Wedding jitters and thinking of changing the hall location

personal development

I’ve been feeling increasingly on edge about the wedding preparations over the last few weeks. That’s unusual for me; this is our sixth wedding and I find the planning generally to be straightforward. Additionally, I don’t have a lot of emotion wrapped up in the specifics.

This time we’re planning for the wedding to be in a smaller hall that isn’t usually used for weddings. The initial thinking in considering that was our expectation that our guest list would be smaller than at our other weddings, and I didn’t want to rattle around in a typical hall. From there we went on to consider that it would be a big gain for the couple to enjoy the savings resulting from a wedding on a smaller scale.

That was the idea, but that’s not how it’s working out. The costs involved are either the same or much, much higher than at a larger hall. That means that a wedding for 150 will cost almost the same as a wedding for 300. That’s because there aren’t the economies of scale for a smaller hall that are standard for the larger halls.

More and more concerns have been coming up for me but until now I’ve repeatedly pushed them down, telling myself at least the couple will be happy. And after all, isn’t it their wedding?

Yes, but it’s a celebration for the parents as well. Sometimes parents go overboard and it’s not at all about what the couple wants, but on the flip side, sometimes as parents we minimize our own preferences in planning a celebration.

It wasn’t initially clear how things would play out with the choice for the smaller hall and knowing what we now know, it wouldn’t have been an option.

Obviously it would have been much better if my concerns had been clear to me earlier on, but they weren’t. The initial assumptions I was operating under kept shifting bit by bit, until all that remained of the suggestion my husband and I originally made was the smaller hall. As more and more things come up to complicate the use of this location, my unease has increased.

I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s contentment with what was being planned, and though I did express my concerns several times about what was being planned, I didn’t stay with the conversation and communicate until my position was clear enough. Part of that was my own ambiguity, and the other part was not wanting to seem nitpicky or controlling. So I kept pushing down the concernes that were coming up. Finally, I just couldn’t push them down anymore and all I felt when thinking of the wedding was stress, instead of happiness and excitement.

So what to do at this point, four weeks before the wedding?

The easiest thing for me to do is to continue to smile and agree to whatever everyone else wants. However, I’ve always regretted ignoring my gut feelings and always pay the price later on; right now my inner voice is screaming that this is a big mistake and needs to be reconsidered because the wedding isn’t going to be a good experience for our family. But if I say something, am I going to be that controlling mother-in-law imposing her preferences on the couple?

Despite my very strong reluctance, I knew I needed to have some uncomfortable conversations.

I called my daughter-in-law-to-be to share some concerns and get clarity on what her priorities for the wedding are. (Her mother is overseas so she’s the one actively making the decisions for the wedding planning.) Until now we haven’t directly talked about the plans; her preferences were conveyed to me through a local family member. I stressed to her that I’m absolutely not saying we need to make a change in location, but that I’d just like to bring up some concerns.

She’s very lovely and was willing to listen though I’m sure that wasn’t easy. I was really concerned that she would feel an imbalance of power in the conversation due to my position in the family. But she handled it beautifully and I was very impressed with her equanimity.

She was able to listen to my concerns, consider them, and then called me back to say that she heard my points and is willing to look at other locations, if we can still find a hall available for four weeks from now.

So that’s what I’ll be busy with in the morning, making calls and with Hashem’s help we’ll quickly and easily find a hall that will be more aligned with the feelings of happiness and positivity that we feel when celebrating a wedding.

Avivah

Running low on patience and reprogramming my thoughts

parenting, personal development

I always have a full schedule but the last month has been over- the-top busy.

I recently noticed that I’m overreacting to things the kids are doing that I don’t like. Yes, sometimes whatever it is is annoying, but I have demonstrated high levels of patience and forbearance in situations much more challenging than these. So I know it’s not the situation that’s the problem, but something about me.

When reflecting on this, I realized two things:

Realization 1: I have too many time dependent activities I need to be at with the kids. I’ve known for years about myself that time pressure brings out my absolute worst qualities, and to compensate, try to build margin around time dependent activities and schedule them cautiously.

Well, cautious scheduling is not what I have going on now. There are many appointments to take care of in addition to extracurricular summer activities for the kids at home in Camp Mommy, and I’ve been out daily with the kids at these different commitments. I realized, I’ve got too much going on and I’ve got to cut this down.

