My name is Aya. I am a mother to four precious daughters: Maria, who is 8 years old; Milar, 6; Mennatullah, 4; and my youngest, Ruwaida, who is only 3 years old. I write these words with a heavy heart and tears blurring my eyes from the midst of rubble and displacement. The war has turned our lives completely upside down, stripping us of everything that once gave us safety, dignity, and stability.

During the early days of the war, my husband, the pillar of our family, was detained. He was kept away from us behind bars, leaving me completely alone to face the horrors of death. But our tragedy did not end with his release. Just one month after coming home, he suffered a severe injury that led to the amputation of a finger on his right hand. This injury did not just wound his body; it completely robbed him of his ability to work. With the loss of his livelihood, our only source of income ceased, leaving us in absolute vulnerability.

The calamities continued to pour upon us. Our home was bombed and entirely demolished right before my eyes. We lost our lifetime of hard work—those very walls we built with our sweat, struggle, and years of sacrifice just to be a safe shelter for our daughters became nothing but rubble and ash in a single moment. Today, my injured husband, my daughters, and I have become displaced refugees. We live in a worn-out tent that offers no protection against the freezing cold or the burning heat.

Right now, we are enduring the scorching and suffocating heat of the summer, which transforms our tent into a literal oven that consumes the fragile bodies of my little girls. There is no cold water to quench their thirst and no shade to protect them from sunstroke. Yet, amidst this daily torment and my broken spirit, I am currently pregnant, carrying a new life inside my womb. I am paralyzed by a terrifying, suffocating anxiety for this unborn child, fearing they might suffer the same tragic fate as their sibling due to the absolute lack of medical care, scarce clean water, and severe shortage of food and medicine. It is beyond human endurance for a mother to think about how she will give birth and welcome a newborn into a tent lacking the barest necessities of human life, all while watching her daughters wither from hunger and thirst.

But the deepest, most devastating wound inflicted upon my soul occurred when I lost my precious baby whom I had waited for through nine long years of yearning, patience, and prayers. My sweet child was taken from me, dying before my eyes due to the brutal famine and acute malnutrition imposed upon us in Gaza. My baby starved to death while I stood completely helpless, unable to feed or save that innocent life. A massive part of my soul died that day, and the heartbreak of that loss remains a crushing weight added to the mountains of grief and hardship we face every single day.

Despite the darkness surrounding us and from the ruins of this bitter life, I refuse to give up on my daughters' future, and I am trying with everything I have to keep them in school. I fight against impossible odds—the lack of books, the absence of proper desks, and the harsh environment—just to protect the minds of Maria, Milar, Mennatullah, and Ruwaida from despair. I want to plant a seed of hope for a better tomorrow in their hearts, even though the daily road to their education is fraught with exhaustion and danger.

I turn to every living conscience and every merciful heart with a wounded soul and a voice choked with tears, pleading for a helping hand. We are not asking for luxury; we are simply searching for the basic essentials of survival: food and clean drinking water, prenatal medical care to protect my pregnancy from malnutrition, a dignified shelter to shield us from the summer heat and the cruelty of displacement, and support to help me continue my daughters' education.

Your support, no matter how small it may seem to you, is a literal lifeline for an entire family that has been nearly crushed by war. It is the only glimmer of light left in our darkness.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank everyone who reads my words with empathy, stands by us, and supports us through this harrowing ordeal.