Posts by Shira Lankin Sheps
Looking Toward the Heavens
Last night was surreal. I sat with some of my sisters, my mother, and my daughter in the darkness listening to the reading of Meggilat Eicha. In the distance we could hear rumbling; of warplanes, rockets, and the explosions of the Iron dome. My daughter was squeezing my hand, I could feel fear making her…
Read MoreMila’s Story: They Can Never Erase Them
In Honor of International Holocaust Day: Mila’s Story: Mila grew up in southern Poland, in a town called Chrzanow. Her parents had six children: three boys and three girls — Malka, Chaim, Moshe, Mesia, Nachman, and Mila. The summer of 1939 would be the last the family ever spent together. As the Nazis invaded Poland,…
Read MoreLearning to Rest
I never let myself rest. At some point when I was sick with chronic illness, all I could do was rest. I was told by my doctor that all I could do was stay in bed. I was not allowed to work, or to get up and move around. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV…
Read MoreThe Next Chapter
It’s funny how sometimes we end up creating for others what we need the most. The Layers Project was born because I needed to say out loud that my life was imperfect and messy. That I was struggling and complicated– but also that it was OK to live an imperfect life. I felt that the…
Read MoreDanielle’s Story: Embracing Surrender: My Experience With OHSS
1/6 “Unexplained Infertility” “It was the day before Thanksgiving. I remember because I took the day as a good omen. That was the day I went in for my first IVF transfer, where a healthy embryo that was made in the clinic just a few days earlier was implanted back in my uterus. Almost two…
Read MoreReality Under Rockets
I had never heard a rocket siren before. I’ve watched countless videos of rocket sirens, rocket explosions, and all sorts of violence. But I had never heard it above my own head before. The city of Jerusalem was exploding with energy yesterday. There were Arab riots in pockets of the city- fighting against police, throwing…
Read MoreLife in the Ghetto and Journey to Auschwitz- Excerpt from the Story of Leah Klein
“The Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1944. The first thing they did was to take away the Jewish work permits. People that worked in the city hall, the post office and more, were replaced by Hungarian workers. Then they took away our business licenses. My father had a delivery business; he had four wagons with…
Read MoreShira’s Story: Behind the Scenes of the New Layers Book
(1/6) Some of you may already know parts of my story. This next part I’ve been keeping to myself for the last three years. Now it feels like the right time to share it. I’ve written about how for most of my twenties I wrestled with chronic illness. Years passed and my life became smaller…
Read MoreIn the Eye of the Storm
My father is in the hospital sick with COVID. It has been many months since words like “coronavirus” “quarantine” and “pandemic” have been coming out of our mouths. Words we never said before. Along with those words came a mounting fear; sometimes we could feel the virus breathing down our necks, on the verge of…
Read MoreAzi’s Story: “Finding the Light Within Us”
(1/8): “Feeling Deeply” “From a very young age, I had a great capacity to feel. I recall watching an episode of Sesame Street and Big Bird went away to camp. My mom asked me why I was crying, but I couldn’t quite verbalize the intensity of my sadness. My exuberance for life was intense too.…
Read MoreWaiting For All the Answers
This year I am almost at a loss for words. The last two years I have wrestled with the question, “Why are we mourning on Tisha Baav?” The first time I asked the question, I was living as a new olah in Jerusalem. I was so overwhelmed by the intensity and vibrancy of the city,…
Read MoreEnough, For Now
I’ve been trying to make sense of the time period that we are living in right now. We have been bombarded with endless adversity: global pandemics of many kinds of ills– hatred, illness, and injustice. The world is in so much pain. Typically on Layers, I take it one story at a time. I unwrap…
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