War, Grief, and the Middle East: A Therapist’s Elegy

ABSTRACT This essay provides a glimpse, through the eyes of a Gestalt therapist, at the start of the Israel–Gaza war that began on October 7, 2023. Along the way, it reveals the potential struggles that therapists who train in a relational modality, such as Gestalt therapy, can experience—namely, how do they adapt during a war and how far do they go to relate to both sides of a conflict. Poetry, born of wartime, accompanies these reflections to help illustrate the creativity and humanity that coexist with even the most harrowing battles and strife.