Roots Before Branches
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.
Category: Relationships
Please Define The Following Terms
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:
“But You’re Not So Old”
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 …
Attachment
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 …
An Independent Mindset
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 …
Leaving the Voices Behind
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. …
An Independent Life
A reader asked for a post on the topic of developing an independent life while you are living at home (with your parents). This is a great question. My first thought is that independence is largely a state of mind. The stage from about ages 18-29 is known as emerging adulthood in psychology. It’s when we learn about ourselves …
Jealousadness
Jealousy can be a scary word that carries heavy associations. If I’m jealous, does that mean I’m a bad person? Isn’t it one of the worst traits a person can have? I remember desperately trying to force myself to not be jealous when my best friend got engaged when we were 21. I know now that I was so young …
Nature Is Not the Final Word
I just read a beautiful quote from Rabbi Dr. Lord Jonathan Sacks z”l: “Nature is not the final word, for nature itself was created by a being who stands outside it and who, by making us in His image, gave us the power to stand outside it.” This is so beautiful and in line with the lessons of Chanukah. …
Fading
The Kedushas Levi writes that when a person searches and prays for something for a long time, and then they find it, the initial gratitude and excitement is so intense, it’s like a great light. With time, the intensity of the feeling fades and the person gets used to having the thing they were looking for for so long (like …