Dear family and friends,
I hope everyone is well. Winter is losing its grip on us. Can we smell spring?
Maybe this is the right way to share art from social media?
One thing I like to see that online an artist can be very specific and repetitive about their art. I think many people find themselves creating hyper-focused material. Being in an online home that celebrates each person for who they are while exposing you to many other artists, allows us the freedom to keep creating that one little “tic” that we have inside with small variations over and over again. You can see the sublime littlepurpleflowers.art above.
Last Shabbat, we were talking about the images that I share in the newsletter, in passing. I think I misspoke when I said that the algorithm chooses the images. So, I’ll tell you a little bit about how that happens. (I think it’s like with everything else, and as Rivky mentioned, once we talk about it or celebrate it, it’s hard to refind the grooves of the organic process.)
I had so many pretty pictures saved on my phone. These are images I saw from all over and also photos of beautiful things I passed by in this world. I didn’t have any place to share them, but I was collecting them like precious objects. I don’t know for what. Baruch Hashem, I was able to share some of them with you here.
I never thought I would run out, but I am so glad I did— of my photography and most of the art I found. Most weeks, though, I can look at my saved pictures and say wow, that is the image I wanted to share with people who would appreciate it, and I do. A few times I go digging a bit deeper into my saved photos or I share an image I didn’t connect to as deeply. Either way, I spend a nice amount of time tracing the photo or image back to its source and sharing it in a clean way.
The pictures I hesitate to share are fashion-related and home interiors, though here is one below. Thank you for being here.
This photo is by Adelphi Paper Hangings. They write: The reproduction of this pattern was commissioned by the Homewood Museum at Johns Hopkins University; the original document is in their collection. While many double repeating arabesques – those with two vertical rows of the pattern per width of paper – use a modest number of colors this one incorporates 14 colors printed with 24 blocks.
Block printing (and wallpaper) is a “rabbit hole” that I don’t mind falling into online. What is your rabbit hole that doesn’t leave you feeling empty?
The Hayom Yom
The Alter Rebbe once said:
“The commentary of Rashi on the Chumash is ‘the wine of the Torah.’ It unlocks the heart and reveals one’s essential love and fear [for G‑d]. The commentary of Rashi on the Gemara unlocks the mind and reveals the essence of one’s mind.”
Last Shabbat, Mendel was sharing a Devar Torah where the Rebbe uncovers the above hidden within Rashi.
Also, the women of Kingston get together once a week and we study a talk of the Rebbe. Sometimes we study a “Rashi” and discover some of Rashi’s deceptively simple profoundness.
Rashi lived in Medieval France and he seems to be a Jewish leader who was stubbornly insistent in the power of every detail, every word of the Torah, every small kindergarten child, every childhood memory, and every pull of his own soul/heart.
Please share your thoughts.
The Rebbe’s Letter
Why don’t I hear from you regularly? Why is your letter so abbreviated? The more the better, don’t forget. You can write to me in any language. You can write through a third party. I will read it. I am just hoping to receive consistent, detailed updates from you.
The above is, of course, my paraphrasing.
It reminds me of the time we had in New York this past weekend. Somehow, I received a new sense of the relationship people had with the Rebbe. We, too, can ask the Rebbe what to do and how to make decisions.
We are lucky to have a seer in our times.
The Rebbe can help direct us to what is best for us and meaningful for our future. It is not a weakness to constantly ask for advice, it is a benefit that we could enjoy and use. It’s like a mix of best friend, older relative, and spiritual master.
The main thing is that we are not alone in this world.
The Rebbe leaves the door open for us to interpret this in any way that works for us and which can evolve with time: it is up to us to speak, write, think connective thoughts. We can speak English, we can direct our post through others. We can ask many questions or few. We can share details or recap main events. We can speak as a friend, a relative, a student.
We don’t have to, but why not keep in touch.
The Chapters
Thank you for all the advice you have given about turning this story into a published work. I thank Ima, Farrah, Rivky, and all of my sisters.
