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Sabra Aya Gonen lives in Migdal Ha’emek, a town near Haifa. Pregnant with her first child at age 23, she noticed a swelling in her breast, assuming it was caused by the pregnancy. But when she saw the doctor after giving birth to baby girl Liya, she heard the horrifying news. She had breast cancer.
Almost 16 years later, she's on one of her regular visits — every three weeks — to the Sharett Institute of Oncology at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem. As always, she's dressed stylishly. One arm is hooked up to an IV tube, but she's wearing a brown blazer and blue trousers.
"I consider myself to be in recovery for 15.5 years," Gonen said.
Her optimism and charisma have made her a popular motivational speaker in Israel. A special education teacher by profession, she works in an external program for the Ministry of Education, accompanying new immigrants and teaching them Hebrew. "I empower them, and they empower me back," she said.
She also supports women who are battling the disease. "I spend hours speaking to these women. I always go back and think of myself when I got sick. I was 24 and did not meet many young women who were ill. Today, speaking to someone young at the beginning and identifying with her is extremely important. I tell her that everything now looks scary and awful, but slowly you can mark a check on one stage and then another."
Gonen’s journey to recovery was fraught with difficulties. After her initial diagnosis, she underwent a mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy in a hospital near her home. Two years later, the cancer had metastasized to her brain.
She needed precise radiotherapy to fight the brain tumor. Desperately seeking a solution, she was referred to Hadassah hospitals and to Dr. Tamar Peretz. She underwent four brain operations. "The journey was intense," she said, "but I fell in love with Hadassah and really connected to the hospital. I feel that I'm in a safe place."
Fighting the cancer didn't dissuade her from seeking another goal. Gonen and her husband, Tamir Ben-Yehuda, wanted another baby, particularly to give a sibling to their daughter. In 2018, their second daughter, Shaya, was born via in vitro fertilization and a surrogacy agency in former Soviet Georgia.Throughout, she shared her journey on social media. This evolved into invitations to deliver inspirational lectures, offering tools that worked for her on how to deal with challenges.
"I realized that I can give inspiration to others. Women would share with me that they are going through something else entirely but that my strength and perspective helped them cope with their reality. And then I understood that I have to pass that along. It goes beyond battling with cancer," she said.
The emotional and mental resilience she built helped her wrestle with uncertainty, allowing her to take control of her life.
"I didn’t want my daughters to see a weak mother, so I developed emotional resilience, which only became stronger and stronger."
Strength runs in the family, she said. "My grandmother was very strong too. My mother, who was diagnosed with cancer when I was young, is a very strong woman," she said. "She was a model of inspiration for me. My daughters are also very strong.”
“Sometimes I was acting when I projected strength, but I even fooled myself. I learned to put a stop to the negativity because it’s very easy to get consumed by it."
Coordinating nurse Smadar Daniel Gadasi, who has known Gonen for more than a decade, said, "Aya comes for treatment and looks as if she doesn't really fit into the scene. She's always meticulously dressed in colorful clothes, beautiful, smiling and looks like she celebrates life every day."
"I see her speaking with patients, contributing from her experience, and responding to their questions with pleasure."
"Her positive attitude is infectious, but together with that, she also sees the situation realistically with a lot of hope. She's simply inspirational."