All of the doctor/dental/hearing test stuff has to be done, as do visitations with the twins’ parents, a National Insurance committee meeting to determine eligibility for ds6 since the country is changing the rules of child allowances for foster children, social worker visits, preparatory school meetings – but I have changed what I can and that has made a difference.

In the last week we’ve finished the swimming lessons that had us out three days a week, and cancelled horseback riding, which I had only recently begun two weeks before. (That decision deserves a post of its own because it was a very empowering choice.)

I enjoy going out with the kids daily for some kind of activity, particularly now that it’s the Nine Days and they can’t use the pool. Going out breaks up our day and is a nice change of pace for us all. It’s not a time pressure when it’s dependent on me, I can go where and when I want, and stay as long or as short a time as I want.

A couple of recent outings included:

Playing with newborn puppies- We were invited by one of our Shabbos guests to come visit his newborn puppies. The puppies still had their eyes shut and were crawling around; we were there quite a long time and the kids enjoyed them very much. We were invited to come regularly to play with them and we will probably go back, but I won’t make a commitment to a regular day or time because I don’t want to create pressure for myself.

Ds7 with a puppy
Ds6 and dd6 with puppies

Another trip was to the public sprinklers in the center of Tiberias. We packed a picnic lunch and the kids had a wonderful time. It’s fascinating to watch how much enjoyment children can generate with almost no props – other than two plastic bags they found, it was just the sprinklers. But they played with the water in various ways, had different kinds of races with one another, and just kept finding new ways to entertain themselves in this one area.

I find that the lower key an activity is, the less expectation and pressure there is and the more enjoyment we all have. This morning I was thinking of taking the kids to the cable cars in Haifa, but hesitated, wondering if it would be worth the effort to find parking and then the money spent. Instead, I took them to a park in the city we were in that I found after cruising around for just a few minutes. The park was built on a steep hill so there were four levels to the park – each level had just a couple of items on it; there was nothing spectacular or especially engaging about any individual part of it. But the kids loved going from one level to another, and we spent almost three hours there.

Realization 2: I have been recognizing that I’m using all of my patience in the course of a day and don’t have extra margin. And that’s true.

It’s also true that our physical capacities are affected by our thoughts, and I’m disempowering myself by defining myself as having my patience maxxed out, and mentally going over all the things I’m doing to explain to myself why I’m feeling my patience is wearing thin.

I was out with the kids for eight hours today – it was a really good day for everyone but tiring as well. I was driving home at the end of all of the activities and the thought flashed through my mind, “I’m so tired.” Then I caught myself and asked myself, why am I telling myself that? Why not think about how energized I am by the things I do, how blessed I am to have plenty of energy to do all that I need to do, how patient and loving a parent I am? That’s a much more helpful focus and feels a lot better, and it’s just the flip side of the same coin. We can focus on what isn’t and what we aren’t, or on what we is good and what we want to be.

Can you see how thinking the two different sets of thoughts will impact how a person feels?

I truly have a lot going on now, that requires me to carefully and proactively schedule commitments to myself and others in to my planner so that everything gets done and I still get sleep. I burned the candle at both ends for too many years, and I choose not to shortchange myself in that way anymore.

Every day when I start to feel a little tense about how much I’m doing, I remind myself how grateful I am that I can do the things that are important to me, that my schedule is full of things that are meaningful and stimulating for me. And I mean it. But you can’t say it too often!

Avivah

Excited to be planning an intimate wedding

frugal strategies, parenting

Years ago, my husband and I talked about how we would like to handle wedding planning. Our ideal was to set aside an amount of money for each child’s wedding, and then let each couple determine how they wanted to spend it. If they wanted to spent it all on a one night event, that was fine. If they wanted to make a smaller or simpler event, they could keep the difference between what they spent on the wedding and what was remaining.

That was our ideal but we never had the opportunity to make that offer until now.

When you’re making a bar mitzva, you can do what you want because it’s only your family you have to consider. When you’re making a wedding, you need to take into account the preferences of another family.

Before each engagement, we meet with the parents of the other side and agree as to what our financial contribution will be for the wedding: what will be the overall budget and how will the expenses we distributed. We did that this time as well, and our baseline number was based on the sums we spent on our last two weddings.

