I don’t wear much makeup on a daily basis, but I do wear lipstick. Or I used to.
At some point over a year ago, I stopped wearing lipstick. I had a couple tubes of shades that I really liked but they no longer glided on smoothly. I had another tube that was way too pale, and a fourth was too thick and uneven. I tried applying one and then the other to get a blended color but it wasn’t effective, so I just stopped wearing lipstick.
After making antibiotic salve last week, it occurred to me that it might be very simple to create new lipstick from these unusable ones. That’s what I did!
I took the four tubes of lipstick that I’m not using, and pushed the applicator to the very top. I broke off each lipstick at the base, then scraped out the remaining contents into a glass jar. I then boiled a small pot of water and put the glass jar into the pot (creating a makeshift double boiler). I added some petroleum jelly, then waited a few minutes while it all gently melted together.
The easiest thing would have been to pour the mixture into a small round glass container but I wanted to try to use the original lipstick holders. This made a little more mess and took a bit more time, but was worth it.
I adjusted each empty lipstick applicator to the lowest position, then poured the liquid mixture in until it was just about flush with the top. I let it set in an upright position until it completely cooled. I didn’t get a nice smooth pointed shape like lipsticks in the store, but with use it will smooth out.
I am so delighted with the results of this little experiment! Instead of four tubes of unusable lipstick, I now have four tubes of a color that I love. It’s the perfect shade for me, and amazingly, it not only goes on smoothly but it stays on longer than my old lipsticks used to.
Not only that, I don’t need to blot it to prevent it from getting on my teeth. I always thought it was a waste to apply lipstick, then blot it and have half of what I just applied be thrown away on a tissue! I don’t know what is different now, but practically it means my new upcycled lipsticks are easier to use and will last longer.
If this sounds time consuming and difficult, it really wasn’t. It didn’t require any special skills – just melt and pour. The entire project took somewhere between 15 – 20 minutes from start to finish.
It’s that time of year when there are the yearly payments to cover my website expenses, so I do a bit of online juggling to make sure money is in the right places for the various automatic withdrawals. Tonight I got a message in my email inbox, notifying me know that the transfer I had made from my bank to my Paypal account didn’t go through due to lack of funds.
I was taken aback since there was plenty of money in the transferring account so I quickly logged onto my bank account and saw that I had mistakenly done the transfer from one of my two accounts (one is savings, one is checking). Though the accounts are linked, rather than automatically transfer the necessary funds from one account to the other, the transfer was denied.
I didn’t mind that, but I did mind that I was charged a $29 non-sufficient funds fee for the transfer that didn’t go through. I didn’t think that I should be charged for a failed transfer from one of my accounts to another. I called my bank to explain what happened; the representative very courteously heard me out and said she understood. (She can also look at my 13 years of banking history at their bank and see that I don’t have a history of insufficient funds fees – if I don’t have money for something, I don’t buy it. My secret for staying debt-free. :))
Then she asked me a very interesting question: “Well, Ms. Werner, what would you like us to do about this fee?” Isn’t that a nice response?
I told her I wanted the $29 fee waived; she agreed that would be appropriate and she would take care of it while I was on the phone.
Well, that was easy!
While I waited for two minutes for her to refund the fee, I explained to my son who was impatiently waiting to know what I was talking to her about what happened. I explained that it’s our responsibility to be aware of what happens to our money. No one cares what happens to your finances like you do.
Was it worth the few minutes on the phone to get $29/110 shekels refunded? Yes, I thought so!
Similarly, I check my receipts before leaving the store when I shop – I have found so many errors and almost none of them were favorable to me. (Of course, I notified them when I was undercharged as well.)
Winter is here (well, kinda of – it’s been very warm and one son was wearing shorts and a short sleeved shirt yesterday), and we’ve been having fun with some diy health related kind of projects.
Eight years ago before moving to Israel, I traded 50 pounds of spelt berries for a few small, lightweight bottles of essential oils. I didn’t use the oils regularly because even though essential oils are great, you have to: 1) know how and when to use them, and 2) make them easy to use or you’re not going to use them regularly.
Thanks to the diffuser I was gifted by my mom last year, it’s now easy for me to regularly diffuse oils, which I love to do! With the recent free shipping option to Israel from Amazon, I was able to buy a set of roller ball applicator bottles, which I filled with essential oil blends. I made a blend for cuts and bruises (easy to slip into my purse), and one for germ fighting to apply to the younger boys before they head out in the morning to their classrooms.