One reader called it a “gift to the world”. I try to make that the mantra. I will try to polish the book up, print it, and sell it online so that any woman going through something similar can pick up my story. This is my guiding thought, but I don’t know what that will look like practically yet. I am very tempted to take the entire process in-house but ultimately will do whatever the book tells me to do for it to enter the world.
Chapter 42
I needed to get out of NY once again. On the day of our flight, we took our daughter to the doctor because she was coughing and congested. She tested positive for RSV, a virus that I heard was going around the community. Babies were hospitalized because of it, according to the group chats. Could I fly? Would we be chained to another NY hospital? The doctor finally gave us the go-ahead, saying that if she looked like she was doing better (she was), then supportive care was all she needed. We could go.
After a short time at home on Crown Street, I returned to my parents. My father once again, came to escort me. This time we had our baby and one too many heavy bags to juggle through security. A difficult experience, though my father did everything he could for us.
Comfortable settled back in my parent’s home in Myrtle Beach, I used every ounce of energy to open my eyes and get out of bed for our morning routine. I worked on autopilot, finding something to wear and coaxing my daughter into some clothes. We got her and the baby to school, with parents so kindly offering to drive us. I’d hand the baby off to caring and competent nursery class teachers and say goodbye to my three-year-old. Then I had myself. Most of my journal entries went like this:
I feel crazy
Like I’m not normal nothing is real
I can’t believe where I am
I’m terrified to an extreme measure
But I trust Hashem that this is good
…
I don’t know how I’ll feel
How I’ll pas the time
Our family is not together
When it should be
I don’t know my children and their evening
Yet the world ticked on without me
I don’t want to be ashamed of who I am
I am who Hashem made me and
I’m proud
Though different
This too shall pass
It’s for the good
That I learn
Relearn my arms and fee
During this time, I felt undead. I’d wake up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck or crushed by a boulder. It took everything out of me to open my eyes and respond to my daughter. I’d feel like I could fall asleep anytime during the day. At the same time, as steady as my heart beat, I felt that I was hurtling into doom. A sense of immediate terror accompanied me through the day– if you could call it a day.
Another day, quite like the one before:
I’m feeling so jittery
I don’t feel normal
I feel crazy
It’s hard
Do I have something serious?
Will it get better?
I groped around for a reason, for meaning, for a way out.
My father so gently and caringly brought me lunches, some from the campus kitchen, some from various community celebrations. Those plates were always filled with delightful Mediterranean food. I relished the herbs, the eggs, the satisfying spices. He encouraged me to care for myself. “Life has been stressful and this is time out to build back better,” my father confidently reassured me. “This is your chance.”
On my terror days, he visited me. At one point of utter helplessness, he took me by the hand and we walked for 20 minutes around the block. I couldn’t walk around the block, but he held my hand. We walked around a lot that had been a mall 20 years ago. They haven’t built anything there since. It was fallow.
Maybe my father once walked alongside his own mother in similar support. My grandmother wasn’t without mental health challenges, I can imagine. What can the world expect from a woman who lost her entire family to the inferno? Who did not have one village member left in this world? Who went on to build her own family? My father held my hand, patiently and intuitively. I could feel that believed in me. I couldn’t believe in myself at that point. But I did, like my father, believe in the healing power of taking a walk.
Another tragic day, I tagged along with my father. He went to Office Max to make some color copies. I sat on one of the many office chairs and I thought I would go crazy, the ground shaking beneath me, my skin prickling, my vision unsteady. When I asked my father for some water, he bought me a case of water and then had to carry it across the parking lot and into the nearby car shop where we left the car for an oil change. The phone rang right then. Like winning the lottery, I picked up the phone to my psychiatrist giving me the time of day.
I told her something along the lines of this journal entry
I’m feeling nauseous
And my skin is crawling
I’m anxious
And tired.
She, as I said, did not care. We hung up. She had such a New York indifference that although I wrote lists of issues to bring up to her when she’d finally call, I simply had nothing more to say in that moment.
