Mid-Life Musings

Port of Galilee, Point Judith, Rhode Island

“Midlife is not a crisis. Midlife is an unraveling.” ~Brené Brown

I recently read this brilliant post by Brené Brown about what she describes as a “mid-life unraveling” and something struck me. Just as Brené shares that her “mid-life unraveling” hit her during her forty-first year, for me, my forty-third year has been a sort of unraveling. In fact, I think I’m still in it. I’m not sure how long it’s supposed to last or if there is a prescription for how an “unraveling” is experienced, but Brené Brown nails it with this essay. She describes her own battling it out with the Universe. Her resistance and her armor, which she’s built up over decades, is fierce and it has served her well. But at 41, she surrenders and accepts (eventually) that it’s time to let go… to let the layers shed. The layers of insanely strong and professionally manicured armor that she didn’t even realize she was wearing began to burst at the seams and prevent her from living.

I don’t think anyone has ever described this concept of a “mid-life/mid-love” chapter that I now find myself in so beautifully and yet so adjacent to fear at the same time.

In my experience, I learned at a young age, probably around 12 or 13 years old that I couldn’t share my fears. Not all of them anyways. I became astute around this time at playing into other’s vision of “cool,” what I would later look back at and see as a straight, white, cis-gendered femininity and popular girl culture that I needed to blend into in order to survive. I remember masterfully doing a sort of “code-switching,” acting one way when I was with one group of friends and then another way when I ebbed and flowed into other social spaces. For example, I remember starting 8th grade and laughing along with the “popular” kids on the bus, even when their use of the term “gay” was directed at others in a derogatory way. I just wanted to be liked. I wanted to play into the image of cool that I instinctively knew was my best shot at “survival of the fittest” and so that year I began pushing down, really far down, my own doubts, insecurities and vulnerabilities around my own sense of self and identity. My superb skills at “fitting in,” being likable and even becoming known as a sort of “peacemaker/negotiator” among friends have carried me through decades of living and growing and wandering.

I believe on many levels that I am brave and courageous and am worthy of being loved, which Brené professes so beautifully, are all of our birthrights. But until very recently I didn’t know how to shed the armor that has been covering up my ability to see that I don’t need to keep pretending and performing in order to be liked or likable.

The coping mechanisms that so many of us have developed to protect ourselves from getting hurt are keeping us small and stuck in the mud, even when we reach mid-life.

Mid-life is a scary thought. I fight like hell most days to control my surroundings so as to be able to put my feet up at the end of the day and smoke a proverbial cigar and say, “great job,” “bravo,” “you deserve to rest now…” Only to realize as I put my head on my pillow that I never actually put my feet up that day. In fact, I never stopped. Most days I am fighting an uphill battle with the Universe and I don’t think I’m winning. Instead, I am often working myself into a state of burnout, only to get up and keep fighting the same fight the next day.

For those of us who are caregivers (for children or parents, pets or neighbors, for the planet,) how do we wake up each morning and live into our most sacred truths while still making a living and playing this critical care-taker role? How do we allow ourselves to shed our armor and bask in what we really want to be doing without turning our backs on responsibility?

If I could, I would retire now and enroll in a creative writing program. Wake up and write, paint, take photos and live in nature. But alas, I can’t. I must take my dog out, feed my daughter, take her to school, rush to work and make sure bills are paid in order to wake up and do it all over again the next day. All this in a world that feels very, very fragile and chaotic and frankly scary these days.

Brené Brown shares that, “courage and daring are coursing through your veins.* You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.”

*I want to know how to do this and make sure I’m not late for my 10am meeting.

I guess for now, I will just keep writing, keep asking questions and try not to be afraid of this unraveling that I find myself wanting to speak more truth to. Perhaps as Brené illustrates so well, this unraveling is a sort of re-awakening/re-birth that will hopefully allow all of us to build a new type of armor (regardless of where we are in life), an armor of courage, bravery and risk-taking that we didn’t ingest enough when we were young…When I was that 12 year old girl hiding behind myself. Instead, I will try to live into these questions and be less afraid of not being liked. I think I’ll still always be a peacemaker at heart, but I will also try to stay open to some natural conflict and internal dissent along the way. After all, humanity is imperfection. Humanity is messy.

So as we kick off the summer and celebrate Pride month, may we all wake up a bit and concoct a medicine that gets infused into the water of our young. A medicine that allows bravery, vulnerability and courage to become seeped into our bones. Perhaps armor will eventually become a thing of the past, both physical and virtual. And perhaps we will realize that love and kindness, freedom and truth are ours for the taking.

Meig’s Point at Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison, CT

Excerpt from “The Midlife Unraveling“: “I’m not screwing around. All of this pretending and performing—these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt—has to go. Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy and lovable, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever. Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through your veins. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.”

— Brené Brown (2018)

Winter

Wadsworth Falls State Park, Middletown, CT

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~By Jalaluddin Rumi

A poem for a difficult season. When the light feels hard to find. And I don’t want to dance as much.

How can I slowly crawl back to my younger self who danced with the wind, who didn’t notice who was looking when she sprawled out in all her richness, creating a world of fantasy as she moved?

I’ve somehow lost that vision lately, or maybe lost it years and years ago. I have felt so burdened and even crushed by all the self-imposed “to do’s” that I’ve forgotten about the moments of life in between.

I started this blog a little over 3 years ago (fall 2021), in another season of my life when I needed to soak up the wisdom contained in slowing down. That was the whole premise of the blog, in fact, to journal and reflect on the benefits of slowing down, even if by 1%. In some ways I feel like I’m right back where I started, at another critical inflection point, unsure of which turn to take next. The growing demands and intensity of work and motherhood continue to push many of us to our limits. Too fast, too much, too packed. And not feeling in control. How do we get that control back?