In case you’re wondering about costs, I buy large 4 ounce bottles of the essential oils I consider most important (NOT from the name brand companies), then use recipes found online for the issues I want to address and make blends at a fraction of what it would cost to buy them. For example, I made an athlete’s foot blend (castor oil, tea tree, lavender) – I call it ‘Foot Freshener” for one of my sons, conveniently stored in a plastic dispenser with a roller top.
I also recently discovered the amazingness of shea butter! I know, how could I have walked through the world all these decades and been oblivious, right? I’m remedying that right now! I ordered a pound of raw shea butter to play with in making my own salves. I haven’t made salves for quite some time but still have beeswax around from the last go around, so it was pretty simple and fun to put together a few mixes.
In the past, I used olive oil infused with herbs as a base for my salves (http://avivahwerner.com/2009/09/25/making-first-aid-salve/ ). This time, I used shea butter with essential oils and made: a vapor rub (similar to Vicks or Unkers- I like to use this when the kids over age 6 are congested or have a sore throat – I used eucalyptus, lavender, frankincense, rosemary); a general antibiotic salve (tea tree, helichyrsum, lavender, frankincense) and a facial moisturizer.
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Last night I pulled out my capsule filler, which I haven’t used for years. The boys enjoyed figuring out how to use it and filled a bunch of capsules with vitamin C. If you’re wondering how I happen to have empty vegetarian capsules, loads of powdered vitamin C and a capsule filler on hand, you haven’t read my blog long enough. 🙂 Seriously, though, these are the kind of things I keep around.
Vitamin C is a wonderful support for when your immune system is down with whatever is going around, big or small. We generally give our kids powdered vitamin c in water and some kind of sweetener, like juice or xylitol. That’s perfect for the younger kids but the older ones prefer the capsules, and so do I! (Here is my post with guidelines on how much to dose – http://avivahwerner.com/2010/01/27/vitamin-c-for-health/ .)
I’ve hardly ever needed to give any of our eleven kids antibiotics, since vitamin C has been so effective and isn’t accompanied by all the potential side effects. Why isn’t this cheap, easy and super effective remedy for literally just about everything widely known?
In any case, it’s so easy and gratifying to create something people tend to think has to come from a store, right in my own kitchen!
Gosh, it’s been a busy time! The holidays, putting our current home on the market, and … dum, dum, dum, dum….
We have a house under contract!
My husband was surprised that I didn’t write about this already – I’ve been trying to write this post for over two weeks. I have a lot of resistance to sharing about this, but here goes!
Over the last few months I’ve written about being honest with myself about what I want (integrating more nature into my daily life), clarifying what it looked like and moving toward that vision. It culminated with us making an offer on a home that seemed to have been drawn to us magnetically (seriously, no hyperbole intended). Then the house was pulled off the market.
This entire process has been very spiritual and expansive for me, as I’ve consciously had to allow for shifts in my way of being.
It’s been take action and let go, take action and let go, take action and let go. Much more letting go than taking action, actually. That isn’t historically my strong point. No, I tend to hold on with my fingernails dug in, thinking that something should happen the way I want it to happen, just because I want it. (Can anyone relate? :))
So this letting go has been really powerful for me because it’s taken a lot of conscious releasing of my will on a continual basis, and trusting that G-d will take care of things better than I can, so I can let Him do what is best without trying so hard to make it happen.
Alright, let me get to what has happened as a result of all of this letting go because I know that’s what you want to hear. 🙂
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After the house fell through, our motivation and commitment to make the move took a big hit. My husband and I agreed it would be helpful to keep us emotionally connected to the idea of living there if we did something active towards that goal.
When we had an opportunity to be in that general area, I suggested to my husband that we might as well go spend a few more hours there and look at some other properties.
We contacted the agent and made plans to check out a few interesting properties. He set everything up and we agreed to an approximate time to meet. When we checked in with him a half hour before our arrival, he asked us to call him once we were there and ready for him to pick us up.
Since the car accident a few months ago when I was rear ended, I have some symptoms that make traveling taxing for me, so I arranged to stay in a friend’s guest room to rest before looking at properties. That’s where I was when my husband went to call the agent, and as I stood by the window that happened to overlook the house that we had made the offer on, a strong feeling went through me.
“That’s my house.”