Chapter
Another day:
Today was very pleasant
When it got hard, I tried to find a happy place inside of me. Meaning, the panic has become less natural to me. Good night. I will sleep.
I was deathly afraid that I was pregnant. Although irrational, I couldn’t explain the nausea. I was too afraid to take a pregnancy test. My parents listened to my fears. I cried to my mother. My turbulence would be too much of a burden for anyone. I thanked her for caring for my baby. She took me to buy a pregnancy test and paid for it. I peed on the stick and I felt like I was ending my life. In that bathroom, where I often had the distinct feeling that I wasn’t fulfilling my purpose in life, among a cornucopia of 6- and 8-legged wildlife, I tested negative.
I think I will become an outcast
Like…
Because I’m an “overwhelmed mother” who’s “not managing”- “fell apart” but I held on tight for so long. I had the stigma of mental illness which I was trying to get away from... I tried so hard that it got hard.
Another day,
Savta was right.
I can’t work and that’s okay. I am whole. I am a mommy. “There is nothing like a mother in the whole world” (Her words.) I can just be, and nothing bad can happen from that.
I journaled about our new home: the atmosphere we’d create, the love we’d instill in our kids, and the new life we’d begin.
I tried to visit the beach to assuage my panic, to make the most of my Southern stay.
Once it was stormy and lightning struck in thin veins. I write this poem about the beach:
The unfair horizon
Stares
At us with steely eyes
The gulls swing low
Grey in back and white below
The pelicans skim
The gentle surface of
The ocean’s skin
White-hot fire flashes
From the heavens
In veins
Angry clouds hover and close in.
It was at this time that we purchased a home in Pennsylvania near a Jewish school and kosher store, near my brother’s family.
Through my fog, from the couch, I made phone calls to sign my kids up for their new school, purchase home insurance, and the like. My husband would delegate these little tasks to me. When I couldn’t keep the pain inside, I would say to him by text or on the phone, “I just want to be better. I can’t do this anymore.” And he would say, “We’re gonna be amazing.” That hope, that vote of confidence– that someone thinks we have a future– would carry me a little higher. Sometimes the doom and drowsiness would lift around 2 or 3 pm.
Life was going down a completely new course: Real, positive changes were ahead. Yet as 4 pm school pick-up time approached, I was extremely anxious.
I picked up my baby but I didn’t know what to do with her when I got home. I did not know what she needed. I did not have a way of caring for her while entertaining my three-year-old. If another adult was around, I felt immense relief. My father often stayed to help, to feed and soothe the baby or respond to my daughter’s exuberance. Matching her energy takes formidable stamina. When my parents or sister were home, I was torn. I didn't want to ruin their dinner with my darkness, but I also wanted to exit my world and be among normal humans. I am grateful for them letting me in.
I looked in the mirror, trying to find myself in there. My pupils were pinpoints, tiny. Not normal. My face was frozen in fright. I guess that made it more symmetrical than usual? My mother and my sister told me I looked nice. Hard to believe.
I remember once having to go to CVS pharmacy for a pill cutter. My father took me. I couldnt handle the stimuli around me. I wanted to pull the shades down around me. I felt like I was in danger and at the same time, the display selling jewelry felt like it was a message directly for me. The brand of jelery was called I AM. And I thought who am I– I am looking for the healthy mother inside me. I am seeking a mom and woman who’s not broken, so I can return to life and function. I AM. How synchronous. But I knew this sensation seemed all too similar to paranoia.
I continued journing on my phone, desperately seeking to make sense and solve the problems that seemed to be seeping of my every pore:
Most important parts of me:
Common sense
Presence
I’m feeling incredible sadness
That I’m alone
Without husband or kids
Shame of failing
Failing to be a perfect mommy who’s
Always there with every meal
My kids watching me failing
And they are proud
That I still respect myself
After failing
every bit.
It was a Shabbos morning. My mother was available to me in my desperation. My mother, to help, taught me what she learned about labeling feelings and validating them. Giving our feeling a name sets them free to leave.