Lately it’s felt like I’ve been swimming upstream and I know I need to start a slightly different dance.

In this new year, can I stop long enough to find others who will dance with me, alongside me and even mirror me? Can I slow down enough to see all the music and the movements that nature holds in its own dance? Can I slow down long enough to make space for those I love, not for us to accomplish anything, but for us to just be still together?

To sit around a table and enjoy the company, without worrying about who is cleaning up. To do a puzzle together. To play the Bluey Jenga game we gave our daughter for Hanukkah. To sit long enough to watch the PBS New Year’s Eve Countdown 2024 with DJ Walrus and Friends (instead of cleaning the kitchen). Guess what? I watched 95% of it this year alongside her, without my phone in my hand. DJ Walrus needs to get another day job though in my humble opinion. Sorry, Mr. Walrus.

In this new year, can I join my daughter in HER dance and learn more about the true art of slowing down? While she moves a mile a minute, she does focus her attention on just one thing at a time. In the quiet (or not so quiet moments) when she’s playing by herself, may I try once in a while to not fill the time with another chore, but instead to just breathe, soak up the energy of her play and even join in. I know my kid, competitive and playful nature is in there somewhere!

This year, Hanukkah coincided with Christmas and New Years, the holiday trifecta. For the first time in what felt like years, my family sat around the table on the 6th night of Hanukkah (the night before New Year’s Eve) and played dreidel by candlelight. We took turns spinning our own miniature dreidels and laughed out loud as the Hebrew letters were called out. My daughter was the most excited of all and belted with pride as she landed on a gimel (which stands for “gantz” or “everything.” The player gets everything in the pot.)

Wishing us all a quiet and peaceful turn of the new year. May we all find some light and abundance amidst the darkness.

Life Keeps Moving

I’ve been struck recently with how fast time seems to move. My last blog entry was in June 2024 and somehow now we are in fall. The leaves have turned and we are getting ready for Halloween. I wish I could say I feel wiser and more grounded and settled since I last wrote, but I don’t think that would be true. I’m just as confused and overwhelmed with life as ever. (And not to mention, I’ve discovered a few more grey hairs).

One area I’m continuing to reconcile, in which I am perhaps making some progress, is catching a hold of and accepting the contradictions of life, the “both/and” mindset if you will. Just a few examples that come to mind in this particular moment…

Life is scary AND beautiful at the same time. I sit, for example, before this breathtaking fall landscape in Cromwell, CT AND brace for a world that feels more polarized and full of spite than ever before, particularly in the run up to our elections.

Raising my daughter is getting harder and easier at the same time. She is becoming more and more independent AND has the energy of a jaguar on steroids, which seems to rope us in constantly. She resists us whenever possible to proclaim her burgeoning truths. I can remember myself at this age (4 going on 14) and I don’t want to squash her light. (Mine is still coming back on!)

I’m exhausted at the end of most days AND have the yearning to run a marathon, swim a mile or climb Mount Kilimanjaro. It’s a constant push and pull of contradicting and perhaps complementary desires.

Our family recently returned from an epic adventure overseas, celebrating my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. It was the first time I traveled this far in well over a decade and I was reminded of my 20 something self who only saw adventure and travel in her future. I admittedly feel most myself when traveling. The further I go, the more connected I feel to myself and the universe. To break free from the monotony of daily routines, packing lunches, cleaning, being online from 9am to what feels like bedtime, etc. Travel is the epitome of perspective building for me.

While on our trip, we start in a small seaside European town and I receive a lesson along these lines that I’m still digesting. On our first evening in France, straight off the airplane, my mom and I go into town to try and purchase a new stroller after we leave ours mistakenly somewhere between the gate and baggage claim (the first of several things lost on this trip). The highlight, for me, during the excursion is dappling in my broken, very rusty, once fluent French. Once we successfully secure a new stroller, we find ourselves unsuccessfully trying to wave down a taxi. So we get on a public bus back to the hotel, jet lagged and overstimulated.

However the next day, just as we are about to board the ship, I realize my wallet is missing. We search everywhere. I assume I have been pickpocketed and proceed to ride the waves of resentment off and on throughout the trip. To my utter surprise and amazement, while scanning my emails on the plane back home I find out that the wallet has been discovered! It was a good Samaritan from the local French bus company on that very first night who found the wallet, sorted through it, found a business card and emailed me to come retrieve it! While I unfortunately can’t get back there in person (yet), I’m hedging my bets that it gets returned safely to me in the US. What are the chances! And how can I reframe when I next start to feel that victim mentality/resentment start to build up about what feels hard?

The world is so big AND yet so small at the same time. We are but small microbes and photons floating in the universe and yet, when we choose to, more often than not, we find some commonality with the strangers we encounter.

My challenge upon returning home (and perhaps for all of us), is to live into each moment with even 1% more of the energy I have when traveling. To see people and places around me, with all their hues and personalities. To not give up on my potential to keep growing and stretching when life feels hard, and to keep looking for where the water meets the shore…to see the waves, as we did on our “boat trip” (as my daughter calls it) and to know that we are all part of a vast ocean of life. We must keep moving, because we have no choice AND because we have the privilege and ability to do so. Blessings for the journey. Shabbat Shalom. And may I be with you all again soon.