Now this wasn’t logical since obviously it wasn’t our house; we had detached ourselves from that as an option and were moving on by looking at other properties. But it wasn’t a matter of logic; it was more like an instinctive knowing flashed through me. Which of course I immediately dismissed, because that’s what I do – I ignore illogical things and give them logical names like wishful thinking. But it wasn’t wishful thinking.
My husband came back in a few minutes later with a strange look on his face, and announced, ‘I just spoke to the agent.’
Well, since he had gone out to call the agent that was no surprise, but the look on his face was. I said, “Okaaaay, but why do you look like that?”
It turns out that just before my husband called, the agent had been on the phone with the seller of the first house.The seller announced he would sell his house to us if we would agree to a higher price to match an offer he got from someone else.
With suppressed excitement, my husband asked, “So what should we tell him??”
Feeling more irritated than excited, I responded with very measured tones, “We’re going to look at the other properties because that’s what we came here for. Very nice that he’s ready to sell all of a sudden but that doesn’t mean that we’re ready or interested; I’m not interested in him yanking our chain and playing games with us.”
We agreed to set aside the first house mentally and to consider it only after looking at the other properties scheduled.
Off we went to look at other homes. There was one that was particularly interesting and financially would have been a really smart move, but there wasn’t enough air and light for my preferences, and no view from the first floor. If I were moving to better my situation financially it would have been perfect but I want to upgrade my quality of life and that house didn’t match in that regard.
When we finally finished looking at all the properties, we sat down to analyze the ins and outs of each one. They were each interesting in very different ways, and clarifying how each one fit into our vision was very important.
Finally, we agreed that even at the higher price point, the first house would still best meet our needs and would be a good value for us.
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Our new home is now under contract, with the closing scheduled for March!
What’s the house like? A reader who got the early scoop in a private conversation asked me for more details, and was hoping I would share pictures. Honestly, the house isn’t too exciting to look at, especially since it’s been split into two apartments and rented out. (Remember I said in a past post that I’m good at seeing behind the mess?)
Me before walking into house for the first time
Here’s the quick story behind the picture above. When my husband wanted to take a picture I thought, ‘This is going to be my house one day and then I’ll appreciate a picture of the first time I was there.’ Yes, that was my thought before I ever walked in!
Here are the basics – it’s a nice sized house that we can easily convert to a single family. We’ll have additional bedrooms for hosting our married couples (we have no guest room right now). It has what in many cities in Israel would be considered a large yard; at 350 meters, it’s massive compared to my current garden of 28 meters! (It’s about 1/12 of an acre, so it’s a very small yard by US terms!) Right now it’s a mass of dirt and weeds. There is a porch upstairs that is smaller than my current porch, but at 40 meters is still a very good size.
(I’m sharing a video we took but it automatically uploaded in a much larger format and I don’t know how to change that. If it’s too frustrating to watch it, the most important part is what you hear (the wind and animal sounds) – or don’t hear (traffic)- in the background. :))
It’s centrally located and a short walk (6 minutes) to the synagogue and supermarket, which is important to us since we have a child who is a reluctant walker and that has been very limiting.
There are renovations we plan to do to make the space work better for us (obviously in addition to general sprucing up and updating). I kept looking at the video we took of the kitchen when we walked through and saying, something doesn’t make sense about this layout – why in the world did they put the kitchen here?!?
I decided we would move the kitchen to a different area and what do you know? When I got a copy of the building plans I saw the kitchen was supposed to be built right where I want to move it! Its seems the contractor decided it would be more cost efficient to dump it into a small awkwardly located area that the front door opens directly onto. (When looking at the picture above, it’s located on the left behind me. We plan to move it to the right, where the four windows are.)
Are you wondering you wondering why I felt pulled to this house in particular?
Location, location, location.
Since it’s the last house on the block, it has lots of open space all around. (Pic taken by agent in the early summer when everything was still green.) You can see the palm grove running along the side of the house.
Looking out the front door we have this beautiful view.
Where is it? This is located in a small district in northern Israel called Yavne’el.
When are we moving? We plan to move when the school year ends; this is somewhat flexible and could be a bit earlier depending on the buyers of our current home.
So it’s really happening! It’s been so amazing to watch this stage of our lives unfold and I’m continue to look forward to how other pieces fall into place!
Yesterday was my birthday, and I feel incredibly grateful to be living a life that is so meaningful and expansive. I sat down to think about the elements that are leading to that outcome, and want to share with you what has been pivotal for me in dramatically increasing my sense of well-being!
