Widowed by Bombing, Burned by Fire Doaa Still Fights for Her Children

Her husband was killed by Israel. Her home destroyed. Her body scarred. Her hope remains.

Today I want you to meet Doaa from Gaza…not as a statistic, not as a headline, but as a woman whose entire world was reduced to ash in a single moment.

When I first learned about Doaa’s story, something inside me broke. It wasn’t just sadness, it was the kind of grief that sits heavy in your chest, the kind that makes you stop whatever you’re doing because suddenly nothing feels as important as bearing witness to her pain.

Let me tell you what her life looks like today.

Doaa is a mother of three young children. She used to have a home, a husband, a future she could imagine. All of that disappeared the day her house was bombed. Her husband was killed instantly. Doaa survived…but with severe burns across her body, burns that still throb and tear and ache every single day. Burns that require surgeries she cannot access, creams she cannot afford, and care she cannot reach.

She wakes up in pain. She goes to sleep in pain. And in between, she tries to mother three children who look to her for everything.

“The occupation did not only destroy our house,” she told me. “It destroyed my body, my safety, and my future.”

Her children are 12, 10, and 7…ages when they should be learning, playing, arguing over toys, dreaming about who they want to become. Instead, they watch their mother struggle to stand, to walk, to breathe through the agony of untreated wounds. They watch her ration food, water, and hope.

And Doaa is not only responsible for her children. Her 73‑year‑old mother, frail and dependent, also relies entirely on her.

Try, just try, to imagine carrying all of that while your own skin is still healing from fire.

Every day is a battle:

A battle to find food.

A battle to find clean water.

A battle to soothe her children’s fear while hiding her own.

A battle to survive long enough to see tomorrow.

Doaa has no income. No home. No safety net. No medical care. No relief unless strangers, people like you, choose to care.

And yet, in the middle of this horror, she still speaks with a kind of quiet faith that feels almost impossible.

“We fled to the south and we’ve been stuck here until now, with no houses to live in. God is sufficient for me, and He is the best disposer of affairs. Help me, I beg you.”

Like so many in Gaza, Doaa never wanted to ask for help. She was a woman who stood on her own feet. But now those feet are burned, blistered, and carrying the weight of four lives.

She said something that I can’t get out of my head:

“Your kindness may be the reason my children sleep with food tonight.”

Think about that.

Not next week.

Not next month.

Tonight.

Maybe today you were planning to buy a coffee, a small treat, something you absolutely deserve. But imagine if that tiny moment of comfort, the price of a drink, a snack, a little indulgence, could become the difference between hunger and nourishment for a family who has lost everything.

People often say, “There are so many in need, what difference can I make?”

But that’s the thing: oceans are made of drops. Movements are made of individuals. Hope is made of ordinary people choosing to care.

And right now, Doaa needs us. Not in theory. Not in abstraction. In the most literal, urgent sense.

If you can donate, please do. If you can’t, please share her story. You never know who might see it…and who might be able to save a life.

Donate to Doaa here:

chuffed.org/project/doaaayad