12/19/09

12/19/09. It was the eve after her 90th birthday. I got an email from Yehoshua the next morning. I called home right away. They said they didn’t want to wake me. 

She was wearing a red tichel when it happened. It was the one she always wore. Classic Bubby. Like scrambling eggs were. And that sequined blue dress that she wore to every wedding. The one that accented her eyes.

But now I’m scared I’ll forget her. Forget the way she looked. The way she spoke. The funny things she’d say. I never want to forget her. I can’t forget her. I see myself in her. I know that’s crazy to say. She was amazing. But if I look in the mirror, I see those same big eyes, that once were blue. Oh, she loved blue eyes. Secretly, she played favorites with the grandchild who had them. But Zaidy’s were brown. Or maybe hazel. I guess his charm made up for it.

We have this picture of Zaidy giving her a gift a couple years ago. He has this incredible smile on his face, like his whole world is lighting up. Like they were newly weds. She was beautiful. And she was strong. 'Till the very end. She had to be. She lived for nine days without kidneys. The doctors said that’s impossible. But then again, Bubby was no ordinary woman. She was modest. Dignified. I can still envision her on her flowered couch with a tehillim in hand. She probably knew the whole book by heart, she said it so often. But she was modest. She read from the tehillim.

When I visited her in the hospital, before I left, I promised her I’d send her a postcard from Israel. I never did. I davened for her at the kotel. At ma’arat hamachpala. From behind covered eyes when I lit candles on Friday night. I whispered her name countless times. Baila Malkah bas Yaakov Aryeh. May her neshama have an aliyah.

pixie in a giant world

I walk
around with astonished eyes, wide and foolish.
A pixie in a world of giants.
The people, the places I go, even the language is foreign.
I keep a handful of
words in my pocket and recycle them over and over.

Words I may have taken off the lips of strangers,
lapped off pages of books,

copied and pasted from a mimes forehead 
But I’ll write them down anyway.
In the hope that maybe when I reread them in a few years
I’ll remember how it felt to write them.

Yet they never breathe; the words.
They remain confined
to Times New Roman, to the 8.5x11 page, lifeless and one dimensional.
I feel too hard, I see too much;
I can’t compress the moments, crush them up into a fine powder
and funnel them into words,
into sentences that justify the time I took to feel them.

My fingers drum on the keyboard,
the right words evade me.
Words don’t have little hearts on their sleeves
or nerves to transmit the feeling.
Italics can’t whisper, even CAPS don’t holler from rooftops.
Words never reel or implode from the inside out.
Words don’t tremble
or beat so fast it’s as if their heart 

is set to leap from their chest.

Healing Isn’t Polite

I woke up this morning with a sore throat. It came as no surprise, considering I spent the night prior screaming and shouting, in between deep breathing, in a plant nursery somewhere in Miami.

Eyes covered, hands open at my sides, I laid on a yoga mat and followed the breathwork facilitator’s cues. 

It was an active breathing class meant to take us on a journey to our subconscious and release what no longer served us. 

Less than a minute into the experience, my lungs felt like they were on fire. As a chronically shallow breather all my life, my lung capacity was nil. Almost as though I didn’t believe I deserved the very oxygen I begrudging inhaled into my lungs. I didn’t know how to receive what is certainly a birthright. It’s crazy to say it out loud but I honestly don’t think I felt worthy of breathing out loud. 

In the past when I did remember to breathe, I would hold the breath in my lungs, not in a luxurious way, but in the sense that I was so nervous, I’d forget to exhale and take a new breath. I’m not entirely sure why. A part of me thinks that maybe it was so that others wouldn’t hear me exhale, so that I could stay in my shell and tip toe quietly through life. 

Maybe I didn’t believe I was worthy of taking up space or making noise, and maybe the sound of my exhale would remind them that I was there. Maybe I didn’t want to be there, maybe I was somewhere else entirely.

But last night I breathed differently. I decided to immerse myself in the experience. If others deserved to receive this healing event in exchange for money, why not me?

Time moved differently as we breathed, so I’m not sure how long into it it was before my hands involuntarily clasped together tightly like lobster claws. The instructor had warned us before that this could happen, and if she hadn’t, I would have been terrified out of my mind. 

I kid you not, as hard as I tried, I could not unclasp my thumb from the rest of my fingers. And I tried, because the sensation was so incredibly painful. At first, I resisted the pain, desperately trying to open them.