I used her technique and what I came up with was “drowsiness”. I am drowsy and that is making me anxious because I no longer feel functional. I pushed myself to take a walk with my father though it felt dangerous while I kept this knowledge in mind. I tried to beat the fear I felt with rational thought. But it was more powerful than I. The fear was a doom in my bones. The dread was a great swallowing weakness.
I told my mentor how I felt, by phone. She assured me that I was doing the right thing by taking my meds and that I should try to take care of myself. I took her words seriously. She sent me a care package, so generously. I took it in like a medicine, holding the soap, cradling the candle.
Another friend listened to me in my state of doom, through Facebook Messenger, and sent me a hand made macrame bracelet she made. She was patient and knew that sometimes the best response is silence. She knew not to judge, exquisitely so. Another friend told me she’d been in the same unit in Westchester Behavioral Health Center.
I told her, “I’m a bad mommy.”
She said no, “You’re just going through a hard time.” I drank those words in: Did she mean that the circumstances were external to an essential me? Out of my control? Temporary? That helped.
I told my older brother, by text one Friday, while laying in bed tormented that I didn’t want to be a burden any longer. He said, “This is a chance to receive from others. That brings you closer to them.” My sister listened from far, and told over the phone that I could go shopping and enjoy life here. I thought she was right. Why shouldn’t this be a nice time, a vacation? Why couldn’t I just go to the store, maybe pick out something pretty? I wished I could. But I couldn’t drive. Couldn’t spare much money. And the truth was, I didn’t want anything. My grandmother, whom I also called on the hours before Shabbos, suggested I get dressed and take a walk. Again, I dutifully, somewhat guiltily, thought: So easy. Why have I been slacking? But truly, I did that. Though getting dressed and being on that quiet neighborhood street in the sunlight was so, so hard.
There was one memory on my mind for nearly fifteen years: I was in a large classroom in our seminary in the Northern city of Safed, Israel. We were doing a group meditation using a hanuting melody, anim zemiros, of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. We all sang as one. There must have over 100 young women in the darkened room, our eyes closed. And what came up for me after we finished the song and started again multiple times, was Chaya, You don’t like Chaya. I don't love myself. It was as clear to me as it was inscrutable. Years passed and I didnt know what to do about this failing, this core misfiring. I tried. Its like a little friend that I kept with me. And sometimes I tried to solve the puzzle, and maybe to some degree I did. Those nights back in my apartment when I couldnt sleep, I journaled until I dug down to this memory. I asked myself, What does love mean? And how can I begin to love myself? I wanted to badly to know the answer. I vowed that if G-d presented an opporunity for me to begin loving myself, I would take it. I knew that love lies in little actions and I began with one or two.
There was never a time in my recent life that I could remember having hours in which to do nothing. I practiced this new skill to gain proficiency. I sat on the couch. Let’s relax, Chaya. Place your feet firmly on the floor. Notice five things in your environment. Wasn’t easy. The light, the smell of food, the thoughts of my abysmal failure in the test of reality. I have this phone journal entry to sum it up:
Good morning I feel like I’m choking
I’m inside the house
I’m just on the couch
Another day, when I knew my husband was working to hold our family together. He was consumed with work and caring for the boys and packing the house. I didn’t confide much in him because I was told that I shouldn’t burden him, though I don’t recall from whom these instructions came:
July 14, 2021 at 9:46 AM
Good morning
I’m lonely that I’m alone
That there’s nothing that I have to do
That I'm not sure that anyone cares about me
I’m here
I’m alive
My two babes are in other people’s care
Here I am feeling empty inside
Should I call my husband?
I’m alone
Soon I will be hungry
Can’t believe that I won’t even drive
Two days later, we went to the bank and had the entire amount for our down payment– our life savings– transferred to the title insurance, to buy our home.
That afternoon I wrote:
Today I am feeling much better although I woke up not feeling great. I don’t know what it was– an easiness. I know I can take pills if I get too tired or anxious. I’ll ask Hashem to lead me and I will into Him. Thank you Hashem for our home. May it honor you. May it be a truly sacred dwelling for the young souls you have entrusted to us. And may we merit to rest and work there too.