It’s not because my life is problem-free; I have annoying things to deal with but I just prefer not to focus on them.
Here’s the question I ask myself: What do I want my life to look and feel like?
Asked another way: if you had all the resources available to live your dream life, what would you do?
These kind of questions are part of the ongoing vision work that I do, and my answers always help me better direct my energies toward what I really want.
When I thought about the components that make me happy, I realized I can integrate them in small ways every day, and that makes a huge difference. I don’t have to wait for the ‘one day when..then’ to happen.
Here are some personal examples of things that are important to me. My schedule means I’m at home with my children most of the time, and I don’t have large blocks of the self-time that I had associated with some of these things:
An unhurried and serene schedule
Time in the outdoors
Time for prayer and meditation
Physical movement
When I thought about having these things, I would think, ‘One day.’ I had an ideal vision of what that would look like and I assumed I’d have to wait until my children were much older.
I imagined long, uninterrupted blocks of time until I realized, if I wait to have huge blocks of time for perfect, I’m never going to have the things that I want! Instead, I’m going to spend way too much time being frustrated and longing for something that I don’t have.
So here’s my solution: do today – in a small way – the things that you care about most.
There are a number of very small choices I’ve made over time; here’s some of what that looks like on a daily basis. See if you can spot the elements that make my day feel amazing!
I wake up between 5 – 6 so that I have quiet time before anyone else is up. Sometimes my kids start waking up by 5:15, but I sometimes have until as late as 6:30 when the house is quiet. (Right now it’s 6:11 and Yirmi is awake and snuggling next to me on the porch swing as I write this.)
During part of that time, I sit outside on my porch and enjoy listening to the birds chirping. I feel the quietness of the early morning. I try to take time for some prayer at this point, and get in what I can. My ideal is about 30 minutes, but sometimes it’s just 5 minutes and that’s fine, too.
I then have plenty of time to get Yirmi and Rafael ready for school without rushing and tension.
Rafael (2 3/4) just started preschool last week (after being home for 3 months – yay for bureaucratic inefficiency!!) , and now part of my new schedule has prompted more opportunities for doing things I love!
After Yirmi goes on his van to school, Rafael and I immediately walk to the bus stop. He qualifies for a school van but I love having this time with him in the morning. Instead of rushing to get him ready for an early morning van and him having several transitions between leaving the house and being in school, we’re able to spend that time together.
I’ve chosen to take him by bus rather than drive so that we have the chance to walk together. In addition to the together time, walking is important to build his stamina as well as for overall general health and well-being. It’s so nice to start the day with something that is high on my list of priorities.
After I drop him off, I walk home. It’s so nice to be outside and moving in the morning!
I’ve begun stopping at a local park that has a large grassy area. My kids at home don’t yet expect me to be back, and thirty minutes sitting or laying on the grass, watching the trees sway in the breeze while listening to a meditation or inspiring talk is incredibly expansive for me.
It looks like me being in a regular park, but it feels like this!
By this time it’s 9:30 and I’m feeling like I have the most amazing life on the planet! Pure bliss.
But it’s just a regular morning doing the same kind of things as all the parents around me.Don’t think my mornings are absent any challenges! The extreme feelings of well-being come from doing the little things that align with what I want my life to look like.
The exciting thing is that anyone can do the same things! You may not be able to go for a week long vacation to Europe or live next to a nature reserve, but you can find small ways to integrate the elements you want most into your life.
Ask yourself what you want your life to look like, make a small shift in your daily schedule or behavior, then keep asking yourself the same question and keep making little, little changes over time. The more I do this, the more awesome life feels! And the best part is, it’s not dependent on anything outside of you to change.
After a year of doing the technical things necessary, we finally were authorized for hearing aids for Yirmi!
Yirmi is now 7. A year ago a hearing test showed he had a mild hearing loss, which I was told was significant and needed to be addressed immediately. This was the same loss he had shown when tested at age 4, but I was told at that time that there was nothing we needed to do but continue regular hearing tests.
When I realized that Yirmi should have had hearing aids from a young age and has been working hard to compensate for hearing loss all these years, I was filled with self-recrimination. So what if they told me it wasn’t a problem? Why didn’t I research it myself? How could I not have realized there was an issue? I know how important hearing is to cognition and function, I know hearing should be regularly tested. How could I have been so oblivious and dropped the ball on this??