Southern France, after transatlantic flight

Time: The Daily Stretch to See it Anew

“Time is relative; its only worth depends upon what we do as it is passing.”
Albert Einstein

When you become immobilized in making a decision about how to spend your 1.5 hours of “free” time while your child is napping.

When it feels impossible to transition between the seemingly endless “to do’s” and resting because a voice deep inside you is screaming that you may not have “enough” time to get your “to do’s” accomplished later.

When you call the doctors office at the last minute to apologize that you’ll be running 10-15 minutes late due to traffic, but really you just couldn’t stop cleaning up the kitchen or getting in one last load of laundry before you left (referencing back to scenario 2).

The daily fight with time has been something I’ve reckoned with for what feels like forever. But when I was recently asked by a coach to think about when I first became aware of time as an oppressive phenomenon, I froze. I couldn’t remember when the plague of “time scarcity” began. Perhaps it was in college, when I found myself for the first time, living on my own and making decisions apart from my parents about how to structure and manage large blocks of time. I do remember feeling uptight about assignment deadlines and the like but when I look back on those years, it feels like time was never-ending. The days would last well into the evening, going to sleep for 2am was not uncommon and sleeping to 10am for an 11am class was the norm. No, it wasn’t then. Time flowed like honey and there was always more to be found.

I do have a distinct and sticky memory of becoming aware that time was a construct when I studied abroad in Senegal my junior year of college. I remember when one of my Senegalese professors with whom I became close, shared that in Senegal (and across Africa) there was a completely different rationalization given when people were “running late.” He explained that when a friend or colleague was “late,” it was natural to assume they were intercepted by something that was important and necessitated them taking more time. If a person was late, for example, for a rendez-vous with friends, you might assume that a sick family member needed them. In other words, you naturally gave people grace and a built in buffer. NOTHING started on time and everyone gave one another the benefit of the doubt.

—

More than 20 years later and with the advent of smart phones, I can’t help but wonder if the oppressiveness of “white supremacy culture” in our country has seeped in and made it that much harder to let go of a constant sense of urgency.

People have been working and raising families for millennium. How has technology become so all-encompassing and resulted in us being more tethered to time than ever before?

An irony is that I stopped wearing a watch years ago. I rely on my cell phone to monitor the day and time for me now. We have and own more things than ever before, and yet time feels scarcer than ever before.

As a “newer” parent, I’ve noticed just how many references to time fall into our vernacular when talking to our children…

“Running late,” “must be on time,” “wasting time,” “time is ticking,” “we can’t be late,” “on time is late,” “respect my time,” “time is precious.” When I catch myself using time vernacular in these contexts I try to divert myself and say something different. “It looks like you need some help before we go, let’s keep moving, or we need you to participate.” It’s fascinating and sad in a way that we superimpose our construct of time on children, who are blessed (we hope) with not needing to be fully aware of it (yet).

I remember picking up the book, Einstein’s Dreams (Alan Lightman) in my early 20’s and my mind being blown away. Lightman imagines dreams that Einstein might have had in 1905 when he was dreaming up his theory of relativity. Each dream portrays a world in which time works differently. In one world, for example, time is circular and people repeat their highs and lows over and over (not too dissimilar from the concept presented in the movie Groundhog Day, which also fascinated me at the time). In other worlds, time moves backwards and people’s journeys unfold in reverse order. This journey is also fleshed out in movie form in the film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I was equally fascinated by this story and have found my mind wandering back to it over the years.

—

In the end, I wonder if the way we relate to time is relative to our human complex with mortality. After all, time is finite. Our days are numbered, and even if we are Benjamin Button, getting younger with time, we eventually become absorbed back into the universe. The material things we surround ourselves with, the busyness we become immersed in…might all of this be an illusion and a distraction from our fear of the inevitable?

The many colloquial expressions about time are steeped in truth. Time does move faster as we get older. Not literally, but relative to our spirits. We are more consumed with responsibility, and our bodies forget or become disillusioned with the present, even to the point of becoming disembodied. How can we fight back against this, so that we don’t blink and find ourselves looking back at years of “wasted time?”

Perhaps one helpful concept which flips time on its head is Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. It occurs each week from sunset on Friday through sunset on Saturday, and is celebrated by Jewish communities around the world. I remember starting to incorporate it into my life spiritually and therapeutically as a graduate student. Living in Washington, DC, and swimming in a culture of political and professional networking mania, time became all-consuming. I remember finding it particularly challenging to “turn off.” I felt pressure to always be “on” or working. As part of my therapy, I began instituting certain boundaries for myself on Shabbat. Over the years, this concept has become trendy. The idea of a “technology shabbat” has been coined, but for me, it has been a lifeline to sanity.

I’ve experimented over the years with observing a form of Shabbat, from shutting down my phone to not allowing myself to check email or be on any screen. I find it is a welcome respite from the noise of the week. In fact the only day I often give myself permission to slow down enough to write creatively has been Shabbat.

How can I give myself permission to incorporate a “tech Shabbat” on other days and in other moments of the week? In the hybrid world of work we now live in, it has become even harder to create these boundaries. Access to “work” can literally be in your pocket or in your ear bud at any point in the day or night. We must reset our own priorities as no one else will do it for us.

—

I’d like to close with the concept of “Ataya” or the three-cup ceremonial tea drinking tradition I learned about in Senegal. Ataya, which in Wolof translates to the “preparation of tea,” is an integral part of Senegalese culture. “Each cup represents the growth of friendships or the stages of life. The longer you wait for your Ataya, the stronger and sweeter friendships grow.” Whether it’s the start of a family visit or a business meeting, or even rounding a street corner on your way to the market, you can always find someone making Ataya.