However, the morning after the engagement, I was thinking that this would be the time when something smaller would be a better fit for the couple as well as both families. She is from England so neither she nor her family have a huge social circle that expects to attend.

Living in a small community in the north, we also don’t have a large number of people who will be attending.

The standard wedding halls have a minimum of 300 people for the meal, and 300 for the dessert buffet. We just don’t have a need for those numbers at all.

My husband called me from work the morning after the l’chaim and told me he had been thinking that this wedding could be smaller than our usual weddings, and reminded me of what we had said our ideal was: to give the couple the money to spend as they wished. It happens so often that we both think of the same idea at the same time without discussing it with one another, but he was still surprised when I told him I had been thinking exactly the same thing!

So what are we planning for this wedding?

Three years ago the son before this one got married on a Friday and it was a very good experience for us all for a number of reasons. When my daughter got married a year and a half later in the heart of the winter, a Friday wedding wasn’t an option since Shabbos begins so early. My son who is now engaged remembered how positive an experience it was, and talked to his fiance about it, who agreed to have a Friday wedding.

Next is the wedding venue. While the scale of the wedding will be adjusted (we’re thinking we’ll have about 100 guests for the meal), our new couple isn’t looking to do something radically different to save every possible penny, like having a potluck in someone’s basement. They want a beautiful hall with a nice catered meal. But once you aren’t having a very large crowd, there are many smaller halls that become an option.

Since smaller halls don’t have room for people to be seated at tables for the meal and to simultaneously have a large area available for dancing, we’ll be changing the standard wedding schedule. First will be the chupa, then the entire meal will be served, and then dancing will take place at the end. The tables will be cleared away at the end of the meal to make room for dancing, and dessert tables will be assembled around the perimeter of the hall.

After we made this arrangement, we realized that this set up will also cut the cost of the band, since their charge is based on the number of hours they need to be there. Usually the band arrives for the chupa and stays throughout the night until the final dance; this is around five or six hours. Since my son asked two or three of his younger brothers to sing at his chupa, and someone else will arrange for recorded background dinner music to be played for the meal on the speakers the musicians will set up in advance, we only need a live band for the dancing at the end.

We haven’t yet contacted a photographer but the photographer at our last Friday wedding gave us a discounted price because it was on Friday. Friday isn’t prime time for weddings so it’s likely there will be other costs that will be less than if the wedding was held in the evening.

The hall is located in the neighborhood where the new couple will be living, the same one where his yeshiva is located. This is incredibly convenient for his friends. This makes it possible for as many of the students who want to attend to come for the chupa, leave for the meal (other than his close friends), and return for dancing.

When I told a friend our plans, she said that when her daughter got married during covid, they were only allowed to have fifty guests total. She shared that it was the nicest and most meaningful of all of their weddings, and she wishes that all of her weddings could be like that. Every single person who was there was someone they were close to and felt emotionally invested in adding to the joyous atmosphere at the wedding. She also enjoyed being able to connect with all of her guests in a way that she couldn’t at a huge wedding with hundreds of guests.

I’ve heard a number of people say they regret that when the covid restrictions lifted, weddings went back to the same way they had been before. The smaller weddings were a beautiful blip on the social scene but seen as a choice people were forced to make legally and didn’t endure as a socially normative option when people had their choice of venues afterwards.

It will take some time to get an idea of what all the final costs will be, but I anticipate the savings will be substantial. I love that the couple will have a beautiful wedding surrounded by all of the people who care about them most, and at the same time have the benefit of the money saved to create some financial margin as they start their lives together.

Avivah

Why did hardly anyone in real life wish me mazel tov?

personal development

Friendship is something I’ve been thinking a lot about in the last week since my son got engaged.

The engagement was announced first thing in the morning on our community email list. One neighbor came over to say mazel tov. One person called.

And that was it. There was a huge, empty silence at the time we would have loved to have felt surrounded by the shared happiness of friends. It felt like people didn’t care.

I have good relationships with all of the women in our small community, and wondered why almost no one felt it was significant enough to pick up a phone, send an email, or even text a quick, “Mazel tov!”? Is twenty seconds too much time to spend on someone else?

All of these people probably had a thought of ‘how nice’ when they heard about the engagement. But it didn’t translate into any kind of action. I’m not going to analyze what has changed in the communication styles of people in the world at large though I think that’s the biggest factor.