Did I blame the hearing test place for bad advice? Did I blame the speech therapists or ENT for not catching this? Nope. Just me.
After way too long feeling lousy about this, I finally had to tell myself: I did the best I could.
Because I really did.
(We’re still in process with this so it will probably be at least another couple of months before he is wearing them regularly.)
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Yirmi doesn’t reliably walk distances, which I’ve been attributing to me using a stroller for him for too long when he was younger. So with Rafael (now 2 3/4 yr), I’m doing things differently and encouraging a lot of walking, which is what I tell myself I should have done with Yirmi (did you catch that dangerous word, ‘should’ there?!).
And then I had two flashes of insight that helped me to forgive myself for being fallible:
1) When Yirmi was little, every time I went out I either had three little boys along with me, eagerly pulling me to our destination or I had them waiting at home with an older sibling watching them and needed to get back as quickly as possible. I didn’t have the luxury of letting a very little toddler wander here and there, I couldn’t wait him out when he sat down and wouldn’t get up. I took him out often and regularly (we went to the park just about every day), but his running around was done at the destination, not on the way there or back.
Can I accept that I was a very busy mother of 10 children who was doing all that I could, trying to meet everyone’s needs? Can it be okay that I couldn’t do everything for everyone to the maximum all the time? Can I even – gasp – be appreciative for all the things that I did do?
2) I’d been assuming the reason Yirmi doesn’t consistently walk places is because I didn’t walk with him enough at an earlier age. And then I suddenly realized, he has trouble with transitions regardless of if it involves walking or not!!! For over two years I’ve been holding myself responsible for this challenge when it’s very possible it wouldn’t be any different even if I had done lots of walking with him.
I have an awesome 7 year old who happens to have Trisomy 21 who is doing extremely well by any measure, and it’s fair to say that is in large part due to my efforts. Yet here I was feeling inadequate and self-condemnatory rather than focusing on my overall success!
Why am I sharing these two examples with you?
I’ve noticed in conversations with clients and friends that most of you are doing exactly the same thing – you ignore and overlook the many, many things you do well, and focus instead on your perceived mistakes.
Then you beat yourself up rather than crediting yourselves for all that you’ve done well!
I think we all have some reframing to do!
When you catch yourself feeling bad about some aspect of your parenting, just stop.
Remind yourself that you are doing the best that you can.
You’ve always done the best you can.
The fact that you may know better now doesn’t mean that you should have known more then.
There’s nothing more you could have done at that time or you would have done it.
This isn’t a justification to make you feel better. This is the deepest truth.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t things you wish you did differently! Yes, it would have been nice if you had more knowledge, more support, more resources. But you didn’t and you couldn’t have done more than you did.
There are always going to be mistakes and missteps, and that’s okay. It’s not fun and it’s not easy, but it’s a fact of life.
Oh, you wish your kids didn’t have to suffer through your mistakes? Well, we all wish that. But that’s not realistic and it’s not fair to expect of yourself. Squandering your precious life energy feeling badly about yourself is stealing some of the energy you can use to make today what you want it to be.
You are enough, as you are right now. You do enough, whatever you are doing now.
Sorry I’ve been AWOL for so long; I’ve had an incredible string of technical challenges with my computer, my phone, my new phone, my home internet….it just didn’t seem to stop! So I wasn’t able to get online, despite my plans to write several posts this month in honor of October being Down Syndrome Awareness Month.
So here I am, barely squeaking in under the deadline (it’s after 11:30 pm Oct. 31) but better something than nothing, right?
There are so many misconceptions of people with Trisomy 21, and probably all of them involve significantly diminished expectations (physically, socially, intellectually, behaviorally). Across the world, people with T21 are raising the bar and showing us what different kinds of success look like and blazing new trails for those who come after them.
Back in January I shared a video of a talented dancer with Trisomy 21. As much as I enjoyed that, it’s not the kind of thing that resonates with me specifically for my kids, though they may end up being amazing dancers in spite of the lack of focus of that in our family.
Today I’m sharing a video of a young woman who I found to be inspiring and her direction has resonated with me more personally. I KNOW my boys with T21 are intelligent and capable. I expect them to one day be able to live independently and interact appropriately and productively within mainstream society. When I see Kayla McKeon lobbying on Capitol Hills, it raises the bar in my mind of what is possible.
Kayla joins other bright and well-spoken women with T21, including Karen Gaffney and Tikva Juni, who I’ve written about here.
