Giving Myself Permission to Grieve My Mother

I clearly remember the morning in school when I announced, “my mommy passed away and she’s in shamayim.” The room was still. No one smiled. I was six years old and I realized something was not right. I remember thinking that this was not something to share publicly. People wouldn’t understand. My mother passed away…

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The Role of Ring Holder At The Chuppah

“How are you holding up?” – This is the recurrent text I’ve learned to expect in the days following a close friend’s wedding.I’ve become accustomed to staying back after the bedeken. I have become quite used to the Kallah’s sister, aunt, married friend, or another “woman of status” at the wedding seeking me out to…

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Coming Back to First Position: Learning to Love My Body Again

Her body moves gracefully across the room, small ballet slippers dotting the floor with lightness and strength. Her arms are open and reaching, eyes bright with ambition; to dreams, to aspirations, to visions of growing up and taking space in the world. The music comes to a stop and she smiles at the audience, standing…

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Breathless: My Struggle With Panic Attacks

It starts with a tightness in my chest. Slow and searing, it feels like my heart has a clamp around it, suffocating me from feeling anything besides deprivation and heaviness. My breathing switches gears and starts speeding; I’m gasping and I can’t keep up. As the corners of the room start to curl in, I…

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Surviving & Thriving After Emergency Hysterectomy

It has been four years since I was wheeled into the operating room not knowing whether I was to come out alive.  Not knowing whether I would come out with my child. But knowing 100% that I would never bring forth life from my womb again. At the time, I was completely at peace knowing…

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Stopping to Surrender

It’s so hard for me to be far away from him, not to be able to hold him through this, for me to grieve alone and not say my goodbyes, and to manage everything on the home front. Today it’s been a month since my husband left to go abroad to be with his family…

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“What’s the Big Deal?”

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone.  Some physically, some financially, many, if not most, emotionally.  Each one of us typically wears so many different hats, and each one of those has been affected by our current situation.  Our community has stepped up in so many ways to address the current challenges so many of us…

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The Hidden Pain

Three years ago, Yom Hazikaron took on a whole new meaning for me. That’s not to say that the day wasn’t meaningful beforehand. But since three years ago, it just all hit home that much more.  Three years ago, I started dating a guy named “Doron,” who had been in an elite unit in the…

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Forever Changed

“During Tzuk Eitan (Operation Protective Edge), the war of summer 2014, I was a commander in the officer’s course. We were supporting the Iron Dome system. During the war with Gaza, there were many rocket attacks. My family lives in the South and they were under rocket fire. The Iron Dome stopped many rockets from…

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