I spoke to someone else who has been in the community much longer than I have and commented that something has changed in the years since I moved here, and this experience of mine reflected that. We seem to feel less connected to one another than we used to be. She agreed.

It’s not just my community that’s changed. There’s been a worldwide shift in how people communicate and people are becoming more comfortable interacting with a screen rather than real-life people. Though my community is much lighter on the tech than most, nonetheless we’ve been affected by the overall trends.

If you don’t like what you see in the society around you, you can feel like a victim, and be hurt or angry or insulted. Of you can recognize that if you want to see something different in the world around you, it begins with the person you see in the mirror.

I looked inwardly and asked myself, do I make that effort that I wished people would have made for me?

The answer was quick in coming – in a lot of ways I do, but when it comes to calling to verbally convey congratulations, that’s far from my strong suit. Making phone calls is a very weak point of mine and something I procrastinate a lot about. I’ve become less communally engaged than I was in the past, and can justify that in a number of ways, including saying how busy I am, and that the amount of people I have in my family to interact with takes all of my time and energy.

I could say that, and it’s true, but it’s not the complete truth. Everyone makes time for what’s important to him, and for various reasons I’ve put community effort on a back burner.

That same day my son’s engagement was posted, I learned that the son of someone I casually know had gotten engaged. She’s not in my community or someone that I’m particularly close with, but I know her enough that my call would be appreciated.

It took me three days but I picked up the thousand pound phone to make what ended up being an eight minute phone call, and made someone else feel seen and that their celebration was being shared. When I saw a sibling of the engaged man pulling out of the parking space, I jumped out of my car to stop her and congratulate her in person. Both of them were surprised and appreciative.

I also asked myself, what would make me feel connected to the people I know care about me, the friends I have many years of history with? I sat down over two nights and wrote personal emails to good friends in different parts of the world, sharing our good news. In the past I’ve sent out a standard email announcement to lots of people at once, which isn’t the same as an individualized message.

I don’t speak often to friends overseas – quite rarely, actually. It’s my phone issue again; add in the time difference and the busyness of everyone’s life, and easily a year or two goes by without speaking. In response to my email, two friends asked to schedule a time to talk in the next few days, which we did.

I have deep concern about how people are becoming increasingly isolated from one another, but just because it’s happening in society at large doesn’t mean I need to mindlessly participate. And I certainly don’t have to take it personally. I can look for ways to increase my own sense of social well-being and interconnectedness, and that’s what I’m going to continue to do.

Avivah




When it’s so easy – a kiss from Heaven

parenting

At the beginning of June I received a call from one of my married daughters.

She had been approached by a neighbor who wanted to know if our twenty one year old son was dating yet. I answered no, he’s not. It was almost his birthday but our sons wait until 22 before going out.

She commented that several people over the course of the last year have made the same suggestion to the neighbor, who is the aunt of the young woman suggested, as well as to my daughter. When my daughter was approached about it a few months ago she told them he wasn’t starting but at this point called since she wasn’t sure of his timeframe.

For me, hearing that a few people thought of the same idea is interesting but not enough to change my time line. When my last son was dating, eleven different people made the same suggestion of a young lady, people who knew him and her well. It seemed so perfect on paper that it seemed everyone was sure it was going to work out.

They went out once and my son came back and told me she’s definitely not a match for him.

So with this current suggestion, I was kind of like, that’s nice but he’s not dating now.

Then my daughter added, “I also know her pretty well and I think it’s a really good idea.”

As soon as she said those words, it became something for me to consider seriously. My daughter not only obviously knows our family and her brother well, but is an excellent judge of character and has a lot of insight. I asked her for more information, and she gave me a very good picture of who the young woman is.

I told her I needed to rethink my position on delaying him starting to date and would get back to her. I thought about why I was hesitant for him to begin dating and realized it had nothing to do with his emotional readiness, but with my desire to delay having to deal with the technicalities of the dating process.

I recognized that there was no reason for me to hold him back when someone who sounded perfect for him was being suggested. After getting clarity on some things we wanted to know, a date was set up.

From the start felt comfortable and relaxed with each other. I know he has the ability to synthesize a lot of details quickly and accurately, and shouldn’t have been surprised when after the second date, he told me he was confident she was right for him.

