This post was inspired by Chavi, who commented on a previous post. She raised a question — thank you very much for being honest and asking it — that resonated with me and I’m sure many people: How do you know that you’re doing your part in helping yourself get married? How do you know whether you’ve turned down people …
I’m learning to mute the cacophony of accusatory voices, the ones that insist that anyone in shidduchim for a length of time must be making poor decisions, or is picky or unreasonable or impossible to please. I’m learning to stop taking responsibility when things don’t work out, or when I have to say no, or when I end up in …
I get a bit startled when the calendar hits Tu B’Av and I’m not married. I guess it’s one of those markers of time. I decided a few years ago that when I get married, I will commemorate Tu B’Av each year as a special day (why not 🙂 ). There is a source for this that I read in …
Once in a long while, I’ll shop for dresses in a department store. i don’t do it too often, though, because this is what always happens: I’m browsing the racks and find something that looks really nice. I lift it up to take a good look and realize that, yeah, I’m about to run into unworkable tznius issues here …
One of my social worker friends was super-encouraging of my going back to school. She said, “I think it will really give you satisfaction to be a therapist, and aside from that, I think you’ll love the process of becoming a therapist.” Well. I thought I knew what to expect. I know from therapy. Many of my friends are …
Sorry it’s been awhile — I’ve been very distracted and busy with school (plenty to say on that a different time…) but I just spotted something on the coffee table that I had to comment on. We have the Family First in my house this week. I noticed the cover feature. Can non-maternal women succeed at motherhood? Full …
This is just a brain dump of thoughts and questions I’ve been thinking about, regarding how to define myself and my standards in different areas where there is a choice in how much of a connection to have to secular culture. Often it feels like I’m walking a tightrope between the purity of Torah and the offerings of the …
I write in my journal almost every day. Sometimes I write a few paragraphs and sometimes I write more than five pages. I write about anything that comes to mind — stuff going on in my life, creative ideas, to-do lists…Sometimes I reread what I write and sometimes I don’t. I try to keep to it regularly even when I’m …
I love this quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who …
I’ve been thinking over something that came up a couple of times at my sister’s vort/wedding. Some well-meaning people who also had married younger siblings wished me a “welcome to the club.” But…I didn’t want to be part of anyone’s club. I wanted to be free to have my own process, and to get to a place where I was …