I wasn’t able to directly link the videos, so click below for the video and short summary of Kayla’s work. Eight minutes, very worth it!
The motivation for me to move somewhere else is in large part about being closer to nature, and therefore the physical location of a home is important to me. Once I realized that even in much less expensive areas that the land costs are beyond my budget, I started to envision a different way to have the visual benefit of lots of land.
I imagined finding the last house on the block with an agricultural field next to it. That way I can have the feeling of lots of land and space without having to buy it all!
I went cruising online, looking at properties for sale in that area (for research purposes only since we aren’t ready to buy something), and one particular home resonated with me. Of course, I didn’t know anything about the location, who the neighbors are, what the condition of the house is – in short, I didn’t know any of the important information that would be critical in making a decision when buying a home.
But nonetheless, it was nice to see that what I was imagining was possible, so I pulled up this picture on my screen to show my husband, saying, “This is it. This is the vision.”
I didn’t mean we should buy this; I just wanted him to share the visual.
It was the last house on the block; on one side it was bordered by a grove of palm trees; the front of the house looked onto an agricultural field. To the left of the home that shares a common wall were more agricultural fields, and opposite the house there was a beautiful view of the mountains.
The listing had almost no pictures of the inside of the home, leading me to think suspiciously about the condition of the home. But no matter, because I wasn’t ready to look at it anyway. I didn’t even make a call to the agent listed to ask the briefest of questions. Even when I later visited the area to look at houses with a different agent, I didn’t call about this house.
Literally less than two minutes into our drive with the agent we met, I recognized the above house as we drove by. I asked him about it; after checking it out, he told us it was an exclusive listing with a different agent so he couldn’t show it to us.
We finished looking at homes and then drove to visit the first family we had scheduled to drop in at.
And where do you suppose they live?
Right behind this house.
It was starting to feel like I was being pulled to this house, despite my resistance to do anything more than look at a picture on the computer screen.
I considered contacting the agent, but procrastinated about it. Because we’re not ready to buy a house. And I don’t want to waste people’s time. But most of all, because I was afraid it would be the right house for us and I couldn’t see how we could buy it.
I procrastinated for two weeks, until a day before visiting the area again I finally asked the agent to see it.
This time our eighteen year old daughter was with us, and she didn’t think much of the house. I completely understand her; many people have a hard time seeing beyond clutter/mess and someone else’s style. But I’m really good at seeing the potential beyond the distractions.
What I saw was a convenient location, good neighbors (we introduced ourselves to the family immediately next door after looking at the house), and a suitably sized house and yard. And of course very important to me – the expanse of land close by.
Oh – at a price we could comfortably afford.
Darn. Darn. Darn.
This strongly matched what I wanted but didn’t match my timeline. And that wasn’t completely exciting – it was honestly kind of stressful.
So now there was a dilemma. Should we wait a few months until our home sold and make an offer if this was still on the market? But it wasn’t likely to still be on the market. From briefly viewing other homes, we realized the combination of features we were looking for wasn’t a common scenario.
What to do? I was so conflicted. This seemed so right for us. But, hello, money?!?
We brainstormed, we talked, we made some calls about alternative financing.
After all of this we told the agent we were interested and needed to have an inspection done. It took two weeks for the inspection to be completed, and we finally put in our purchase offer.
At this point I was sure this would be the home we would buy and the only question is what the final price would be.
So I thought. This brings to mind the saying, ‘Man plans and G-d laughs.’
Two days later, the agent got back to us. We were ready for a counteroffer, but we weren’t ready for what we were told.
The seller changed his mind about selling and was taking his home off the market.
I was completely thrown off. I was deeply disappointed. I couldn’t believe it.
I mean, this house was my vision. It seemed so perfect for us, everything had seemed to flow so smoothly toward that point. I hadn’t even looked for it – it had found me. It really felt like a huge magnet had pulled us to this house because this is the house we were meant to have.
And then, it wasn’t.
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The first act of courage is to have a vision that is bigger that what you currently have.
The next act of courage is to hold on to that vision even when it seems to be crumbling in front of you.
The most natural thing in the world is when you reach out for something and your hand gets sharply slapped down, is to stop reaching. Instead, you make your vision smaller and safer, and you tell yourself all the reasons you didn’t really want what you were reaching for anyway.
This has been my next growth opportunity. To continue to move toward my overall vision, and to release my attachment to the specifics of how the vision comes about. I can’t say how major this is and how challenging this is. I trust that somehow my vision is going to come together, but how, when, where, what – I don’t know any of that.
