“I think I did what anyone in my position would have done, which is what your mother did for you and what my mother did for me.”
Rachel Goldberg Pollin is one of USA TODAY’s 2026 Women of the Year, which recognizes women who have made a significant impact in and outside of their communities. Here are this year’s winners.
Perhaps Rachel Goldberg-Pollin will be able to grieve for the first time after her son’s death.
Or so she told her therapist.
But how can this happen?
Goldberg-Polin imagines herself in a grocery store. I found a box of “Captain Crunch” sitting on a shelf in the aisle. Her son’s favorite peanut butter cereal would cause some kind of flashback. Then, without warning, she fell to the floor of the Kroger screaming.
That’s how her grieving scene plays out, Goldberg-Polin deadpans telling USA TODAY, “Because that’s what happens on TV.”
How Rachel Goldberg Pollin became a global advocate
Rachel Goldberg Pollin, one of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year, became an advocate for victims of the Oct. 7 attack after her son’s death.
According to her friend, the item delivered was a vintage Goldberg Pollin. But she still hasn’t been able to go to the grocery store. It’s too difficult to go out in public. People easily recognize her petite frame even under the hat, hoodie, and big glasses.
“I remain a symbol of pain and a trigger of trauma for many people,” Goldberg-Pollin says.
She is the embodiment of every mother’s worst nightmare: losing a child. However, she didn’t just lose her son, Harsh Goldberg Pollin. he was taken. Tortured. Cripple. He was held by Hamas in underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip for 328 days after the extremist group attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Her 23-year-old son was executed before he could be rescued. Even after Hersh was returned in a body bag, her determination to save as many of the 251 hostages as possible from the suffering of Hamas captivity never wavered. Goldberg Pollin, 56, has become one of the most famous defenders to emerge from the Israel-Hamas war, which has lasted more than two years.
Goldberg-Pollin kept a daily tally of hostages taken. She wrote the number on masking tape for everyone to see. And we counted with her.
She got on the plane. she gave a speech. She interacted with global elites in Davos, Switzerland. On the 47th day, she had an audience with Pope Francis. On Day 320, she spoke at the Democratic National Convention. She traveled to four continents. She met at an undisclosed location with world leaders who frightened her. (One time she was so scared that she wrote part of Psalm 118, “God is with me, I will not be afraid…” on a piece of paper and shoved it inside her bra.)
The first time she spoke to me was on the 694th day. We were interviewed sitting on a bench in New York’s Central Park on Day 703.
There I learned that while Goldberg-Pollin may have burst onto the geopolitical stage out of necessity, her deepest influence was at a more intimate level. Quietly, thousands of people reached out. First came the email, the Facebook Messenger one-liner. A stranger pinged her on WhatsApp. The message came from Idaho. Fiji. South Africa. Jews, Christians, Muslims. Some sent heart emojis and “Thinking of you” messages. Some shared their own stories of tragedy and loss.
Some lost children or siblings to suicide or overdose. Not all of them had lost someone, but all of them had suffered. The numbers will be different, but the notes will continue to arrive.
“Some days it’s 93 days, some days it’s 112 days,” Goldberg-Polin said. “But it always hovers around 100.”
A quick calculation shows that the number of messages is approximately 84,000.
“Some people write about losing a parent, partner, sibling, best friend, or child,” she says. “And they’re people from all walks of life and different faiths, so it feels very unified.”
The letters continued beyond the 843rd day of January 26, 2026, when the body of the last hostage, Ran Gviri, was returned to his family, completing the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.
That night, Goldberg-Polin noticed that her breathing was unusual. The next morning, for the first time in more than two years, she did not put masking tape on her heart with numbers marking the days of war.
The world has begun to move. But not Goldberg Pollin’s.
The messages keep coming in, with 103 on a recent Friday. School and nonprofit leaders continue to invite her and her husband, John, to speak.
“And I keep thinking, ‘Why?'” Goldberg-Polin asks over Zoom from her Jerusalem apartment. “The story is over. Hersh’s story ended tragically. The hostage situation for me is over. So I don’t know for sure. I’m not a story of resilience, and I’m not a story of hope.”
Her observance of Orthodox Judaism brings order to her life by praying, studying Torah, keeping kosher, and avoiding driving and using electronic devices on the Sabbath, helping her survive what she considers a story of grief. It’s a story the Chicago-born lifelong educator shares over and over again. She weaves together anecdotes, wisdom, and spiritual stories to give people a language to understand what they’re going through. She is a bereaved mother. Who doesn’t know what it’s like to experience loss? In a society that expects grief to go away, like in Hallmark movies, Goldberg-Polin offers a revolutionary proposition. It means living with sadness forever.
Her heart breaks and a prism is born that tells us something about her, but in reality, it tells us something about ourselves. And in an age of political silos, echo chambers served as centerpieces of the day, slick influencer feeds, and a cacophony of endlessly swiped quotes, her rhymes, her analogies, her stories remind us of what it’s like to be human.
Earlier this year, she found herself trying to explain grief to a group of college students. What does it feel like? they asked.
I’m always a teacher, but I didn’t give a clear answer. She taught them exercises.
Everyone, she said, remember someone. It could be your boyfriend. It could be your mother. It could be your best friend, your dog. Anyone.
She stopped and said, “They’re not in this room right now.”
“Don’t you love them anymore?” she asks. “If it’s someone who is essential to your everyday well-being, how are we going to love them and miss them in a healthy way that doesn’t hurt us?”
Her memoir, “When We See You Again,” to be published on April 21, may offer some insight into her answer.
Goldberg-Pollin insists she is not a role model, but a “really normal person” caught up in a horrific situation. The vigil and effort she put in was extraordinary, she says.
“It’s what your mother did for you and what my mother did for me,” she says.
The realism with which she looks straight into the camera draws us to her. What can help me understand her pain? And it’s ours.
“It’s very positive that pain is universal,” says Goldberg-Pollin. “It’s really symbiotic, because I think they think they’re asking for help, but they’re actually really helping me. So there’s a wave experience where we meet in the middle.”
Time is up. The Sabbath is approaching and she is without power.
Before I left, she spoke again about her beautiful son Harsh. He will never feel this pain because she lost him. Then she went back to what she had said in their last conversation over 100 days ago. Has your son decided which university he will attend in the fall? she asks.
She always shares about her son and always checks in on me too.
It is a testament to the enduring power of my mother’s love, and my own.
Romina Ruiz-Goyena He is USA TODAY’s editor-in-chief of investigations and storytelling and a former international correspondent. Follow her on X (@RominaAdi).