“Let go,” I heard her say softly. 

I had a feeling she was talking to me, because I’ve heard it many times before. I knew letting go was both the most difficult and the most important thing I would ever have to do, but I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.

I lugged my past around with me wherever I went, releasing some of it slowly over the years, but still feeling a resistance to letting go completely. It had become part of my identity, so to release it would have felt like shedding limbs. It felt impossible to let go of such a huge part of me.

But I knew I had to. Because I didn’t want to be in pain. I got the feeling then that I was being called to release the idea that my past and self imposed limitations are my identity. I felt I was being asked to release my defenses, my safety barriers, the deadbolts and locks around my heart. I was being asked to smash my shell open and come out, even if only for tonight, even if I later crafted a softer shell, perhaps with more windows and doors. 

I knew that my hands locked shut in such a painful pose was a physical and metaphorical message to let go of all that I’m holding onto. 

It was so painful to hold on and so painful to let go, but it became clear that the only way out of the pain was through it. To surrender to it. 

So I did. 

I had to. 

And when I did, the tension slowly melted away. My hands opened. I let go.

And in letting go, my hands were once again open to receive.

And so I did.

I received.

I drew the air, the oxygen, the life force, into my lungs and intentionally held it there for a a while, luxuriating in the feeling of fullness, allowing my lungs to expand deeper than I ever have. 

It felt difficult but full of promise. 

And when I felt like my lungs might explode and I couldn’t hold it any longer, I held that breath for a few more moments, gently letting my lungs know that I was teaching them to receive, and that I can handle more than I give myself credit for.

And I kept breathing. Two breaths through my mouth, one into my stomach and one into chest; expelled with sound and vibration.

She urged us to use our voices as we exhaled. However loud we needed to be. 

And so I did. 

At first it came out as low hums, vibrations. 

Quiet. Respectful. Polite. 

But there was a voice clawing inside me, impolite and wild, begging for release. The only way to release it would have been to scream, to shout. I’m not a shouter by nature, I rarely scream, but I decided to give myself permission to do it anyway.

So I did. 

I screamed from the bottom of my gut. It wasn’t pretty, it was guttural at some points and shrill at others. I gave voice to sounds that were imprisoned inside for what could have been decades. Sounds that sounded like, “I deserve to make noise, I deserve to use my voice, I deserve to exist, to be here and not stuck within. I deserve to have time to myself. I deserve to take up space.” 

All the things I once told myself I was not worthy of came out in those screams. All the times I felt like screaming and never did. 

At first I thought “Oh no, I must sound crazy. I must be disturbing the others. I must be stepping on their toes.” All the apologies I’ve ever given played in my head. But then I quickly replaced it with the message that tonight wasn’t about apologies, it was about  healing authenticity, however it wanted to happen. 

Healing isn’t polite. 

At the end she asked us to think about what we were grateful for. Many people and things came to mind, but the first one was… me. 

I had never felt gratitude for myself, I always found other people to be grateful for. But tonight I finally felt grateful for the one who has been there for me all these years, the one who has taken me on this journey of healing. 

So often I searched for healing in others. In supplements, regimens, therapists, coaches, mind and body practitioners, medicines and the people who prescribed them, but it wasn’t until tonight, when I learned how my breath alone can take me to deeper states and healing places, that I realized the medicine is me. 

I left with many messages but perhaps most importantly I left with this: God breathed a soul into each of us, our breath is a sacred and constant reminder of how important we truly are. We are all equally deserving and worthy and when you really stop to think about it, it’s ludicrous that we keep forgetting this. 

We are deeply worthy of all the goodness in the world. 

We are deserving. 

We are deserving.

We are deserving.

My Fire-Breathing Dragon

I emerged from the breathwork event still buzzing with social anxiety, electric with a cocktail of stress hormones coursing through me.

On the car ride over I had attempted to smoke away the heaviness of my day. Using weed as an emotional palette cleanser is rarely effective, I know, but I did it anyway because I had also read something about cannabis heightening the experience.

That it did.

Heightened the already relentless social anxiety strumming in my chest, that is.

Perfect.

I had for some cosmic reason broken my cardinal rule about not smoking before social events, and in doing so, it overrode my original intention completely.

Which had been, for the record: To release the energy I mistakenly held for other people. And to reclaim my own.

Thanks to a little weed and a lot of little-t- trauma, my intention was instead replaced with facing the dragon in front of me: Social anxiety and the wounds beneath it.