One hour later, came this unfortunate spillage. The reason I was writing is because I desperately wanted to step over the vomit and move on to the next clean stage:
I had to leave my baby
At home and go to the er in an ambulance with sirens.
I didn’t know how my baby would be and I didn’t get to be with her
It was horrific like death.
I didn’t want to traumatize my children but I had to go to save my life I felt sad
The hatzala people were not gentle
And the ER had crazy people in it but I tried not to look
Later when I came to the psych ER it was much worse.
I heard someone moaning mamaaaa and I was among very crazy people
I was alone for pesach and shavuos and In hospitals.
Nothing can give me back my time with my family
I hate the coronavirus that stole my mind
I hate that I’m crazy that seems weak
So now I’m messed up I’m so tired but can’t sleep it horrible
My brain feels hot prickly
Just four days later:
I feel
I’m feeling terror
I see a house
Hashem is giving it to me
But like … said, I don’t feel like myself
So it’s scary
But He’s right here
He has a plan
And He’s holding my hand
This one’s my inner cheerleader’s voice:
July 7, 2021 6:00 PM
It's gonna be OK Chaya
You’re doing great
I love you
Youre a great sister, friend, mother, and wife
If people don’t appreciate you
It doesn't matter
This phone-as-journal entry was my regular reality and my attempt at keeping my head over water:
July 12, 2021 at 10:39 AM
I feel unmoored. I don’t have my stuff, my bed, my place, my baby.
But I do have clothes to wear food to eat a baby to come home to.
They say they say
That in two weeks my family will return
They say they say
That my eldest daughter is doing well
They say they say
That my sons still love me. They are fine
They say they say
That this week we will take possession of our new home
They say they say
that in but a few more weeks we will relocate our life to out of town
Brooklyn will no longer be our center of gravity
Indeed, we haven’t said goodbye
Two days letter I had to fill out a Consumer Explanation Letter for our credit report in order to purchase the home. All I wrote to their printed addresses, the ones we occupied since marriage:
I lived here. I lived here. I lived here. Current Address.
Under the question: “Do you currently own this property?” The answer: No.
That was going to change.
There was more paperwork, for covering payment for our daughter’s school; updated medical forms for the new school,
Here is a shorter entry:
June 17, 2021 at 12:08 PM
I’m looking forward
To new home
The next day:
I feel like I want to see
A brighter future
And I feel itchy in my body like jittery
PS: I learned from this important article about this article, from which I learned that that jittery, skin-crawling feeling has a name:
Science hasn’t made great strides in antipsychotics since the drugs were first introduced seven decades ago. Their lack of precision remains largely the same, and because the drugs affect metabolic systems as well as dopamine pathways throughout the brain, they often have profound side effects: mental torpor, major weight gain, tics, spasms and a condition called akathisia, an overall jitteriness, as if a mad puppeteer is fighting perpetually for control of the person’s body.
Commonly, people abandon their antipsychotic drugs, whether they’re in mandatory treatment or the most sensitive, attentive voluntary programs. This is generally attributed to anosognosia and the disorganization that can come with mental illness, but it might well be seen as an outcome from the weighing of pros and cons.
(I haven’t “abandon[ed]” it. Feel free to comment with your thoughts, please. Or you could just reply to this email.
I didn’t get to learn the Torah Ohr this week. Have you? Please share.
Corrections from last week: I don’t know what I meant to write where it says “digging my sisters”. I would think it should have said “being with my sisters”. Also, I forgot to credit the art with the circles of light. I looked for it everywhere and can’t find the source now. Will share when I find.
Shabbat Shalom dear ones.
Abba and I enjoyed your words about Rashi's leadership. In Abba's words: the world needs you. Needs you to write.
I loved the description of the layers. Layers of anger and discomfort. Layers of hope and confidence. It’s so genuine and relatable. One of the things you do very well in your writing is zoom in then zoom out then back in and all together it helps the reader know the context and how you feel in it, which is a great example of the flow of consciousness in day to day life.