When he came home from the fourth date, he told me he was ready to propose whenever she would be ready. Early into the fifth date the topic of engagement came up and it was clear they were on the same page. He called to ask when I would be able to meet her, so my husband and I drove in the next night to meet her; that was Monday. Two and a half weeks after their first date they got engaged; last night shortly after he proposed we celebrated the l’chaim in Jerusalem with family and close friends. The official engagement party will be next week.

We’ve never had a child find his soulmate as quickly and easily as this. It’s an amazing kindness from Heaven.

——————–

This will be my sixth child in seven years to get married. They were born within nine years of one another but somehow it still feels astonishing that they’re all getting married in what is relatively a short time.

When I was a teenager and heard of people getting engaged after going out for two or three weeks, I couldn’t imagine how that was a good thing. They hardly know each other, for goodness sakes!

Yet, the charedi shidduch system is one that works very, very well. There are divorces in our world, we have unhappy marriages just like every society – but there is a strong positive value on marriage and on family; we believe a soul is incomplete until he is reunited with his other half. And the very positive results in our society reflect those values.

I deeply appreciate the shidduch system and the wisdom that is behind it. Young men and women go out with one another after a lot of thought beforehand – by people who know them well who want to see them happy – regarding compatibility in terms of personality, life direction and outlook and families. This narrows their dating to people who have a good chance of being a good fit for them.

I look at all of our married children and their spouses, I look at all of their parents, and I marvel…how did Hashem send so many wonderful people to our family? While I’ve heard many stories of the sets of parents of the couple having a lot of intense conflict, we’ve never experienced that while planning any weddings. Obviously there will be differences in expectations that need to be ironed out, but we’ve been very blessed with very, very good people who have been reasonable and accommodating, and now another great family is joining the mix.

Hashem is always taking care of each of us, but there are times the extra kindness inherent in a situation that feels like a kiss from Heaven, and this engagement is one of those times.

Avivah

Ds is turning 12 – thoughts and reflections on raising a child with Down syndrome

parenting, Trisomy 21

Today is our son’s twelfth birthday – I remember so clearly when he was born and shared with you here all about our surprise diagnosis of Trisomy 21 a short time after his birth.

There was a lot I didn’t know and a lot to learn about, but my biggest concern was what kind of life he would have. What opportunities would there be, would people be kind to him?

Last week we celebrated a milestone – after seven months of learning with his fifteen year old brother, ds12 completed his first tractate of Mishnayos. They stayed with it regularly for all of that time, despite having very different schedules, finding time to learn together and finally, they celebrated the culmination last week.

One of my married daughters was here with her family for that Shabbos and commented how emotional it was. It was a big deal. While this is a normative learning experience for a boy this age, most people would assume it to be out of reach for a child with Trisomy 21. He did this because he wanted to, not because we suggested it or pushed him to do it. And he did it well.

I don’t want to sugar coat or gloss over the challenges of raising a child with a disability. There have been times that have been frustrating. Very frustrating. There have been issues that went on so long despite my input and support that I sometimes felt close to despairing that we would ever resolve them. But even those tough issues have improved with time and are no longer the source of angst that they once were.

Sometimes I got lost in the close-up view of the difficulties and lost sight of how amazing he is, focusing on what needed to be improved instead of looking at all that was already so, so good.

But in the last couple of weeks I’ve stepped back to look at ‘the forest’ and am incredibly grateful for what I see. I see a child with a lot of self-confidence, who knows how to ask for what he wants and doesn’t give up. He is smart and capable, he loves people and people enjoy him. He’s kind, helpful, responsible and independent.

——————-

I went to a bris recently with the younger four kids and ds greeted the father of the baby at the entrance to the hall with a hug and congratulatory wishes.

We went inside and he sat at a table with men he knew, and he grasped their hands in a high five cross grip. Then he went to the rabbi of the community and respectfully shook his hand and greeted him appropriately.

My husband wasn’t there so he was on the men’s side by himself. Though most boys his age eventually got bored and played with the elevator and were running around, he stayed seated for the next two hours, joining in appropriately at each stage. (The hard part was when it was time to leave and he just didn’t want to go.)

I watched all of this and wondered, how does he know how to act differently and so appropriately with all of these people despite them all being in the same setting, without any guidance from me?