As I felt the energy of this fear resonate in my body, I couldn’t help but wonder…

After all the ceremonies, and all the breathwork and therapy sessions, after all the meetings with my Higher Self, all the newfound self-love, and all the spiritual awakenings, why tf do I still get nervous in social situations?

Too bad psychedelic ceremonies don’t have money back guarantees, because I was just about ready for mine. Judging myself, I wondered: why is healing so goddamn slow?

But then the breathwork started and I did what I came to do. 

I held my husbands hand as I began to breathe, clinging to some semblance of safety in a room that reminded me of the places I was hurt. 

Within moments however, I felt safe to let go and hold myself. 

And in my breath I met her; that beautiful goddess of a Higher Self I meet when I get out of my mind and into my body.

She moves like water, smells of love, speaks so softly yet so powerfully, and feels like Light.

My breath summoned her and she held me in her Divine embrace. With each breath, she showed me my light.

My power.

My love.

She roared with me as I released energy from every part of my body, most of all my throat.

I went back in time with her, to times I recalled feeling unsafe to show up as my true self. Times I had to chameleon and shape-shift, times I felt compelled to fold up into myself and hide. Times I shut off and out, times I had felt less than, times I was in a big crowd like this one and felt afraid of my own shadow.

As I breathed, I felt the waves of utter terror grip me, as though it truly was a matter of life and death. 

I recalled having to give up bits and pieces of myself, like bargaining chips, in exchange for my survival.

It had been a matter of survival, hadn't it? And I developed a brilliant mechanism that protected me. That got me here, to a place where I have enough safety and power within that I could go back and heal it. 

I honored that.

I felt the grief from the loss of my authenticity. 

I honored that too.

As I continued to breathe, and move, and kick, and scream, I felt myself come alive. I felt my energy. I claimed my energy, in a room that reminded me of the very people I repressed my energy for. I released energies that did not belong to me, energies that I absorbed in order to  ascertain who I needed to be to please the person/people in front of me. 

The process of release and reclaiming felt like alchemical bliss. 

After it was done the facilitator asked if anyone would like to share, and before I could stop myself, I heard my voice reverberate in the circle. I felt it vibrate in my chest, and it carried on into the space as though it had a mind of its own. 

Uncharacteristically of me in a large crowd: I let the words come up and out through my heart without overthinking them. I spoke vulnerably about my journey. 

I spoke about how when I began breathing I released my original intention in favor of a more pressing one, but how in the end they were one and the same. 

As a highly sensitive empath, who developed a hyper awareness of energies around me as a means of survival, I spent my life giving far too much attention and credence to the energy of others, and not nearly enough to mine. 

I feared the rejection/abandonment of others so I systematically changed who I was, and in doing that, I rejected and abandoned myself. 

That night though, I chose myself above all else. I chose authenticity over performance, and my truth over an illusion of safety. 

Speaking publicly, from my heart, without a lot of input from my analytical mind felt one part like flying, and the other, like death.

I left feeling more anxious than when I had arrived, and woke up to a vulnerability hangover the following morning that lingered for a bit.

Yet even in the contractions of my pulsing anxiety, I knew it was all unfolding for my highest good. The extended anxiety had given me more time to dig deeper into this wound, trace back to where and when it began, and hold my inner child through it.

As I worked through what came up, I began to feel grateful for the questionable choices I made that heightened my anxiety. I felt grateful to myself for pushing past my comfort zone and opening my heart to the same world that broke it. Whether or not they would get it, applaud it or judge it, this time I didn’t really speak for anyone else; I spoke for myself.

I shared that night, because I felt compelled to voice a part of me that spent the greater portion of my life in silence, in defense mode, for the fear that she will once again be rejected, abandoned, tossed from the tribe.

I spoke my truth to prove to my scared parts that I can be myself and more than survive. To show them that others can reject me, but that I won’t reject me.

I spoke my truth to show my judgmental parts that they are misinformed. That they have mistakenly clung to false beliefs that were programmed long before I could understand how false they were.

I shared, because bringing my shame out of the shadows of secrecy and into the light releases its once choking grip on me.

I shared, because on the other side of my comfort zone is freedom.

That night I walked directly toward my trigger. And in the courage it took to do something that made me feel like I was dying, I transmuted one more layer of my wounding.

While I didn’t die, something did die on my mat: one more level of a survival mechanism I no longer need. And from the very ashes of the false limiting beliefs that I burned that night, I was reborn.