Slowly, over the course of the six months I lived in Senegal, my body and spirit acclimated to slowing down and engaging in this ritual. Often sitting on cushions, friends and peers gather around a tray of small glass cups and boiling water, waiting for the tea leaves, mint and sugar to simmer. The act of pouring the tea back and forth, from cup to cup, slowly building and creating a foam lather, is a form of meditation in and of itself. You finish your tea when…you finish. Time isn’t in control. Instead, it is the tea and sweet moments of connection that call the shots.

—

My eyes flutter open after taking a short nap while my daughter sleeps. I take a deep breath and sigh. It is Shabbat again and I’ve given myself permission to rest and write. A sweet gift that I don’t think I will ever take for granted again since becoming a parent. I know the laundry waits. Emails are likely piling up. And I’ve got a list of errands to run and people to call back. But for right now, I will practice surrendering my time to the universe and being grateful for the early spring trees outside my window, slowly swaying in the cool wind.

The highest version of myself comes out in these moments. Her voice is quiet but I can feel her trying to speak. She’s saying, “shhh, quiet down now, just be sweet girl, resist the urge to move and do and accomplish. Your life awaits in the present moment. You have my permission to play.”

“The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.”
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Waves of Anxiety, through the Generations

Sometimes the most healing thing to do is remind ourselves over and over and over, other people feel this too.
Andrea Gibson

Stranany Cemetery, Michalovce, Slovakia, March 2011

My alarm goes off most mornings around 5:30am. I hear the familiar vibration, followed by a paradoxical “sing songy” instrument that I think is meant to be soothing. I immediately hit snooze and then proceed to do the same thing 10 minutes later, and sometimes 10 minutes after that, and so on. I know research says this is not a healthy way to start the day. According to headspace, “We add to our stress by starting our morning in a fight with our alarms, where we eventually concede defeat.” It’s a bad habit and I find myself often spending the next 20 minutes or so repeating mantras in my head in an effort to convince myself that everything is okay…That I am okay. That I am strong and brave and wise. These are also the same affirmations I tell my daughter most nights, hoping to instill what has often been hard for me to accept for myself.

What is anxiety really? It is distinguished by the American Psychological Association (APA) from fear, which is considered an “appropriate” response to “a clearly identifiable and specific threat.” Despite this distinction, I think it’s still fair to say that fear is at the root of most anxiety and that anxiety plays out in all of us to some degree. While society has made tremendous progress in terms of normalizing anxiety and other mental health conditions, it still doesn’t welcome these emotions at the proverbial “table.” It’s still taboo, for example, to talk about anxiety and depression at the lunch table, with your supervisor or at your child’s parent-teacher conference. And therefore, too many people suffer alone.

I’ve been in and out of therapy to treat anxiety for over half of my life. This is hard to admit and yet, I think important to normalize. And I know today’s youth are struggling at even younger ages. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on youth, for example, has only exacerbated an already horrific downward trend.

With the international climate aflame with strife and violence, I’ve been spending a lot more time thinking about Epigenetics, intergenerational trauma and their impact on mental health. The idea that environmental factors or traumatic events can affect your genes and the way “your body reads and responds to your DNA” is hard to wrap your head around. And yet, I’m seeing it unpacked more and more, not just through a scientific lens, but within the arts, spiritual spaces and even counseling settings.

Now working for a Jewish organization whose mission is to fight hate and antisemitism, I’ve been spending a lot more time thinking about my own family lineage. While I’m sure my anxiety can be attributed to multiple factors, both environmental and genetic, I do wonder if my nervous system is responding, not just to perceived threats in my own life, but to those real threats that my ancestors battled with and against for centuries. How long have ancestors from within all of our communities been fighting off threats such as hate and bigotry and how does this dynamic play out in our bodies today? I wanted to know more. And so, I turned to literature.

I recently finished the novel, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, by Jamie Ford, and am struck by how the role of Epigenetics is being explored through historical fiction as well. An Asian-American author, Ford unpacks the role of inherited trauma through the female lineage of Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to set foot in the US in 1834. Ford beautifully weaves together stories of Moy’s descendants, including a nurse in China serving with the Flying Tigers in WWII, a young girl quarantined during an epidemic of bubanic plague in San Francisco in 1900 and Washington’s former poet laureate, Dorothy Moy, who is raising a daughter and fighting for her mental health in 2045. In pursuing an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy Moy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family tree. While the novel weaves in elements of mysticism and science fiction, it is beautiful and heart-wrenching and feels very, very real.

When I was living overseas in France in 2010-2011 in my late 20’s, I decided to take advantage of my proximity to Eastern Europe and explore first hand where my family emigrated from and why they might have left. I am the first person in my family (that I’m aware of) to have taken the pilgrimage back to the tiny town in what is now Eastern Slovakia where my family lived, before emigrating to the United States in the 1880’s. Thanks to Wikipedia and the stories passed down from my grandfather with whom I was extremely close, I know that my great-great Uncle, late Rabbi Joseph Hertz was born in Rebrín/Rebrény, Hungary in 1872. This town is presently part of the village of Zemplínska Široká in Slovakia. Hertz emigrated to New York City in 1884 a year or two after his older brother, Emmanuel (my great Grandfather) and their father, Simon came looking for better opportunities, in the face of rising antisemitism at home.

Joseph went on to become the first graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1894 and would go on to serve as a Rabbi in New York and South Africa. He served his final post as the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth from 1913 through two world wars and until his death in 1946.