———————–

I attended his end of the year party a few days ago, and had mixed feelings while watching his class and the class above his perform with drums and songs. He’s in a special ed school, and while I watched, I kept asking myself what he was doing there. Yes, he has Down syndrome and yes, he benefits from extra mediation – but externally he seems to be more capable than the other children I saw. I’m searching for a better word than ‘capable’ and I’m uncomfortable making this statement at all because I have no desire to imply in any way a negative judgment of others.

There was a special breakfast for the mothers after the performance, and I listened to the conversation without participating. I drove a couple of the mothers home and we talked about an issue that came up in the group discussion, and I saw clearly that I think very differently than the other mothers. I don’t expect the school to raise my child; they are my partners and I’m appreciative of all that they do, but I see it as my responsibility to equip him for life. Not the school. This wasn’t their view.

Years ago a much more experienced mother of a child with Trisomy 21 told me that I think differently than most of the other mothers she met, and I didn’t understand what she was saying. She told me the way I take responsibility isn’t typical, and I finally understand her point now.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what academic framework would best serve him going forward. We’ve had a very difficult year because of difficulties ds has experienced on the school van – being hit, kicked and made fun of. When he reacted, I was told he was violent and not welcome on the van. The kids who instigated waited until the aide’s back was turned to say and do what they did, and it took four months until I finally learned what was happening from another mother whose child told her. It’s been a really rough year, and he’s spent a third of the year at home with me.

I’m very clear that there’s not going to be another year like this. I’ve already spoken to the person at the municipality who makes transportation arrangements and put in my strong request for appropriate accommodations for next year. (When I spoke to them at the beginning of the school year, they said they weren’t yet completely set up; when I spoke to them during the year, it was too late, and when I continued speaking to them, they said that ds is the problem and no changes would make a difference.) If they don’t provide appropriate accommodations, I’ll keep him home.

Ds enjoys school, he enjoys his friends – but it’s my input that is moving him forward.

I’ve thought seriously about homeschooling him next year but as someone who thrives on being with people, I’m hesitant because I can’t yet picture how we would fill that social gap.

The principal of the local yeshiva ketana that my teens are at has spoken to my husband and told him they’d like ds12 to join the yeshiva when he’s old enough – that would be in another year or two. (He knows ds because he’s sometimes come to learn with an older brother when it’s between the official learning sessions.) I’m very interested in doing that; perhaps he’ll continue in the mornings at the school he’s at and attend the yeshiva in the afternoons, or perhaps we’ll take him out of the school he’s in completely. We have time to figure that out.

Right now ds is beginning to learn to read his parsha (Torah portion to be read out loud for the congregation) for his bar mitzva; again, this is his initiative and something he wants to do. There’s no question I could do much more with him if he were home than if he continues at school – when he comes home it’s already 2 pm, and by the time he finishes eating lunch it’s time for me to pick up the other kids from kindergarten. So we don’t have quiet time together during the school year and I can’t focus on doing some of the things I’d love to do with him that would make a big difference for him.

So what does raising a child with Down syndrome look like twelve years down the road? We’ve passed the years when everyone looks at a small child and sees only cuteness. I worried when he was young that maybe we were living the best years of his life then and maybe it was only going to go downhill from there.

But now I don’t feel that at all. I see more and more maturity in him as he grows up, and have let go of most of those worries that I had in the earlier years. Now deep in myself I really believe he’s going to do great in life, he’s going to make friends and do things that are meaningful for him. I can’t guess what that will look like – we do talk a lot about when he gets married what will happen and I expect marriage to be part of his future – but I think it’s going to be really good.

So though I’ve had a year of challenge and I still have wishfulness about things I’d like to do and am not doing, at this stage raising a child with Trisomy 21 feels like hope and optimism, of relaxing and trusting the process as he continues on his path of developing into an incredible human.

Avivah

Why I turned down routine health scanning

health

A while back, I received a call from my local health clinic. The nurse calling inquired if my husband and I were new to the area, and I told her we’ve been here a few years. She was surprised since neither of us have recent blood work or doctor visits on record, so she invited us both in to have our medical details noted.

I politely declined, letting her know we were in good health and had no concerns, but she was very persistent and insistent that I needed to have my markers checked. I politely declined several more times before we ended the call.

