Nicole Haz­an is a writer and high school Eng­lish teacher. From 2021 — 2022, Nicole stud­ied UEA’s MA in prose fic­tion, where she grad­u­at­ed with dis­tinc­tion. A Push­cart Prize nom­i­nee, her short fic­tion has appeared in The New Orleans Review, New Let­ters and Jew­ish Fic­tion, among oth­ers. She lives in Tel Aviv with her hus­band and twin daugh­ters, where she is writ­ing a nov­el, a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller set in Israel. This essay is one of a series she has writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ReGrow Israel.