Goldberg-Polin recounted the meeting with Biden and her experiences over the past few years as an advocate for hostage families in a conversation with TIME Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs at the 2026 TIME 100 Summit in New York City.
Biden’s pain illustrates to Goldberg-Polin how her family’s story of loss became a “magnet” for other people experiencing pain.
“This is part of the human enterprise,” she said. “We will all experience these sensations at some point, and that, strangely, is unifying.”
A memoir about love and grief
In her memoir, When We See You Again, Goldberg-Polin describes a mantra she repeated during the days when Hersh was alive: “Hope is mandatory.” She told Jacobs that this mantra wasn’t advice, but a “demand” for herself and her husband.
“There’s such a fine line between hope and despair, and once we fall into that quicksand of despair, it is so sticky,” Goldberg-Polin said. Her faith, she added, also helped her find that hope and meaning—even after Hersh was killed—and to advocate for a better world, little by little.
“Don’t get overwhelmed. It’s not on you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from doing [something],” she says, paraphrasing the Talmudic sage Rabbi Tarfon.
She recounted another story in the Jewish faith about how people cannot escape their destiny, a teaching that gives her solace when she misses her son.
“I happen to be a person of faith, and I know he’s not supposed to be here now, and the way I know it is that he is not here,” she says.
In writing her new memoir, she learned that love endures as grief.
“Grief is a badge of love that we wear because the love doesn’t die—the person can die, the love keeps growing. It’s like bamboo,” Goldberg-Polin says.
She closed the conversation by saying that despite the pain of losing her son, “I would pay this price again and again every single day because I had that delicious boy for 23 years and 340 days in this world.”
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