Checking for Breath

On guarding my mother, refusing silence, and watching a people fight for freedom.

Mom on her iPad

I’m on guard.

Not in a noble way. In a nervous-system way.
In the way your body becomes a security guard and never clocks out.

I check.
Double-check.
Check again.

The cameras. The app. The missed calls.
My phone held like a stethoscope to the world.

Will she pick up?
Did she move?
Is she breathing?

And then I check the news—because far away and impossibly close, people are standing up in Iran and being answered with murder. Not “unrest.” Not “clashes.” Murder.

Videos seep out through blackouts like contraband: snipers, shots to heads and eyes and chests—children, elders, anyone. A regime trying to terrify a population back into silence.
And because the internet goes dark, the numbers become a war, too.

CNN says a few thousand. On social media, I see 20,000 and climbing. I don’t pretend to know the exact count—no one can, not in real time, not under a blackout—but I know this: bodies are piling up, and courage is still showing up.

There are reports of mercenaries brought in—fighters who don’t even speak the language—because it’s easier to shoot strangers than neighbors. And then the detail that makes my stomach turn: mothers coming to claim the bodies of their children and being asked not only for money, but for a box of pastries, as if grief itself must be purchased and performed. Whether every version is true or some of it is rumor, the logic is unmistakable: the violence isn’t only to kill. It’s to humiliate.

So I do what I always do when the world feels too big: I shrink back to what I can touch.

I check my mother.

She’s in bed.

When she’s home, she’s in bed—her headquarters, her command center. Her iPad is always within reach: bridge, Wordle, number games, sometimes a show. The big TV in her room mostly stays off now—it’s usually only on when I’m there, when I sit beside her and we watch something together.

My brother bought that TV for her. He’s been gone six years, and that screen is a reminder that safety can disappear—even when love was complicated.

Now my “just in case” is an app.

So I look at my mother’s dot on a screen and I scroll the world with the same thumb.

And I realize how backwards that is:
I’m checking the news more than I’m checking my feed.
I’m checking danger more than I’m checking joy.

I should be replying to the people who write kind things. I do—sometimes. But then my attention snaps back like a rubber band.

What’s happening?
What’s happening?
What’s happening?

As if repeating the question could become a form of control.

It can’t.

Hypervigilance doesn’t negotiate.
It just keeps scanning.

I’m tired.

Tired in the way sleep can’t fix.

Tired from watching antisemitism dress itself up as something sophisticated—politics, activism, righteousness—like costume changes make hatred clean. Tired of watching Jewish businesses get targeted. Tired of watching slogans get shouted by people who couldn’t define the words they’re chanting.

And I’m tired because fear doesn’t stay in one place.

Fear travels.

Fear crosses oceans.
Fear migrates from a headline into a living room.

Not long ago, I tried to convince my mother to come with me to an outdoor Hanukkah celebration.

“If there’s an incident, I’ll be a burden for you,” she said—steady and practical, the way she gets when fear puts on a sensible coat.

A burden.

That word cracked something in me.

Because what is freedom if it can be stolen by the threat of becoming “too much” for someone you love?

And then—because my mind is always trying to connect dots—I think about secrets.

People say we’re only as sick as our secrets. I believe that—because shame doesn’t just live in the mind; it settles into the body. But I also know another kind of secret: the one you become when you’re raised to swallow your truth. When a child learns she’s “too much,” she doesn’t just keep secrets—she becomes one. And maybe that’s why I’m so driven to name what’s real now. Because my mother’s longevity is undeniable… but so is the cost of all the things that weren’t said.

My mother kept secrets—many I didn’t know existed until much later. Some she hid. Some I was expected to keep. And my brother, the one who’s gone, carried secrets like they were oxygen. That’s what secrecy does: it doesn’t just protect the person holding it—it shapes everyone around it. It teaches a family what not to ask, what not to name, what not to feel out loud.

Maybe that’s why I can’t tolerate silence anymore—not mine, not anyone’s. Because I’ve lived what it does.

And I’m watching a whole country refuse it.

I’m watching people in Iran take their fear and walk straight through it.

Women reclaiming their bodies.

People standing in streets knowing they might not make it home.

They’ve had enough.

And here’s what I know, not from decades of fear, but from a lifetime of watching what control does to the human spirit:

You can control people with fear for a long time—
but you can’t control them forever.

Eventually something rises that is stronger than compliance.

Dignity.
Freedom.
The insistence on being human.

I check my mother again.

Still.

I turn on the audio. I listen.

This is what loving someone at 102 does to you: it teaches you to listen for breath the way other people listen for music.

And I hate what my mind does next.

What if she isn’t moving because she’s gone?

This is the cruelty of being on guard:
it makes you practice grief before you have to.

My mother has said—quietly, plainly—that she hopes she’ll go to sleep and not wake up.

And I understand.

I don’t want her to suffer. I don’t want anyone to suffer.

And maybe that’s the whole point: I’m holding two truths at once.

I’m watching my mother sleep and listening for proof of life—
and I’m watching strangers risk their lives because they refuse to keep living as shadows.

A small movement.

An arm shifts.

She turns in bed.

Relief hits me like water.

Okay.

Okay.

And I think: if a single breath can make me this grateful, then how sacred is the breath of a whole people refusing to be smothered?

I’m Jewish. I’m proud of my heritage. Proud of a culture that taught me to question, to wrestle, to learn, to repair, to build. Proud of a tradition that values life—not as an idea, but as a practice: show up, contribute, care.

And I’m done being quiet about what I see.

I’m done letting fear decide where my mother can go, what I can say, how small I should make myself to keep the peace.

Because peace that requires your disappearance isn’t peace.

It’s control.

And control is just fear wearing a uniform.

So here I am: walking, talking into my phone, trying to turn anxiety into language, trying to turn fire into something useful.

Checking the app.
Checking the headlines.
Checking for breath.

Praying—imperfectly, stubbornly—that the brave live. That the innocent are spared.

That the tyrants lose their grip.

That freedom doesn’t remain a miracle people die for, but becomes a basic right we protect like it matters—because it does.

I check once more.

She moved.

And somewhere else, far away and heartbreakingly near, other people are moving too—into streets, into courage, into the terrifying, holy words:

Enough.

Not with slogans.

With truth.

With learning.

With solidarity.

With the refusal to look away.

And for tonight—this one small, priceless proof of life—
I let myself exhale.

Okay.

Okay.

If this piece resonated and you’d like to support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. I’m a one-person operation, and your subscription helps me keep publishing. Paid subscribers also receive one monthly “Behind the Essay” post—a deeper reflection and one practical takeaway.

Gayle Kirschenbaum’s debut memoir BULLIED TO BESTIES: A DAUGHTER’S JOURNEY TO FORGIVENESS explores her transformative journey from pain to healing. An Emmy-winning filmmaker, photographer, writer, coach, and speaker, Gayle’s film LOOK AT US NOW, MOTHER! premiered on Netflix and has been credited with transforming lives. Her TED talk is “No More Drama with Mama.” Gayle co-authored MILDRED’S MINDSET: WISDOM FROM A WOMAN CENTENARIAN with her mother, centenarian influencer Mildred Kirschenbaum. For more, visit GayleKirschenbaum.com.