One of the Israeli-American hostages still being held by Hamas is Sagui Dekel-Chen, a married father of three young girls.
Dekel-Chen, 36, who was taken during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, is expected to be released in the first phase of a Hamas-Israel ceasefire agreement over the coming weeks. His family is anxiously awaiting word.
His stepmother is Gillian Kaye, a New York native who works as a mental health counselor in Sarasota. She spoke with WUSF's Kerry Sheridan about the trauma and recovery that lies ahead for the hostages and their families.
This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What do you know about Sagui's status?
The only sign of life we had — proof of life — was last November (2023), when the group of hostages that were released after 51 days came out.
A number of the people who came out knew Sagui. They were from Nir Oz, and they told us that they had seen him in the tunnels under Khan Yunis, that he had been wounded. We know he had been shot in the leg and in the shoulder, and that he was alive.
So that was about 14 months ago. Anything from the three women who were released earlier this week?
No, no one's heard from them. They're very guarded, which is correct, they're being very shielded.
As someone who is a psychotherapist and also going through this, what should people know about what this experience is like?
This is very unique. This is a very terrible club to be part of. It is hostage families, people who have loved ones who have been held captive for long periods of time.
It is an endless pain, an endless terror. You have no information other than what you hear sporadically from people who were released long ago and are now being released. You're aware that they are being tortured, starved, deprived of sunlight, beaten, sexually assaulted. They may be dying of malnutrition or dehydration, or their wounds or infections. The International Red Cross, unlike many other situations somewhat akin to this, has never seen them. They've been denied access by Hamas. So you don't know anything other than the terror that's in your mind all the time and the fear that's in your mind all the time.
It's almost like you're a hostage, in a way.
I think we are hostage to many things, certainly not the way they are, but we are hostage to our pain and our stress. I mean, I'll tell you on a personal level, I spend my days helping people who have trauma work on regulating their nervous systems. How do they deal with panic and anxiety attacks and the waves that come over them physiologically? How do they help to bring that down? I do my best to practice what I preach, but it's not easy, because there's never a resolution. There's never even a way to move toward resolution. We are totally powerless. We're helpless. We are at the mercy of a terrorist organization and a government that— it's not clear, really, that the hostages are a priority, no matter what they say.
So it's pretty terrifying and really challenging, and there is no healing. There's no moving toward healing or peace for us until, of course, Sagui is home, and until — for all of us, and for the country, for Israel — until all of the hostages are back.
How do you navigate that? Do you try to remain hopeful? Or, do you try to be realistic? Or both?
Yes, I mean, you have to be hopeful. It was so devastating when Hersh Goldberg-Polin was murdered. (Goldberg-Polin was executed by Hamas after 11 months in captivity.) Of course, we know now many things about his murder and the beautiful five other young people that were murdered also with him.
Rachel Goldberg, Hersh's mother, and (husband) Jon Polin, who were part of our strange family of American hostage families. We know them so well.
Rachel always said you have to hold out hope all the time. Hope is mandatory.
And I think that we all feel that that hope has to be mandatory, and at the same time to be realistic about what may happen, because nothing is certain, and we've seen so much, and we know so much now it's sometimes hard to hang on to it, but you have to.
How do you think you would counsel people who are getting their family members back and spending time with them? How should they proceed? What are these days going to be like for them?
You have to go at the pace that they want to go at. It's kind of like with grief. Certainly, we all want the loved one who's grieving to be better. "It's been two months. You're still sad?"
The best thing you can say is, "What do you need right now? What do you need?" Never judge, never rush, never assume anything, and just to allow that person to move at their own pace, to know that you are there to hold them and to catch them and support them. So I feel like for us as hostage families, it's a very good message, and I think a really important thing to remember.
Our loved ones are coming back having experienced something that we could never imagine, and some of the things that they have seen and experienced we'll never actually know. They're going to come back with behaviors that may seem very strange to us, and we just have to let them know it's OK. They're whole. They're who they are. Whatever they do is fine, and we're just there to support them and love them and let them lead.
It's incredible what you've gone through. How do you think this has changed you?
I think it's changed me on many levels, from the ridiculous to the serious. I have been emotionally eating like never before, and my health shows it, my cholesterol, my blood pressure and everything else. I mean physically, the stress is endless. I am very aware of what a stress reaction is as a psychotherapist, and I think my system has been dumping cortisol and adrenaline for 15 months, which is not healthy on any level. And so physically, I'm incredibly depleted and deteriorated, like I know my husband is and all of us are. I think I've been living in a mild to moderate depressive state for all this time.
I'm sad a lot, cry a lot. I started drinking. Never drank before really. Just to destress. Many of us have talked about this, that we are frozen. I'm frozen. My life stopped, our life stopped, and life doesn't go anywhere. You can't think about anything, you can't plan for anything, you can't move because it is all waiting for Sagui to come home.
I live with this enduring, constant pain, certainly for Sagui and for Avital, his wife, my stepdaughter-in-law, and the three gorgeous little girls who are his daughters, and especially his oldest daughter, Bar, really understands what's happening. And for my husband. He's so unbelievably strong, but I worry he'll break. So, yeah, I think it's completely changed everything in my life.
Does it give you any feeling about how the political situation should be going forward? Can Palestinians and Israelis live in peace?
Is there hope? I think for me, I have to believe that there's a hope of peace. But ... I believe that the Palestinian people, separating this from Hamas and even the Palestinian Authority, that the Palestinian people deserve peace, deserve to raise their children and have their families in peace and prosperity just like anybody else, and I believe that they have been terribly, terribly treated for decades by the Israelis and Hamas. They have been victimized by systems beyond their control to some extent. So I wish that, certainly for Palestinian people, I wish peace. But how that's going to happen? I don't know. This road has really kind of run in a direction that feels dismal, and it's hard to see what the end of it's going to be or could be.
You mentioned a question that people should ask, "What do you need?'" I want to ask that of you. What do you need now?
I need Sagui to come home, and I need all the hostages to come home, and I need this to be done. That's all. I need him to come home alive. I need the rest of them to come home, those that are alive, alive. I need it to be over, this part. So that we can then say what's next.
