Live updates: Israel at war with Hamas and Hezbollah, one year after the October 7 attacks

In this screenshot from the video, Meirav Gonen, mother of Romi Gonen, talks to Christiane Amanpour.

It has been a year since Meirav Gonen's daughter Romi was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Israel on October 7, 2023.

It's been a year since Gonen heard her daughter's voice, she told CNN, adding that she doesn't know what her daughter looks like today, whether she can stand it, whether she lost her hand after the day was shot during the attack, or when she smiles the way she always smiled.

“I can't even explain how you feel when you wake up in the morning and at first you hope it's just a nightmare, a dream, a bad dream. But then you wake up to reality,” she said. “It’s so excruciating, it’s so difficult.”

Gonen said some Israeli hostages who returned home were with her daughter and told her stories about them in captivity.

The freed hostages also said their daughter had lost color on her fingers, Gonen said.

“The color of her fingers changed, her hand no longer worked,” Gonen said. “At the time I thought: Wow, she’s going to lose her hand. We have to bring her back. But today I say it doesn't matter if she loses her hand. We just need to bring her back alive.”

In August, the Gonen family celebrated Romi's 24th birthday.

“At first we wanted to hide the fact” that it was her birthday, Gonen said. “But at some point we thought maybe she would see us.”

That's why they celebrated the day to bring light and strength to the people, she said.

The war, she said, was not about Israel and Palestine, but against Hamas. “We will not break because we are the good guys and Hamas is evil,” she said.