Every few years I go back and re-read aspects of his story and discover something I didn’t know before. In my latest reading, I learned that in 1920-1921 Rabbi Hertz was the first chief rabbi to undertake a “pastoral tour” of the British empire. His pilgrimage would take him over 40,000 miles and to over 40 Jewish communities around the world, including in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Canada. Just reading this is a reminder that the Jewish diaspora is wide and nuanced, built upon waves of complexity and layers of history, going back to biblical times.

My own personal pilgrimage to the village of Zemplínska Široká in the spring of 2011 took me to a small town that was completely wiped of its Jewish population at the turn of the century. To get there, I took a 10 hour night train from Prague to Košice, a bus from Košice to Michalovce and another smaller bus from Michalovce to Zemplínska Široká. I had arranged beforehand to meet a local historian in Michalovce who was kind enough to drive me to an old, overgrown and abandoned Jewish cemetery outside of town. I wanted to see if I could find the grave of my great aunt’s grandparents who were believed to be buried in that town (hence the photos above and below). While I didn’t find their specific tombstones I did find one with the same family name I was searching for (Friedman). It was remarkable to be that close to my own family story and yet to know so little about what they went through to pave the way for my family light years away.

And here I am in 2023, raising a family of my own in Middletown, CT. As I write these words I question if I am struggling with some existential desire to answer an unspoken cry from my ancestors. What am I in search of that they never found? What inherited trauma has been passed down to me that I must embody and then let pass through me, so that it doesn’t get passed down the family line even further.

How does inherited trauma continue to play out in our own bodies and become experienced as anxiety?

I’m not sure where this search will lead, but I know that I must take a pastoral tour of my own, to understand why and from where our pangs of unworthiness, fear and anxiety stem. I know I am not alone. And I know that the answer lies in 1000 different places.

When I wake up tomorrow though, and find myself at battle with my snooze button, I will try and be just a little kinder to myself and lean into the strengths passed down from generations of ancestors who were likely all just trying to do the same.

לְדוֹר וָדוֹר, l’dor vador, “from generation to generation”
An ancient concept in Judaic scripture generally interpreted to mean that we have a responsibility to pass on teachings from one generation to the next.

A Poem for my Fellow Humans

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Martin Luther King, Jr

I am thousands of miles away and I feel your pain. Your aching. Your cries. The shame. The deafening silence of the world community as you were pulled from your beds, from your homes, last Shabbat and brutally hunted down, literally and figuratively.

I cannot watch the videos. I am living them inside my body. The stories. The sounds. The smells. I am trying to feel them. To bear witness in my own small way.

I am waking up in cold sweats, imagining images of ISIS style torture and beheadings and picturing my child or her friends as victims. The agony. The fear. The insanity.

In my lifetime I have not truly felt the pain of being a Jew until now. Of being hated so deeply that you could become nothing overnight. I’ve been teased, I’ve been mocked and I’ve been laughed at. But I’ve not felt the pain of a massacre in my bedroom. My home. My town. My Synagogue. My most precious spaces.

As bomb threats in the US reverberate online… “you all need to die. If you die, I’ll be happy.” Likely a child who wrote this. A child who has learned to hate. Hate that starts at home. With the jokes and the taunts and the jeers. How young do they start to feel this? Our children. Our babies. How young is a child who feels hate towards a people they do not know. Towards a human who could have been their friend.

What has the world become? That we could feel so desperate, to not just take a life, but to savagely dehumanize a life into mere ashes, in front of their family. Where do we go from here?

A friend sent a quote to me this morning, “the Giants of our past have taught us how to be brave. Jewish persecution is as old as time, but Jewish valor is eternal.”

Shabbat shalom, my friends. May we not rest completely until humanity is restored and our children are safe.

Letting Go

“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you- all of the expectations, all of the beliefs- and becoming who you are.
Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

Sometimes the best thing we can do in life is to take our hands off the steering wheel and let someone else drive. There is a Yiddish expression, “Der Mensch Tracht, Un Gott Lacht,” which translates to “man plans and God laughs.” I have received a lesson in this wisdom over the last month. Less than two weeks before starting my new job, I had an absurd, freak accident which left me with a fractured ankle and what felt like an impossible situation to maneuver. Instead of planning my commute to work, I was planning a pathway to surgery and renegotiating a start date to allow for recovery. Life stopped. And the millions of little things that one moment had been in my control and seemed so important were suddenly whisked away.

Since surgery to repair my ankle, I’ve had to relearn how to go up and down the stairs. My daughter is now getting a kick out of me descending and ascending on my butt like she used to do when learning to become mobile. We are both learning to put on socks and step into shorts together. It is not straightforward. I can empathize with how tired she gets when trying to do it by herself and just wanting to give up and ask for help. Well, now we can help each other.

There have been countless lessons in this “pause” that have inconveniently inserted themselves into my life. I don’t even know where to start. For one, resisting reality or grasping for something different makes everything harder. When the Physician Assistant (PA) in the ER came in to tell me about the results of the x-ray, I was in disbelief. I started rattling off all the things I had planned for the summer and asking if I could still do them. I had plans to take my sister to NYC the next day for her 40th birthday…could we still take the train? Could I still participate in the sprint triathlon I signed up for in August? I had finally found the time to get my bike tuned up after years of it collecting dust in our garage. The PA looked at me funny and said, “well if you want to show up on the day of the race and see how you do, go for it.” (Instead my training of late has consisted of doing light ankle stretches and circles). Okay, so what about this concert or this trip or this baseball game or this adventure, etc? I immediately looked at what I was losing. Perhaps this is fair. There is a lot of loss. Not to mention, money and time and the incredible burden this places on my loved ones to pick up the slack.

