“I Forgave Myself First”: One Woman’s Journey From Pain to Healing

From the outside, she seemed to have everything one could ask for: a successful young woman who had built a family and become known by women across Israel for her work. Women came to her from all over the country.

“It looked like I was completely moving in the right direction,” says Aliza Bracha Elharar, 28, a resident of Beit Shemesh, married to Netanel and a mother of three.

“For years, I was a woman of action. When I started my handmade table-design business and the courses that came with it, I quickly discovered that this was what I was best at.”

And she did build, create, manage, and teach courses and workshops, eventually becoming a recognizable name in her field. But amid that success, a realization slowly began to sink in: something wasn’t right.

“Looking back, I understand that I was very much a people-pleaser. I gave my clients my whole soul, but from a place that went beyond my strength, my boundaries, and my abilities. I did everything so that every woman would be satisfied, so everything would be exactly the way that would make her happy. From the outside, the business really was successful, but inside I was drained. At a certain point, I understood that I couldn’t keep living this way.”

Along the way, other things became clear to her.

“I understood that the people-pleasing did not begin with the business. The business simply gave a platform to a pattern that had already existed within me for years. My whole life, I was a people-pleaser. I grew up in a place where I learned to be very responsible, to worry, to manage, to see what everyone needed. I was the strong, capable child, the one who could handle things. But when you are always seeing everyone else, at some point you no longer see yourself.”

Even when she married Netanel, she was still looking outside herself for things she did not know how to give herself.

“I entered marriage thinking that my husband was supposed to take care of everything for me. He was supposed to take care of my self-confidence, my self-worth, my joy and happiness, my sense of well-being, to protect me from the whole world. It was clear to me that this was his role. Today I understand that you cannot place that responsibility on another person.”

But at the time, you still did not understand that this was what was happening to you.

“Not at all. I did not understand myself at all. I only knew that I wasn’t okay.”

“I Felt Like Everyone Was Hurting Me”

The struggle deepened after the birth of her first son. Aliza Bracha found herself in an emotional state she did not recognize, but she did not know what to call it.

“I didn’t understand anything. I only felt that everyone was hurting me, that something was wrong and I didn’t know what it was. As far as I was concerned, the problem was my marriage, because in my mind, marriage was supposed to make me happy, take care of me, and that was not happening. I was sad and I wasn’t well. Luckily, Netanel was very mature and was not frightened by the situation. But he also did not really know what to do.”

When the baby was seven months old, she was living on dates and water and little else. Only later did she understand that she had been experiencing postpartum depression.

Added to that struggle were unresolved issues from the past, including harm she had experienced from someone known to the family, an experience that affected her deeply and that she carried within herself for years.

“I grew up without really knowing how to talk about emotions. If there is a problem, you silence it; you don’t look at it. I remember that even as a young woman, I asked to understand myself. I said it was hard for me, that I wanted to understand what I was feeling.”

As her distress intensified, she began looking for help. Professional therapy became part of that journey.

“Thank Hashem, I turned to professional therapy, but I did not stop there. I searched for the solution in every possible way: people, professionals, therapists, books, reading, workshops, courses. Every time I felt pain, I understood that there was something here I could rise from. Every time, I looked for the way to reach the next level, to heal myself and, first of all, do good for myself.”

“Suddenly, I Understood That I Wanted to Be Home”

After the birth of her second son, Aliza Bracha felt that she no longer wanted to continue working in the field that had supported her financially.

“Suddenly, I understood that I wanted to be home, to be a mother. That was my essence. A year later, I discovered I was pregnant with my third child. After two boys, it would have made sense, of course, that I would want a girl, but already during the pregnancy I experienced fears and physical sensations I could not explain. The birth brought up, with great intensity, the fears of the little girl I myself had been. I said to myself: How can I raise a daughter when I do not know who I am? How can I protect her?”

After the birth, the anxiety intensified. The thoughts would not leave her alone, her sleep suffered, and she found herself facing severe emotional distress.

You had already experienced postpartum depression before. This time, did you understand more quickly what was happening to you?

“This time, I had tools I did not have before. I said I was not going to give up. Throughout the whole journey, I knew I wanted a better life. Maybe I did not know at that moment what was wrong, but if I was not okay, I would look for a way to change it. Even when I had trouble sleeping or eating, I tried not to let myself sink.

“Every morning, I would get up and go out. I told myself that instead of staying in bed and letting the thoughts overwhelm me, I would distract myself. I would make plans with friends in advance, go out, and pray on my own. If I could not fall asleep at night, I would get up and pray Maariv, and I kept saying to Hashem: Is this what You want from me right now? I do not understand why, but if this is what You want from me right now, I am here for this role, so give me strength.”

During that time, she remembers the sukkah as a place of extraordinary calm.