A little more me.

Even when the change is ever so subtle, versions of us die and are reborn constantly. 

We may feel impatient when change isn’t happening quickly enough, but metamorphosis happens quietly, and beautifully, frustratingly, deliciously slowly, as it's meant to. 

We evolve in tiny nudges forward, backwards, sideways, inside-out, in a dance that ebbs and flows.

I don’t really notice the pieces reshuffling into someone new. Until one day I look back and feel different somehow.

A little more me.

Until I look around and there’s a little more light around me.

A little more laughter.

A little more love.

A lot more love, actually. 

Truly, the best part of this psychedelic journey that is life, has been learning to love myself through all the becoming and unbecoming, even when I feel like I’m gonna die.

Especially then. ♥️

Miss Bossy Pants

“Go to the party”, the voice urged me.  

One of tens or maybe hundreds of voices overlapping in my psyche; this was my Bossy Pants voice. 

Not to be confused with my Mean Girl voice, who’s tone is slightly more pitchy and slopes like a Valley girl.
                                     

Bossy likes to tell me what I should do. Her favorites are telling me to do yoga, eat clean, clean my apartment, be more adventurous, and read. 

Tonight she was demanding I go to a Super Bowl party because as Mean Girl would say, “It’s, like, super lame to stay in for the Super Bowl.”

Bossy doesn’t talk like that, she has a much more leveled-headed, logical, if not domineering tone. 

“It will be good for you to get out and socialize,” she says, and when I tell her I’m exhausted and just not in the mood and don’t really care for football anyway, she responds as per usual, “You really need to do it.” 

The chorus of voices agree, I can almost hear their eyes roll to the back of their heads.  

But there’s another voice, so soft-spoken and faint, I could barely hear her. Speak up, I urge her silently, hoping she might give me a justification to stay in like I wanted. 

I have to tell the others to shut up, and listen closely, when I hear her: the voice of Self Care. 

When I hear her speak I know she’s the one who actually cares about my wellbeing. She’s not concerned with what I “should” be doing, she doesn’t care about me fitting in that very narrow box of social “norms”. She wants me to do what will make me most happy and operating at my best-self. 

And tonight that meant wearing pjs and writing in Starbucks (with a book on the table I was “supposed” to read, but didn’t, because that wouldn’t have been self care.)

It’s really hard to differentiate between what we “should” be doing and what’s truly in our best interest. Between what will deplete vs what will recharge us, what will make us feel like we’re doing whats expected of us vs doing what feels right. 

Parties are fun, and socializing is absolutely necessary, but forcing yourself to do something you’re just not up for is not self care- it’s peer pressure. 

I got texts of photos of beer-pong from Half-Time and secretly wondered how Justin’s performance and commercials were going to be- and a small twinge of FOMO pinched me. 

But the cool thing about Self Care is that you get to change your mind- at any point you can turn your car around if you want to. Self Care will tell you exactly what will help you feel best- you just need to tune out the Bossy and Mean Girls- and listen out for hers. 

The Black Elephant in The Room

Yesterday I wrote about the days I am lucky enough to wake with a warm sunny halo around my head...mmmm. 

But that was some days. Most days? Most days I wake up with a feeling of dread washing over me, with the thought of ‘what if today sucks’ resounding in my head? 

I’m not a pessimist at all, I just struggle with this thing called anxiety that often makes me operate in fear rather than love.

As a teenager I was very comfortable sharing the darker parts of me. I didn't see it as something to be ashamed by, it just was. I could say I was feeling depressed by wearing black nail polish before it was trendy, or write about it in an emo poem for all of Facebook or Myspace to see. 

As an adult, I no longer want to be seen that way. I want to present a highly functioning, put together persona, who is cheerful and fun to be around. No one wants to hang out with Debbie Downer. When I’m feeling blah I tend to keep that under wraps. Everything is or will be okay, is the kind of message I want to project.

But don’t we also get to acknowledge the pain? Doesn’t not talking about it give it more power than it deserves? In trying too hard not let the negative emotions define us, don’t they define us even more? The black elephant in the room no one wants to talk about only grows in our silence. 

What if it’s just casual instead of a huge deal? Depression, anxiety, mental illness, these are things we all deal with on some level. We all have features of those demons in us in some way or another. Some are more willing to acknowledge it than others. Some try to repress parts of them they don't feel are acceptable. Some are less respectful of their negative emotions than their positive. 

