talented souls with big dreams for a peaceful future. My husband holds a university degree in Early Childhood Education, and despite the scarce opportunities in Gaza, he worked as a teacher whenever he could. I, too, graduated from Al-Aqsa University with a degree in Education. But like thousands of youth here, the suffocating siege and unemployment locked those doors. Refusing to surrender, I taught myself digital marketing to support my family and to afford my own medical treatments.

My health broke years ago after a terrifying accident; one of my children fell down the stairs and lost consciousness. The sheer trauma of that moment altered my body forever. I was diagnosed with chronic hypothyroidism and severe adrenal insufficiency (high cortisol), requiring lifelong medication and regular, expensive medical testing just to survive. Yet, despite the illness, we were happy. We had each other.

### Then, the sky fell.

The war came and swallowed everything we owned. Our home was reduced to rubble. Our sources of income vanished in a flash. In an instant, we became homeless, stripped of our dignity, shoved into torn, fragile tents.

Today, the crushing weight of our entire world rests solely on my shoulders. My husband’s eyesight, already weak, has deteriorated drastically. He now suffers from severe spinal disc disease and debilitating back inflammation, leaving him completely unable to work or lift anything.

Since the onset of this horrorshow, we have been forcibly displaced more than ten times. Ten times of running through streets paved with fire, clutching my children’s hands, fleeing death only to arrive at another unknown wasteland. We have stared death in the face countless times. Shrapnel and bullets have rained inches from our bodies. The relentless, buzzing roar of drones never leaves our skies. Tanks, shelling, and earth-shattering explosions have become our daily breath. We wake up every single morning wondering if this day will be our last.

Yet, amid this living hell, I refuse to let the darkness steal my children’s future completely. I bleed myself dry to send five of them to a makeshift educational center so they don’t forget how to read and write. It costs $200 every month—an impossible fortune for us. Some months, we can only pay if a kind soul donates to our fundraiser; other months, the fees pile up, and our debts grow like a mountain, threatening to lock them out of learning.

But nothing prepared us for the dark horror of the famine.

When my youngest daughter was just a baby, the starvation was so severe that my breast milk completely dried up. I watched her cry from hunger, and my hands were empty. My six-year-old son developed severe, acute malnutrition; today, he lives with chronic, severe anemia, desperately needing specialized medical care and real nutrition that I cannot provide. My eldest child, now thirteen, has had his growth permanently stunted. Because of prolonged starvation, his frail body looks like that of a seven-year-old child. My ten-year-old son suffers from recurring, painful skin conditions and severe allergic swellings that erupt without warning due to the toxic environment.

The tent we call “home” is a nightmare. It is torn, freezing in the winter, scorching in the summer, and crawling with rats, fleas, and insects. Clean drinking water is a luxury we can only pray for.

Right now, our survival depends entirely on this fundraising campaign. Food prices have skyrocketed to insane, impossible levels. The very little food we can find is miserable. The meat and eggs available are of the lowest, worst possible quality (“Tareef” brand)—spoiled, foul-tasting, and barely fit for human consumption. The fruits and vegetables are mostly rotten, unripe, and highly unhealthy. Yet, we are forced to buy them at astronomical prices just to stay alive.

Instead of sitting in bright classrooms, my children spend their fragile childhoods carrying heavy water containers across long, dangerous distances. They stand in exhausting lines for hours for a piece of bread or wait at charity kitchens. During the height of the famine, they literally risked their lives just for a loaf of bread, returning to the tent bruised, traumatized, and trembling with fear. No child in this world should ever have to trade their childhood for a piece of dry bread.

We don’t dream of luxuries. We dream of sleeping for one single night without the terror of explosions. We dream of a cup of clean water. We dream of a safe, sturdy shelter. We dream of restoring our stolen dignity.

As for me, my body is failing. I struggle daily with chronic hypothyroidism and adrenal insufficiency, confirmed by medical reports. I must take 100 mcg of Thyroxine every single day, alongside monthly medical tests and specialized care that we cannot afford.

Some of the hardest days we have ever endured were the days of starvation. It was an unimaginably brutal time. We didn’t have a single crumb of bread. Flour became a rare luxury; a single 25-kilogram bag skyrocketed to an astronomical $1,000—an amount that would only sustain my family for a single week. Hunger consumed us. Desperate for anything to quiet our empty stomachs, we found nothing to eat but tree leaves.

When the so-called “humanitarian aid corridors”—which were nothing but traps of humiliation and death—finally opened, crowds of desperate people would gather, waiting for hours under the scorching sun. Every single day, people were killed or wounded. Driven by sheer starvation, my young children had to go there. Sometimes they would return with a single kilogram of flour; other times, they came back empty-handed, their fragile bodies bruised, bleeding, and torn. The occupation forces opened fire directly at the crowds. My own brother was martyred there, killed while waiting in line just to bring some flour or lentils to his hungry children.

Prices were insane. We went to sleep for consecutive nights without a single bite of food. We were starving. My children were exhausted, crying constantly from the pain of hunger. Our faces grew pale and gaunt, and our bodies wasted away. I lost 18 kilograms. Because my chronic medication was completely unavailable, I suffered from frequent fainting spells and severe drops in blood pressure. With our pale faces and protruding bones, we looked like walking ghosts. We were exhausted, and to this day, we still suffer from the deep physical and psychological scars of this famine.

### The Collapse of Daily Life and Healthcare

Before the war, transportation was excellent and readily available. Now, we are reduced to riding donkey carts, heavily overcrowded with people. It is so unsafe that passengers frequently fall off and get injured. Accessing medical care has become nearly impossible. Hospitals have been bombed, and a massive number of doctors and medical staff have been martyred. The remaining medical personnel are stretched dangerously thin, utterly unable to handle the overwhelming volume of patients. There is a catastrophic shortage of medicine because the occupation blocks medical supplies from entering.

When we do seek treatment, it is usually in makeshift medical points set up in tents. Thousands of patients wait for hours, sitting on the bare ground under the burning sun. A sick person goes in search of healing, only to return in worse pain, thoroughly exhausted to the point of collapse by the journey, the waiting, and the heat. In the end, you are usually told that your medicine is out of stock, or that a substitute exists in an outside pharmacy at a price no one can afford. We are withering away, dying a slow death.

There is no healthcare, no education, no food, no clean water, no usable roads, no proper transportation, and absolutely no source of income to sustain a dignified life.

I am not asking for the world. I am asking for a lifeline to keep my children alive, healthy, and educated.

If your heart can feel our pain, please consider supporting my campaign or becoming a long-term sponsor for my family. Your compassion is the only bridge between my children and survival. It means medicine instead of agonizing pain, education instead of dark despair, and a flicker of hope instead of paralyzing fear.

Thank you for looking into our eyes and listening to our story. Please, do not let the world forget us.