But what of the gain? What do I gain from a setback?

In the last month my mind and body have slowed down, literally and figuratively. I’m not able to think much beyond what is right in front of me. At any moment I need to know where my crutches are, what I need to grab in order to sit down, whether it’s time to ice or elevate, etc. I’ve been forced to slow down in a way I didn’t think was possible, and life has not imploded. It’s gotten a bit more confusing and there are additional puzzle pieces we need to maneuver but I’m able to keep up at a pace that feels more realistic.

So what happens in a couple weeks when I can start bearing weight again, when I can commute into work or go for a walk to the mailbox? Yes even getting the mail is a formidable challenge now. Will I start piling things back on slowly, until I can’t catch my breath? Truthfully, I probably will at first. But perhaps this time I’ll connect with the ease of keeping things a bit simpler. After all, it’s not what I’m accomplishing or checking off that dictates my worth, but instead it’s in the “letting go” that I stand to gain the most. Blessings for a smooth week ahead and may you embrace the bumps and cracks along the way.

Meditation on Change

“Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter.”
Amit Ray

Aging is a funny thing. It happens constantly. In every moment. While we are awake and while we are sleeping. Most of these moments just pass by, unnoticed. It is a natural and inevitable part of life and yet we often fight it. Or at least I fight it.

The gray hairs that start to slip through, harder to hide. Wrinkles on my face. An increase in aches and pains when I don’t work out as much. Or when I do work out. I’m growing older. Most of us don’t have too many outlets to make sense of this process. Instead we buy our way into stopping the aging process. Try this beauty service. Use this jade roller. Meditate more. Eat lighter foods. All of these recommendations on their own are perfectly reasonable and ones we could likely benefit from, but taken together, they feel overwhelming and at times counterproductive.

Our six year old Portuguese water dog, Halligan (aka Hal), was recently diagnosed with aggressive liver cancer. He was given a prognosis of about 1-2 months, if we pursue treatment. And if we don’t pursue treatment then we are looking at weeks or even days. Of course no one can say for sure and the research is spotty but either way you look at it, we have very little time left with him.

How on earth do you process something like this? One moment he’s seemingly healthy, running 2 miles in the woods with us and the next we are talking about comfort measures and how we want to talk to our toddler about mortality. (Tips on this are welcome by the way.)

As I remain hyper vigilant to Hal’s symptoms, I notice that so many of my waking hours are spent in a state of subtle scanning. I think I’m channeling my ancestors and looking for a fire to put out or a threat from neighboring tribes. I’m almost always in problem-solving mode, planning out my week ahead or doing the math on how I’m going to get to my new job on time while “lightly” guiding my daughter through her morning routine. (She’s rounding 3 years old and the concept of “threenager” feels apt.)

As I prepare to return to work full time, I’m asking myself, how did this happen again? I took the last year a half to step back and find a sense of calm and balance from the the frenzied pace I had been moving at. And, yet, if I’m being brutally honest with myself, I think I’ve recalibrated bit by bit so that I’m still following the same patterns just a little less intensely. All of these behaviors I’m sure are adaptive and in place to protect me from unseen threats. However, they are still getting in the way of me being in the here and now.

In this next phase, as I return to work, I want to reflect on what I’ve learned since “Taking a Pause” 20 months ago. In no particular order…

Our relationships are sacred. Our partners, our children, our parents, our colleagues, our neighbors, our friends…They are primary and deserve to be elevated above all else. No work stress or drama or inconsequential, petty argument is worth jeopardizing the connections we’ve built with those around us.
Parenting is hard. Full stop. Give myself grace as the journey continues to unfold.
When I feel cynical, which I do often, try to reframe or consider a new perspective. How am I learning, growing, and stretching through this hard thing? What is another way to look at this moment?
Dream. Imagine. Rest. Allow myself space for rest and creativity. Having just finished Tricia Hersey’s, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, I’m moved and saddened by how consumed many of us are by “grind culture.” The oppressive nature that white supremacy and capitalism have on us is dripping in plain sight and yet we can’t see it because we’re too busy grinding away. It’s in our blood and our social makeup, but it doesn’t have to be our fate. We can resist.
It’s okay to not have it all figured out. Multiple times throughout the past year and a half I thought about making major career and life changes. I researched schools, ministries, organizations, yoga teacher training programs, etc. I shadowed, I prayed, I asked for answers.

And…now….I find myself returning to something very familiar, to an organization for which I worked previously. I think my search and quest for change has ironically (or not so ironically) brought me back to where I started so many years ago when I first moved up to CT.

Perhaps though, while I have come full circle in some ways, I have changed in the process. I have grown and surely aged (as is evident by my greys). And hopefully I’ve garnered a little more wisdom about what matters.

In this next chapter for myself and for all of us, may we go easy on ourselves and others. May we see the world for all its beauty and all its pain. May we stop for snuggles and cuddles and belly rubs and know the sky will not fall if we don’t send that last email. Perfectionism is dangerous and a form of violence and is perhaps the biggest threat of all to this messy and sacred process of living.

Sending love and blessings for whatever small or big steps lie ahead.

How Do We Protect Our Relationships?

“One of the greatest gifts we can give to the people that we love is to free them from our expectations of them.”
Meditation Teacher

I sometimes wonder how our relationships survive the act of parenting. By relationships here, I mean the relationship between a child’s parents or caregivers. Perhaps, the answer is that many of them don’t.

