A wonderful reader asked for a post on the topic of the fear of change, specifically as it crops up when dating someone. I think this is a great and relatable topic. These are my thoughts: Change brings up a lot of fear. It’s natural to want to stick with a known situation rather than step into the unknown. …
A friend shared a visual with me a few years ago that helped me see anger in a new and less stigmatizing way. Anger is like a suit of armor that shields you from experiencing softer and more painful emotions like sadness, grief, and disappointment. Anger is like the tip of an iceberg. When you look beneath the surface, you …
I once learned that geese fly in a V formation to save energy. Each bird flies in the updraft created by the bird in front of it, which helps the geese preserve energy and fly longer distances at a time. When the lead bird gets tired, it drops back and another bird takes the lead. This is a great …
I read a great article from The Atlantic about the power of recording and sharing our rejections with a group of peers. The concept of a “rejection collection” was developed by cognitive psychologist Barbara Sarnecka and two graduate students as a way of encouraging academics to keep trying for goals like jobs, awards, and grants without being discouraged by rejection: …
My grandfather was niftar this week. I don’t usually share details about my family but I would like to share a bit about his life.
Before we can have a conversation about your wonderful shidduch suggestion for me or your wonderful advice for how I should be doing things differently, I am going to need you to define the following:
A reader shared that it can be irritating when people write off her struggles in shidduchim because “you’re not so old.” I empathize with that and I really don’t think it’s fair to compare, because no one has a monopoly on pain. Where do comparisons end? After all, 22 isn’t 27 isn’t 33 isn’t 39. Each stage comes with …
I wrote a paper on the subject of attachment theory a while back and I thought it might be interesting to share an excerpt. John Bowlby first developed attachment theory in the 1950s through his work with neglected children. Based on his observations, Bowlby concluded that in order to thrive, children need to feel connected to a primary caregiver …
Last week we talked about establishing independence while living with your parents. In some circles in the frum world, young adults routinely move out of their parents’ homes after graduating seminary/college, but in others, that’s not a given. Where this is the case, it’s easy to get stuck in a sort of limbo identity, not a child but not quite …
Someone in my family once sent me a long text about a guy I said no to, asking if I was “100% sure” I wasn’t interested, stating that “normal guys are very few and far between” and if I said no there was a “99% chance he would never say yes again.” Reading these things was obviously very triggering. …