On an almost daily basis I have been asking G-d to give me clarity about the next right step, and whether it was what I wanted or not, the seller’s response gave me the clarity I asked for.
The answer is either: 1) not this house right now, or 2) there is a better home for us.
This is the thought I’m going with – either this home will come back to us at a more opportune time, or there is a more suitable home for us.
This emotional dance is like walking a tightrope – to believe that you’re going to have something you want in your life but not feel upset when you don’t get it. To trust something will happen and let go of your specific idea of what that will look like (in this case releasing attachment to this specific house). To be connected but not overly invested.
A few years ago I couldn’t even understand this concept in an abstract way. I would ponder this idea, wondering how in the world is that possible?
Either you want something, take actions toward it and you care about the outcome, or you don’t care about the outcome and don’t move toward it. How can you move toward something and release the end result emotionally?
It’s interesting, learning to surf the waves of life.
After my talk with my husband and verbally wrestling repeatedly with my resistance to changing anything about where we currently live, my husband asked if I knew of a place that I would want to live. Did it even exist?
Almost none of the smaller communities that are in more natural settings are religiously aligned with our direction, and shifting my religious affiliation isn’t an option.
I then thought of a community in the north where I spoke several years ago. At that time, I had the passing thought that it seemed like a nice place to live.
I mentioned this area to my husband. We agreed to look into it, then each made calls to people living there to begin getting information.
After a couple of weeks we had gotten as much information from a distance that we were going to get, and what we then needed to do was get a first hand feel for the area.
We decided to make a day trip there, to meet a couple of families. I also wanted to see what kind of housing was available and to verify that a home that I would be comfortable with would be financially feasible for us. (I’m very much not a fan of building castles in the air.)
Since we decided to include our children in our exploratory process, we invited ds10, ds12 and ds13 to accompany us on our trip. We wanted them to see the area itself, and meet some of the people living there.
We drove around with a real estate agent and viewed some homes from the outside, then went to visit two families. We had a pleasant time, and two of our sons later told us that they liked the idea of moving there.
Though my husband found it helpful to see the area and liked the two men he met, it wasn’t enough for him to make a decision one way or another. He wanted to make a visit for a longer time to have a broader sense of what the community is like.
Two weeks later, we spent a Shabbos there. This time we brought dd18, ds7 and ds2 (the four other boys were away at a friend’s bar mitzva). I also reached out to an agent who had an online listing for a home that interested me, and set up a time to view the house.
After this more extended visit, my husband agreed that it looked like a place that our family could be happy.
Wait, let me highlight that because one sentence is too little to express this huge, massive moment of decision for us. It was at this point that we went from having a very theoretical possibility, to making a concrete decision about something we were going to do. We agreed that we wanted to move, and this is the place we wanted to move to.
As a homeschooling family, we’ve had plenty of positive feedback over the years, but we’ve also had our share of criticism and naysayers.
One of the critics was a rabbi of synagogue in a city we moved to when my oldest was 9. He was a sincerely good person who was concerned that we didn’t understand the dangers of the homeschooling path. He warned us that our children were likely to end up unhappy, dysfunctional and religiously ‘off’.
I strongly disagreed and told him so (respectfully, of course :)); though he periodically would try to convince my husband of the error of our ways, our children continued learning at home. I knew he said what he did from a desire to be of help to us, and didn’t take it personally.
Fast forward 17 years. My oldest son and his wife were visiting the US last week and my husband asked my son to give his warm regards to this rabbi when he saw him.
So he did.
After my son introduced himself and shared a brief update on our family, the rabbi exclaimed, “Your father won!!!”
My son had no idea what he was talking about and asked him what he meant. The rabbi explained, “I tried to talk your father out of homeschooling and told him how you kids would be ruined as a result. But he was right, he won!”
I’ve been quite happy with my choices and how our family has developed, and I don’t expect those with a different perspective to validate my choices.
But let me tell you, it was soooo validating to hear that comment!
I have an awesome 7 year old who happens to have Trisomy 21 who is doing extremely well by any measure, and it’s fair to say that is in large part due to my efforts. Yet here I was feeling inadequate and self-condemnatory rather than focusing on my overall success!
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t things you wish you did differently! Yes, it would have been nice if you had more knowledge, more support, more resources. But you didn’t and you couldn’t have done more than you did.
