Israel's beloved journalist faces Parkinson's: "It scares me"
After years in the media and her participation in a successful reality show, the veteran journalist speaks candidly about the complex struggle with the serious illness she had been hiding, and explains why she decided to move out of the denial phase: "I didn't want people to pity me."
Veteran journalist Neri Livneh, a well-known columnist for Haaretz who also participated in the past in "Big Brother," recently revealed in a special and particularly candid column that she is dealing with Parkinson's disease. This morning, Sunday, Livneh was a guest of Akiva Novick and Roni Kuban on the program "Kubanovick" on Kan Reshet Bet, where she spoke about her struggle with the disease.
Livneh first explained why it took her time to reveal that she is dealing with Parkinson's disease:
"I was ashamed because I didn't want people to pity me. Couldn't it be something sexier? Let's say cancer that you recover from. At first, I was really in denial. I wrote the column not to help other people, but to help myself accept that I have Parkinson's."
Livneh continued, admitting that she had been in the denial phase for a long time, and for her, this marks the acceptance phase. She shared that she learned to cope using humor: "Humor is a way to organize the world differently, and there is also a happy ending, and there is a punchline, while our lives are usually one big chaos."
Livneh further explained her perspective with a touch of irony: "I still don't like it. If I wanted to be on a dating app, I would write: IDF disabled veteran, Parkinson's, 73 years old, earning poorly. My mother once told me in my youth that if I were really stupid, I would go be a model. So now, here, I am not really stupid and I am 'modeling' Parkinson's."
In conclusion, when it was noted that it is characteristic of her personality to hide such struggles, she admitted that this is indeed the case, but added: "It scared me so much. I was ashamed."
