A Mother’s Story of Loss and Strength
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“We built it with love,” says Rim, 38, softly, as she looks at what remains of her home in Bednayel, Bekaa.
On 3 March, an Israeli strike reduced the house to rubble, ending not just a construction project but a shared dream, carefully shaped, step by step, by a family still trying to build its future.
A business graduate who once worked as a teacher and in the private sector, Rim chose a quieter life in recent years, dedicating herself to raising her 9-year-old daughter. “It may have seemed routine to others,” she reflects, “but to me, it was a warm and hopeful life.” In motherhood, she found purpose, building a sense of stability grounded in modest but deeply valued aspirations.
She now carries both the weight of loss and the responsibility of holding her family together.
Rim searches through the rubble of her destroyed home in Bednayel, Bekaa, for family photos and personal documents after an Israeli strike on 3 March. Photo: UN Women Lebanon/Georges Roukoz
Before the escalation in 2026, their home, though unfinished, was central to that future. Every corner reflected shared effort: decisions made together, colors chosen with care, rooms imagined long before completion. “It was our safe space,” Rim says, “a place we built as a family.”
That sense of safety was shattered in a single afternoon. Earlier that day, residents received an official warning that the building would be targeted. Rim, her daughter, and her parents waited in the house they were renting until their own was finished, caught between fear and disbelief, hoping the strike would not happen. Around 5:00 p.m., it did.
“When it happened, I felt paralyzed,” Rim recalls. “It was as if the world was falling apart.” Her first instinct was for her daughter.
The child had been preparing her room, painting it pink, choosing decorations, placing stars on the ceiling so she could fall asleep under her own imagined sky. “They took that from her,” Rim says.
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Rim stands before the remains of her family’s home in Bednayel, Bekaa, confronting the loss of years of effort, memories, and the life they had carefully built together. Photo: UN Women Lebanon/Georges Roukoz
Since then, her daughter has struggled to make sense of what happened, asking questions Rim cannot easily answer: Why was their home destroyed? When will they return? “I try to comfort her and remind her that we are safe,” she says. “I stay strong in front of her, but inside, I feel broken.”
What was once a sense of belonging was replaced by uncertainty. Even childhood feels disrupted.
Today, Rim and her family are staying in a house rather than a collective shelter, something she acknowledges with gratitude, while expressing solidarity with women facing far harsher conditions. She is keenly aware of the unequal burdens carried by families across Lebanon.
“Women experience war differently,” she says. “We have to stay strong for our children, to help them heal, even when we don’t have the time or space to grieve ourselves.”
The rubble of what was once a family home in Bednayel, Bekaa, where years of memories, dreams, and a sense of safety were reduced to ruins in a single moment. Photo: UN Women Lebanon/Georges Roukoz
Beyond physical loss, women often carry the emotional weight of holding families together, maintaining continuity amid disruption. Still, Rim draws strength from that shared experience. “Women do not give up,” she adds. “Even in the most difficult situations, they find hope in small things, and pass it on.”
For Rim, motherhood remains her anchor. “Being a source of comfort for my daughter is what keeps me going,” she says. What she lost goes beyond walls and furniture. “It is years of effort, of dreams, of building something together. It is safety. It is belonging. It is everything my husband and I imagined for our future.”
Yet even in the aftermath, she holds on to hope. “We cannot lose hope,” Rim says. “We have to believe that better days are possible, so that one day, they can truly come.”
As of 18 May 2026, at least 3,020 people have been killed and 9,273 injured in Lebanon since 2 March 2026, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health (MoPH). More than 1 million people remain displaced, including over 129,721 people hosted across 632 collective shelters, while the majority remain outside formal shelter sites, according to OCHA (as of 14 May 2026).