We don’t talk often enough about the “crushing responsibilities” that come with being a parent and how they can take a toll on the space and energy required to maintain the health of our romantic partnerships. This is not to presuppose that all co-parenting relationships look the same or have the same trajectory or expectations. With this post, I am speaking for myself and my journey which inherently look different than others. That said, I thought it might be helpful to share some of the personal challenges and vulnerabilities that have come with parenting and trying to maintain a strong foundation at home with a partner.

My wife and I met about 8 years ago through a mutual friend when I was living in New Haven, CT. She was living in a small rural town in CT and it often felt like our get togethers entailed exploring completely different cultures and terrains within the same state. Still new to New England, I was insistent on taking countless day trips to explore quaint towns, villages, cities, beaches, breweries and everything in between. It was light and fun when I stayed out of my head and just enjoyed the adventure of building a relationship with someone new.

This is not to say that building our relationship was simple or easy. We had our fair share of ups and downs. Coming out as queer was a long, arduous process that in many ways started when I was a young teenager. Having felt a bit stunted emotionally, I wasn’t comfortable or ready to start dating seriously until my late 20’s. By the time I met the woman who would become my wife I was 32, a very young 32 and still had a lot of maturing to do. I was no where near ready to settle down and had numerous hurdles to mount in order to feel ready to take that leap of faith.

Fast forward 8 years and our daughter has just passed the 20-month mark. She is a fireball, always in constant motion, exploring all the nooks and crannies of her big, wide world. It’s been an honor to be on this journey with her. At the same time, as the relationship with my daughter blossoms, I’m managing all the anxieties and stresses that come with motherhood. At times, this can become so overwhelming that I am able to see nothing else and am unable to focus on the role I play in my marriage.

In the days, weeks and months since our daughter was born — as we’ve muddled through ongoing sleep issues, a global pandemic, career changes and parenting anxieties — I am realizing that I’ve boxed myself and my wife into the role of logistics coordinators. Who is going to pick her up from daycare? Who is getting her up in the morning, doing bath time, giving meds, cleaning bottles, cooking dinner, driving her to the pediatrician’s office…the list feels endless. Resentment can so easily build up and our communication at times can look like a bidding war on who is doing more to manage our countless responsibilities. What starts as a conversation about the dishes or taking out the trash somehow devolves into an existential discussion about wanting to be seen and acknowledged for all “that we are doing.”

The truth is, everything we are “doing” can’t be assessed according to a rubric. No one is getting a grade. But we dig our heels in nonetheless and are ready to go to the ring to fight for our title as “hardest working parent, most deserving of a break.” The other day I found myself immaturely fishing for a “thank you” as if we were playing a game when I simply cleared the table after dinner.

Perhaps this is a form of #adulting that we are all immersed in, whether we have children or not. I do remember when we brought our now 5-year-old Portie (Portuguese Water Dog) home, we fell into a similar dynamic. I was more concerned with whether our dog got his paws dirty in the house, then if my partner had a good day at work. Had he been walked, fed, who was going to take him to the vet, etc.? Everything became a negotiation of sorts and communication between my wife and I centered almost exclusively around tying up loose ends at home.

I know that a lot of couples go through periods of this throughout the extent of their relationships, and some of it is to be expected.

But is there anything we can do to curb it before we start to feel more like business partners than life partners?

A couple of ideas that come to mind based on what I’ve noticed when I do manage to go against my “have to get things done” mindset…

To begin, when possible, I’m now trying to make a point to share space with our daughter, even if it feels like not a “good use” of our time. When possible, we will both give her a bath or pick her up from daycare or pile into the car for an adventure together. It may not make sense from a logistics standpoint, but it gives us a chance to breathe together as a family and create joint memories. Just this past weekend we decided to make an adventure out of a run to Target. What could have been a rushed errand to take something off our plate, was instead a full blown sensory and learning experience.

Interestingly, as a queer couple we are less subjected to traditional gender norms and heteronormative ideas around the roles we play inside and outside the home and who is doing “more” for the family. Instead of a power play, I am trying to look to our relationship as a team sport where we are both on the same team. If she is doing well, we are both doing well. And vice versa. If we are doing well as a unit, then our daughter is more likely to thrive. Admittedly, this is much easier said than done. There are so many pressures on each of us individually and it can become all too easy to slip into a contest of who is more deserving of the so-called parenting/logistics award. Perhaps it is a cry for control during a period in our lives where this kind of mastery feels more fraught than ever.

Additionally, I’ve realized how important it is to cultivate excitement around joint ventures and activities outside the parenting role. What is it that we can plan together, even if it seems lightyears away? (I already started daydreaming about a hypothetical winter 2023 getaway). I want to hold more tightly to those small moments of connection. Can we stay up past our bedtime to watch an extra episode of bad TV or meet up for a secret rendezvous at Chipotle for lunch? Perhaps these moments are not as sexy as our honeymoon period adventures, but they are just as meaningful.

As always, I am very much in the thick of this unchartered territory and open to the experience and wisdom of others. Above all I want to make more of an effort to give myself and my partner grace when one of us is stressed or overwhelmed. After all, what drew us to each other all those years ago at an ordinary bar in New Haven was our zest for life and adventure. Business and parenting logistics have their role, but perhaps letting go of some of these expectations and embracing “messy” will take us further in the end.

“Momsomnia”

“If we are to wake up out of our patterning, a key element of that is to be able to pause, recognize and open to a larger space than the cocoon that our mind is creating in thought.”
Tara Brach

It’s somewhere between the hours of 1 and 3am. I can feel it in my bones. I’m purposely not looking at my phone to see the time as this messes with my head when I try to fall back asleep. I’m at the door to my bedroom, leaning my right ear against the wall to see if I can detect a sound coming from my daughter’s bedroom. We share a wall so it’s not too hard to tell when she’s up and when she is sleeping. Lately I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, thinking I’ve heard a sound (a shrill cry, a yell, a strange outburst, etc.). However, when I give it a few moments the sound tends to dissipate, which is likely a sign that either I was hearing what’s called a “phantom cry” or that she is self-soothing and “rocking” herself back to sleep.

