Category: Self-Care

This winter/early spring, as you’ll soon tire of hearing, was verrry stressful. I had a notion that being super-busy would feel energizing and empowering (?), but in the end it was just horrifying (lol). I started to feel anxious about life in general and stuck and even hopeless. I hadn’t realized to what extent the work stress was impacting me …

I read this article by Dr. Shira Kessler with interest, on emerging adulthood and frum women. I was struck by the sense of pressure felt by emerging adult women in the frum community — to choose a career path, to look put-together all the time, and of course, to get married ASAP. None of this is exactly surprising to any …

A friend and I were talking about how similarly we feel about certain experiences in shidduchim (what makes us feel stressed, pressured, or judged), and how we have found that other people feel differently. This reminded me of one of Gretchen Rubin’s Secrets of Adulthood: We are mostly alike, but our differences are very important.   I also thought about …

A few days ago I journaled a list of hobbies I would take up if I had the time – some of these are a bit aspirational but that’s the fun of journaling:

I enjoyed this essay by Alexandra Fleksher on the issue of materialism in the frum community. It was published Chanukah time but is relevant any time of year.

I got a text this week from someone who wanted to discuss a shidduch, and they asked if I was busy. I couldn’t tell if they meant busy as in otherwise occupied at that moment, or busy as in dating someone.   But busy, I am. I recently read a book on optimizing time management for happiness, and I learned …

Hi, all. I’ve been a bit sluggish about posting the past couple weeks because I’m under the weather. Seems like everyone is catching something these days. It might take a bit of time to get into a more frequent posting schedule, in the meantime I hope you can enjoy previous posts!    

Last week my 10-years-younger-than-me cousin got married and I did not attend. The truth is that I didn’t even consider going — I knew it was just not what I needed. A few years ago I would have suffered through the same but somehow with thirty came the freedom to stop caring about what other people think (everyone is too …

A friend recently sent me an article about “glimmers” which are the opposite of “triggers.” Triggers activate our fight/flight/freeze responses, but glimmers activate our sense of safety and connection. This is a concept from Deb Dana, LCSW, who is an expert in polyvagal theory, an approach to understanding and healing trauma. Glimmers are found in small moments and reminders of …