“I would sit in the sukkah for hours. Inside the sukkah, I had no anxiety. I could leave it and feel as if I was about to faint, but there was something holy and special there that brought an unusual level of calm to my soul.”

The birth of her daughter also forced her to confront the place she had spent years running from.

“That was where a journey of forgiving who I had been began: the little girl who was such a people-pleaser, so innocent, so afraid to say no. My daughter came to me like medicine. I had to see all of those places and grow from there, because I understood that I could not raise her out of my fears.”

Picking Up the Pieces

Aliza Bracha describes the seven years since becoming a mother as a journey of disconnection and reconnection.

“The first part was the disconnection, and the second part was reconnecting with myself. Reconnecting with myself began when I started connecting with the Creator of the world. Prayer, which had previously been part of a system of obligations for me, took on new meaning. I began to understand that prayer is a gift. It is not that I am doing the Creator of the world a favor by praying to Him. Every word is medicine for the soul. I began to pray out of love.

“I began studying faith, reading and learning before bed, and it brought calm into me. Today I study faith with friends almost every day, book after book, because I understand that it is medicine for the soul. The verse, ‘I will thank You, for You answered me and became my salvation,’ also took on especially deep meaning in my life.

“It was precisely through the struggle, through the pain, that I found the way. The crises brought me to a place of taking even greater responsibility for my life, my choices, my independence, and my self-worth. To let go even more of dependence on people and connect even more with the Creator of the world. Today, personal prayer, faith, and prayer are the things that give my soul the most strength.”

At a certain point, a separation developed between her and her family. Aliza wants to emphasize that today, she does not see cutting off contact as a solution to rush toward.

“I do not recommend cutting off contact at all. If you can build yourself up, restore yourself, examine boundaries, and build self-worth without cutting off contact, then do not cut off contact. But sometimes it is the only option. It is painful, but I knew I was doing it first and foremost for myself, for my children, and for my home. It was not against anyone; it was for myself.

“A year ago, in the month of Elul, I felt that I had succeeded in rebuilding myself and picking up the pieces, and I began, step by step, to return to the relationships that had been cut off.”

How do you move from such enormous pain to forgiveness?

“First of all, I forgave myself. I allowed myself to be the little girl, and I no longer waited for them to see me, to apologize, or to ask for forgiveness. I no longer needed anyone’s approval. The moment I agreed to forgive my little girl, to give her the validation that she was not guilty, that she was okay and that she was good, I no longer needed forgiveness from anyone. The moment I forgave myself, I could forgive the person who hurt me.”

She did not settle for forgiveness in her heart. She called the person who had hurt her.

“I did not ask him for anything. I told him: Do whatever you want, say thank you or do not say thank you, that is yours. I am only telling you that I forgive you. I want to cleanse myself, I want to be free. I want to get this out of myself for my own sake and make room for goodness and abundance.”

That conversation, she says, opened another stage in her healing.

“From there, even deeper healing began, because I released what was not mine.

“The process did not happen in one day. I also called my father and asked him for forgiveness for the pain created around the separation. I came from a place where I was ready to hear what I was asking forgiveness for, too. I asked him: Do you want to tell me what I am asking forgiveness for? Because I really want to regret it. I do not want to apologize just to fulfill an obligation. It was important for me to know.”

Her relationship with her mother also began to grow stronger again through conversations and greater communication.

So you are saying that forgiveness does not depend on the other side apologizing?

“Exactly. It is true that if someone asks you for forgiveness, it can bring healing, but today I understand that my self-worth is not in their hands. That is my responsibility. I understood that the hurt is not mine. What is mine is only responsibility for my life: what I do with what happens, what I choose, whether to collapse or to get up. And every time, I chose to get up.”

From Personal Healing to Helping Other Mothers

Today, she hopes to turn the path she has traveled into a calling. She studied parent coaching, and through her experiences as both a mother and a child, she wants to help mothers build different relationships with their children.

“I want to help another mother build those relationships and understand that sometimes, the child she finds most difficult is the child who comes to give her the tools, the strength, and the change. If I need to work on patience and a child comes along who challenges me specifically with patience, I can say thank you to that child. Instead of seeing him as an enemy, I see him as a gift.”

The anxiety, she emphasizes, is also not a chapter she can simply erase from her life. The difference is that today, she knows herself and understands which tools help her cope.

“Above all, there is my choice not to wait any longer for someone else to change my life. Perhaps that is why the month of Elul now seems so different to me from the way I experienced it in the past. The month, which I once associated mainly with fear, has over the years become a time of closeness, prayer, self-reflection, and forgiveness.

“If a woman carries within her an injury she is still unable to forgive, I would tell her first of all to connect with herself. To allow herself to be, supposedly, not okay, not good. To forgive herself. Because from there, it is possible to let go.

“And ultimately, if you want to truly connect, you have to connect to something greater than yourself. A person is limited. The connection to the Creator of the world is infinite, and that is what gave me strength.”