How Does the Gaze of the Other Become a Soft One?

On seeing and being seen through unfamiliar eyes, And how it brought me closer to who I am.

It began with a longing. To reunite. To rest. To breathe summer in a place that isn’t home.

We landed in Italy, three souls converging: Yonatan, Evyatar, and I. My sons. My heart.  Five days of family, of reconnection, of holding each other gently across oceans and time zones.

Then, the world shifted.

The war in Israel broke open. The skies closed. Our return flight disappeared.  We were suddenly no longer travelers.  We were suspended.  Between earth and air,  between news flashes and pasta bowls,  between paradise and hell.

Yonatan had to go back to his life in Zurich. Evyatar stood beside me.  Silent. Steady.  A man-child navigating uncertainty with grace.  We held each other’s gaze in the silence of not knowing.

Milan.  A two-story apartment, sweet and sunlit.  Bookshelves, quiet corners, a little café downstairs.  Everything is chosen with care.  Everything that should have made me feel held.

But I couldn’t land.

The mirror looked back at me with someone else’s eyes. Even beauty asked for nothing. The streets were kind, the people warm, But inside me, A quiet dissonance. I wandered through galleries. Ate well. Bought little objects as anchors. None of it sank in.

And Evyatar, witnessing it all. Holding the weight without words. Being with me, not around me.

For the first time in my life, I felt truly foreign. Not only in place, but in self.

Sartre wrote about the gaze of the Other. How, when we feel ourselves being seen, We become objects.

We step outside our skin. And try to match what we imagine is expected of us.

In Milan, I lived that. Became an outline of myself. Not judged, just… displaced.

And then, Something softened.

Not outside. Inside.

I let go.  Of explaining.  Of translating.  Of being coherent.

And in that unraveling, I met something real.

The foreign gaze, once sharp, Turned tender. A mirror without critique. A presence without demand.

Because when we stop performing, When we allow ourselves to be truly seen,

Something shifts.

The gaze that once fractured us

Becomes an embrace.

The stranger becomes a witness.

The mirror becomes soft.

"I see myself because somebody sees me."

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

I asked for help.

First with hesitation.

Then clearly.

A message to a former student,

a woman with wide arms and an open heart.

France opened its doors.

And we entered.

There, in the soft folds of rural quiet,

We rested.

Not as tourists.

As temporary exiles, learning to listen to silence.

Sartre was right: The gaze of the Other lives in us. But we get to choose how to meet it.

We get to ask: How do I soften the mirror? How do I turn judgment into care? How do I meet myself? Not through their eyes, But through a deeper seeing?

These questions and experience led me to share this with you.

With many reflections about the foreign gaze,  I invite you to a one-time summer journey,  One that might be best taken while you are already in motion.  Whether you're mid-holiday, between homes, or simply wandering inward or outward,  This process is made to hold you there.

Because sometimes, when our eyes are in a state of vacation, of softness, of pause, of foreignness, Something opens. Our gaze sharpens. And our heart becomes willing to meet itself.

This is why I opened.

Seeing and Being Seen – The Full Journey A process through photography, presence, objects, and gaze.

If this resonates with you, I warmly invite you to join me. Click below to learn more and register:

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With tenderness already back home, Much love, Efrat