Two weeks. That's how long Avi had been home from Gaza when I saw him scrolling through our WhatsApp group while shopping at a local supermarket. The group buzzes constantly with units looking for drivers, logistics positions opening up, emergency requests for specific skills. His thumb moved mechanically through the messages while his seven-year-old loaded his cart with snacks.
"252 needs help next month," he said without looking up. "Or there's the new base in Carmei Gat."
His son ran over, looking satisfied with his haul and grinning ear to ear. Avi gave him a quick high-five, eyes already back on his phone.
In my previous post, I wrote about how civilian life feels impossibly small after military service. Now we're witnessing the next phase: reservists who keep going back, not from obligation but from need.
The pattern has become predictable. Soldiers return from deployment and immediately start hunting for the next rotation. They take every course the army offers: advanced combat medicine, drone operations, tactical communications, specialized driving certifications. They volunteer for units they've never served with, positions below their skill level, anything that keeps them connected to military service.
The psychological infrastructure exists. Each unit receives mandatory post-deployment therapy sessions. Psychologists, social workers, structured reintegration programs. The government allocated thousands of shekels per soldier for mental health support including individual therapy, couples counseling, family sessions, specialized trauma treatment. First session attendance runs high. Second session drops dramatically. By the third scheduled appointment, therapists face empty waiting rooms.
The resistance to therapy runs deeper than simple avoidance. Soldiers describe a fundamental disconnect between therapeutic frameworks designed for trauma and their actual experience. They feel purposeful in service and purposeless at home. Traditional therapy asks them to process difficult experiences they don't want to leave behind.
Meanwhile, family structures strain under repeated deployments. Spouses become single parents in practice, managing households, finances, children's needs, and their own careers while partners cycle through service rotations. Children adapt to fathers who appear briefly between deployments, present physically but absent mentally, planning their next rotation while sitting at Shabbat dinner.
The economic reality will soon force decisions. Businesses can't operate indefinitely with absent owners. Employers who initially supported emergency reserve duty grow frustrated with employees who volunteer for additional rotations. Mortgage payments, school tuition, and daily expenses continue regardless of where someone finds meaning. The current model of endless voluntary miluim subsidized by emergency economic measures has an expiration date.
Some reservists are already positioning for what comes next. Career military transitions that once seemed impossible now attract qualified candidates. Private security companies report unprecedented interest from combat veterans. Training academies see waiting lists for courses that prepare military personnel for civilian security roles. These soldiers aren't looking for new careers; they're looking for careers that maintain proximity to military purpose.
The family WhatsApp groups tell a parallel story. Not the public ones full of meal coordination and encouragement, but the private conversations between wives whose husbands have become visitors in their own homes. They share strategies for explaining Daddy's absence to children who've stopped asking when he'll return. They discuss whether couples therapy works when one partner refuses to acknowledge a problem exists. They wonder when accommodation becomes enabling.
The available support focuses primarily on practical needs and traditional therapeutic models. Financial assistance for missed work, business support for the self-employed, subsidized childcare during deployments, grief counseling, PTSD treatment. But the core issue remains largely unaddressed: soldiers who've found irreplaceable meaning in military service.
Unit commanders report unprecedented volunteer rates for typically hard-to-fill positions. Kitchen duty, equipment maintenance, supply runs all have waiting lists now. Soldiers with advanced degrees and successful careers compete for driver positions. The hierarchy of military service has flattened; any role that maintains connection to the mission holds value.
The question of what happens when formal hostilities end looms large. The current operational tempo can't continue indefinitely. International pressure, economic constraints, and military objectives will eventually reduce the need for massive reserve mobilization. Thousands of soldiers who've structured their identity around continuous service since October 7th will face an abrupt transition.
Some will manage the shift. They'll redirect military skills toward civilian purposes, finding meaning in renewed careers or community involvement. Others will struggle, caught between a civilian life that feels hollow and military service no longer available on demand. The potential for widespread adjustment disorders, relationship breakdowns, and employment crises grows with each extended deployment.
Therapeutic approaches need recalibration. Instead of treating military service as trauma to process, programs must acknowledge that many soldiers experience service as the solution, not the problem. Reintegration support should focus less on "returning to normal" and more on creating new frameworks for meaning in civilian life. Family counseling must address not just deployment stress but the challenge of living with someone who actively chooses repeated absence.
The economic support system requires similar evolution. Current assistance assumes temporary disruption followed by return to regular employment. Future programs must account for soldiers who've fundamentally changed their relationship with civilian work. Retraining initiatives, career transition support, and long-term financial planning become essential as emergency measures wind down.
Our WhatsApp group continues growing. Units post needs hourly. Soldiers respond within minutes. The cycle perpetuates: deployment, brief return, immediate redeployment. Families adapt or fracture. Businesses survive or fold. The question "When's my next miluim?" becomes less about availability and more about identity.
Organizations working to maintain family connections provide crucial support during deployments. But increasingly, the challenge isn't maintaining connections during service. The real challenge is helping soldiers value the connections waiting at home. The infrastructure exists: therapy, financial support, job placement, family programs. What's missing is a framework that acknowledges the profound meaning soldiers find in service while helping them build equally meaningful civilian lives.
Until that framework develops, the pattern continues. Soldiers scroll through deployment opportunities while their children play nearby. Families plan around absences that used to be emergencies but have become routine. The space between military purpose and civilian life widens with each rotation.
The war will end. The economic subsidies will stop. The endless deployment opportunities will disappear. Then we'll face the real challenge: thousands of citizens who found themselves in war and must somehow find themselves again in peace.
For now, we keep the support systems open. We keep the therapy available for when they're ready. We keep helping families navigate this impossible space. We keep working to bridge the gap between service and home, even when the soldiers themselves aren't ready to cross that bridge.
The messages in our WhatsApp group keep coming. Another unit needs drivers. Another position opens near the border. Another opportunity to return to the clarity of military service. And Avi, like so many others, keeps scrolling, keeps volunteering, keeps choosing the world where he knows exactly who he's supposed to be.