I’ve been learning about health and nutrition for decades now, and it’s something I think about regularly. I took a big break from sharing health related topics from 2020 and on since people like myself who had alternative suggestions about how to improve immunity and lessen the likelihood of disease were vilified and treated as anti-science conspiracy theorists. At this time I feel able to share more about my personal health perspectives and decisions and to clarify the paradigm that underpins all of my decisions in that arena.

To some people, getting your blood pressure, weight, and blood work checked regularly is critically important. The thinking is, if something is wrong with any of these markers, you can them meet with a doctor and get guidance on how to address the issue. Generally the recommendation will be a pharmaceutical. That’s fine if that’s what you want to do.

I don’t believe that health comes via a prescription pad and it’s not a doctor who can keep me healthy. It’s my job to keep myself healthy, and I recognize it’s no one’s responsibility but mine. Medication can suppress symptoms but when the core issue that led to the symptom remains unaddressed, over time other symptoms will appear and create seemingly new health problems. Those will then need to be medicated; in addition there are now side effects of the medication that may also need to be medicated, and so the cycle continues. Symptom suppression is not the same as healing.

Doctors are very well-trained in identifying symptoms and medicating them, and that’s a much needed and important skillset. When I have a health issue that I want feedback about, I occasionally go to a doctor to get their educated opinion (for example, after my car accident when I was diagnosed with post concussive syndrome). A diagnosis as well as their suggestions are helpful and from there, I can choose to continue my research to learn about why a symptom appeared and what to do to resolve it at the root level, or not.

About twenty years ago I had a swelling in my throat area – a friend with a medical background noticed it and insisted I get to a specialist immediately to have it checked out. As soon as the specialist looked at my neck, he was visibly alarmed and immediately performed a biopsy.

Thankfully, the biopsy was clean though he said the swelling on my thyroid was so large that it’s possible they missed the cancerous cells. He suggested I do a follow-up biopsy to be sure. I asked him what caused my thyroid to swell, and he said, “Sometimes thyroids do that.” I was fairly certain that if I continued doing biopsies that they would eventually find something and I wasn’t interested in chasing an undesired diagnosis, so I left that day, grateful I was healthy but no wiser as to why I had this symptom.

I don’t remember how much later it was that I adopted a very clean diet with no sweetener of any sort – I feel like it was at least two years later. And I don’t remember how much after that, when I passed a three way mirror in the hotel I was in and noticed I had no swelling; my neck area was completely normal. I stopped and looked at my neck at different angles again and again, in disbelief that there was no sign of anything. I was obviously thrilled it had disappeared but wondered how it happened.

It took a few years before I found the answer but guess what? Despite what the specialist told me, thyroids don’t just randomly swell as mine did. There was something that caused it. Candida feeds on sugar and can overgrow in the body, which resulted in the swelling in the area of my thyroid gland. When I took out the sweeteners, the growth disappeared.

That’s another foundational understanding of mine – that there’s a reason for everything the body does. Many health issues that we attribute to as happenstance simply aren’t; when we remove the cause of the problem, the body can heal.

——————–

For the most part most of what I’ve experienced has been in the range of normal seasonal viruses. But occasionally I encounter things that are unusual for me.

This fall I had some soreness in my upper arm that made it hard for me to reach my arm behind my back, and I couldn’t put weight on it. I waited for it to go away but time passed and the soreness wasn’t passing. It was bearable but annoying, leading me to wonder if it was age related muscle weakness. I mentioned it when I went to the osteopath, who found that the lymph nodes in that area were blocked. He worked on that area to release the blockage; it was extremely sore for the following week, but after that my arm has been pain- free and strong again.

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I don’t think I have the answers for everything, all the time. However, I do live in my body all the time. I know what’s normal for me and what’s not. I know what kind of help I can expect from what avenues and I use all of that selectively as is appropriate to the situation.

I also believe in asking people who have the results you want to see for advice. If my doctor is brimming with health and energy, then I want to hear his suggestions about how to upgrade my health. I can’t say that my external perception of most of the medical professionals that I’ve encountered is of models of health. If I have to have a surgical procedure, they’re the ones I’m going to ask about it. But if I want to be healthy, I need to ask people who know about health and wellness, not sickness, and I’m not going to participate in scans and tests that I don’t see as valuable at this time, just to to meet someone else’s idea of what I’m supposed to do.