But we all deal with darkness, and the more we talk about it the less alone the rest of us feel.

So here’s to those days. The dark, gloomy ones. To the gray skies and rain dripping down our windows. Here’s to accepting the darkness, instead of being ashamed by it. Here’s to learning how to deal with the black elephant in a way that respects it but doesn’t feed its power. 

Stop This Ride, I Want To Get Off!

Some days I wake up to the sun streaming in through my blinds, a warm glow surrounds. I feel rested, inspired, and motivated, like I got this. Things just go right; I’m taking a smooth Ferris Wheel ride up to the top, feel good music playing loud, the smell of carnival popcorn all around. And it feels damn good. 

“You did it! You’re happy,” I tell myself proudly, as if there was something special I did today to make things go well. As though I am the one manning this ride.

The next day, I feel almost as though I have a right to this happiness I created. 

Then there is a kink. There always is. My heart sinks. Something has gone terribly wrong, and the trajectory of my ride has come to a halting stop. My cart has suddenly stopped mid climb, and is swaying. This doesn't feel right. It’s out of my control, and I’m starting to feel powerless. 

Disappointment washes over me when I realize things are not going the way I had planned, one curve ball hitting me after the next. The music stops, and my cart takes a nosedive, falling quickly to the bottom, landing hard and messily.

From rock bottom, I see the top, where my cart once was, where I had gotten to with my own inspiration and hard work, and realize how hard it will be to get back up there. I feel dejected, unmotivated, let down, so incredibly let down, and I don’t know that I even want to attempt to rise back up again. I want to curl up in a ball and take a week long nap, blaming everyone and everything for this fall. 

Who is in charge of this ride anyway!? Why are people not more responsible? I paid for a ride that goes smoothly to the top, and stays there for a decent amount of time. I anticipate the slow and gradual fall that is inevitable,  before going right back up. But changes mid-climb? Oh no. This was not expected.  

Unmet expectations create the hardest falls, and landings most difficult to recover from.  

I know this is where my the work lies. 

I can’t take credit for the days I wake up motivated. That’s a gift from G-d, a head start. Those days are easy. When our expectations are met, it’s not hard to feel good. 

It’s the days where nothing seems to go right. The days you have to draw deep breaths and remind yourself that these curve balls are part of life, and without them, the good would feel mundane. The days that go off your expected plan, those days you have to take a moment to acknowledge the disappointment, tell yourself if's okay to be disappointed, and then decide to just get right back up.  

Turn up the music, pop some corn, try not to anticipate where this ride will take you, and just go with it. 

All or Nothing

If you read my poetry from when I was a young teenager, then you know. You know that I was an angsty, brooding, emo-music-listening-to kind of teenage cliche. I dripped black Sephora tears, bled in ardent poetry, and listened to way too much Linkin Park. 

If you read my articles on Chabad.org from my late teens, then you know as well. You saw my writing attitude shift into a more optimistic, spiritual, if not somewhat self-helpy, vibe. 

Ask me which version of me was more real, more honest, and the answer is, well...neither. 

I wasn't trying to be dishonest or inauthentic at either point. In fact, I was merely trying on these personas for size, and I took comfort in giving myself a label, so I could pretend I was all figured out. Really, I was just searching for an identity, in a world that I have always seen as either black or white. 

What I needed was balance, in a world that I has always nudged me one way or another. What I needed to do was something instead of doing everything or nothing. 

  

The thing is, balance has always been a challenge for me. My room has always been either chaos, or meticulously organized and labeled. I got either A's or F's on exams. I worked tirelessly on a project or didn't do it at all. My day was either categorized as "amazing" or "awful", rarely anything in between. 

The truth is my day is a cocktail of monotony, joy, sadness, anger, anxiety, excitement... not in that order nor limited to those emotions (how fun for my lucky husband!). It's taken me years to understand that life is not meant to be lived in an "all or nothing" frame of mind. It's not all great or all terrible... people are not all good or all evil... and most of us fall somewhere in the middle of the broad spectrum between perfection and failure. It's the very place I am learning to be comfortable in, and although I've always favored "insta" results, I am learning to appreciate the lifelong journey that is balance. 

When I am tempted to revert to my usual "all or nothing" state and veer far left or right, I pull over and stop to think how fortunate I am to live in world that is not just black or white, but painted in various shades of vibrant color.