I knew that sleep deprivation would be an issue in the immediate postpartum weeks and months, but I never stopped to consider how one’s relationship with sleep would be forever changed once having a child.

I’ve never been a great sleeper. Since as far back as I can remember, I have fallen asleep with the aid of white noise. I remember replacing my beloved white noise machine with a cheap clip-on fan my freshman year in college as I was embarrassed to bring what I used to call a “snore machine” into my dorm room. I attached it to my metal lofted bunk bed and would turn it on high every night to try and drown out the eclectic mix of sounds in the hallway. When traveling before the advent of smart phones, I would get creative and try different tactics to help myself fall asleep. For a semester in college while studying abroad I listened to Enya every night on my Walkman CD player until I nodded off. I remember my obnoxious foam headphones were not comfortable to sleep in but they were preferable to having no noise at all.

Now all these years later, and with multiple sources of white noise at my disposal (air purifier, white noise machine, and cell phone apps all playing simultaneously), I find myself in a new conundrum. My sleep is not my own anymore.

Since having my daughter I have become keenly aware that my sleep is all relative to her needs. In her first days, we would be lucky to get a couple hours of sleep in a row before being woken up. Once she would settle after an early morning feeding, I would try and give myself permission to drift back to sleep. But it was hard to do this with regularity as every night could end up looking a little different. Eventually my wife and I realized we didn’t need to be up at the same time and so we started taking different shifts, sleeping in our guest room when we weren’t “on.” We would switch places somewhere around 3/4am in time for the other one to “sleep in” past our daughter’s pending 5/6am feeding. On good days, she would go back to sleep after that feeding and we could either get ourselves up and showered, changed, etc. to get ready for work or we could crash and sleep all the way to 8/9am when she next woke up (a blissful treat when it happened).

Back then, the hours sort of melded together most days and we just hoped and waited for it to get better. As it turns out, we were one of the lucky ones. Our random assortment of sleep training techniques actually worked. Our daughter was sleeping 7/8 hour chunks by 3 months. And it’s only gotten progressively better.

Somehow though, as my daughter’s sleep has improved over the last 18 months, mine has gotten progressively worse.

So what’s going on here? Perhaps some of it is natural age-related changes to my body (I did just turn 40 after all). If I’m being honest with myself though, I think much of my sleep disruption is cognitive and presents itself in the form of mind games and self-manipulation. Just knowing that I could be woken up by a shrill cry or wail at any moment is enough to keep me in a sleep deprived trance most nights.

How is stress playing a role in exacerbating this dynamic? According to Nikki Trojanowski of mic.com, children’s crying can increase the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) arousal. This can mean instantly being awake and simultaneously feeling our hearts pounding, our palms or bodies sweating and our minds on high alert. Trojanowski explains, “One of the classic findings in stress research — initially done by endocrinologist Hans Selye — is that prolonged SNS arousal… wears the body down, essentially, but also puts a person in a permanent state of vigilance, which is wearying.”

As I’ve also been exploring in therapy, the narrative I tell myself about sleep (and if I’m being honest, about much of life) may be having the most profound impact on my sleep and well-being than any other factor.

I have a tendency to get stuck in a negative feedback loop and then lose a grip on what’s real and what isn’t. For example, my daughter wakes up one night due to teething or some other myriad of issues and I’m convinced I’m never going to sleep again. This negative, pessimistic voice then catapults me into a heightened, anxious space which then reinforces the negative thought. Pretty soon I’m on high maternal alert and ready to wake up the whole house. It’s a form of catastrophic thinking according to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) therapy and is one of many different automatic thought patterns that can send someone down a rabbit hole.

Another helpful concept which I’ve been aware of for years is the idea of the “second arrow.” Taken from Buddhism, the “first arrow” is the unpleasant experience we have that is not in our control, in this case, being woken up by a real or phantom cry. The second arrow is the more dangerous one though. As renowned psychologist and meditation teacher, Tara Brach describes, the second arrow is the judgement and self-blame that we shoot ourselves with as a result of the first arrow. (For example, “there must be something wrong with me if I keep waking up to phantom cries and can no longer catch a good night’s sleep.”) As Brach encourages, if we can show ourselves grace and compassion during these uncomfortable and unexpected moments, we will come to realize the second arrow is completely avoidable and in our power to control.

Building on Tara Brach’s teachings, I can’t help but think about how to extinguish the proverbial second arrow by following in my daughter’s footsteps.

As noted earlier, when she wakes up repeatedly throughout the night (which I’ve come to learn is completely natural), she does not ruminate or cast blame on herself. She calls out if she really needs something. Otherwise, she breathes through it. Her self-soothing techniques of the moment include laying on her belly, sucking her thumb, and giving her (stuffed) “doggy” an extra squeeze. And then eventually she falls back asleep.

The middle of the night is not the time to go through all the “what-ifs” in my mind. Instead, when I wake up and feel pangs of anxiety, or wonder if I’ve heard something, I will try sitting up, acclimating myself to my surroundings, perhaps drink some water, and take some deep breaths. I will commiserate with the other phantoms of the night who are surely out there and if all else fails, start brainstorming about my next blog post. Sleep tight, everyone.