Avivah

What I did to recover from post-concussive syndrome

Uncategorized

I’d like to share part of my healing journey, which has taken a lot of time and not been easy. There’s a lot to write about so I’m going to abbreviate but I want others to have hope they can change what seem like hopeless health situations. I also want to share my appreciation of where I am now, and you can’t really understand what that means without knowing what I’ve been through, which I’ve shared very little about over the years.

I’m going to go back five years to when I was rear-ended by the car behind me when I stopped to let a pedestrian cross at the crosswalk. Prior to that, I was healthy by every measure.

Immediately after that, I began having excruciating head pain that went on for six months until my primary care physician diagnosed me with post concussive syndrome, a mild traumatic brain injury, and referred to a neurologist. Because my body was locked in a cycle of intense pain with no relief, the neurologist recommended I take very strong pain medication to break the cycle but warned me if I looked up the medication I would find it had alarming side effects. That’s not my kind of solution, so I declined and asked if he had any other suggestions.

He responded that he’s seen acupuncture help. I ran with that suggestion, and right away the pain reduced. After one session I could bend down to pick something up from the floor without lightning bolts of pain exploding in my head. I saw benefits from the acupuncture sessions I had regularly for several months and then at the beginning of covid moved to a different part of the country so my sessions stopped.

At that point, the pain was no longer constant; I could get up or down without having to grab my head and squeeze it as hard as I could to counteract the pain. The improvement was amazing. As the pain receded, I began to be aware of other symptoms that I didn’t notice since the pain was so intense it had blocked everything else out. I was still left with intense headaches, nausea and a strong proclivity towards serious dehydration.

The dehydration happened a few times a week for nine months of the year; it was a relief that it was only once a week in the winter months. This went on for three years. I would do everything I could to avoid getting dehydrated – staying out of the sun, drinking lots of fluids beginning as soon as I woke up (I usually drank water with lemon and salt throughout the day), resting for hours daily. I was afraid to do anything to exert myself because I didn’t want to trigger the cycle. I could tell what made it worse (activity, travel, tiredness) but not how to keep it from happening.

It seemed hopeless because inevitably I would start to get headaches, which would intensify with horrendous nausea and only culminate when I would painfully throw up massive quantities until even the gastric juices in my stomach were gone. There was no way to stop the cycle once it began; it was such a horrible feeling every time knowing I had no way out except to wait for it to escalate until it was finally over. Then I spent most of the following day in bed recovering; if I was lucky I had a day in between of feeling somewhat normal before the cycle began.

After three years, I said to myself, I can’t live like this anymore. At 48, I was too young to be that limited. Mainstream medicine had no answer for me; I had been told this sometimes passes with time, but after three years, it was clear that wasn’t happening. There were no other answers. It took so much energy to manage the chronic unwellness; people didn’t see what I was going through because I didn’t talk much about it, and I also rested a lot before I had to go anywhere or do anything so I was able to function in public. I looked pretty normal but was always close to the edge of feeling horrible. Sometimes after a dehydration cycle completed I would rue how people who saw me a few hours before and would have assumed I was completely fine would be shocked if they saw how sick I was a short time later.

I remember one Shabbos afternoon talking to my son who was visiting. I made some comment about not having so much energy, and he said something like, “Come on, Mommy, you always have energy!” I thought he was making fun of me because I was so far from that and I asked him what in the world he was talking about. He said he everyone always told him “Your mother is Superwoman” and that’s how I’d always been. That’s when I realized how successful I had been in hiding how badly I was doing from my children who were married; my son had no idea that I was really struggling to cope with daily life. My children living at home did see how often I had headaches, how often I rested, how little I could do around the house, and they were amazingly helpful in picking up the slack left behind for all I couldn’t do.

My husband and I appreciate different topics and different writing styles, and he bought an excellent book titled Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, by Joe Dispenza. I picked it up several times but despite being interested in the topic, it didn’t resonate with me and I couldn’t get through it. But months later when I was at this juncture and I said, I can’t live like this anymore, I picked up this book and it opened to the section about healing serious health issues. He writes about the science of why and how a person can change his health dramatically through his thinking.

Suddenly the writing style didn’t seem dry and uninteresting. I determined that I was going to get better. To do it, I was going to train my brain to imagine a different possibility and I was going to live in the future image of being a healthy person at the same time I was experiencing my present symptoms. That was the idea, but I couldn’t understand how it was possible because my baseline was feeling rotten most of the time.

My entire identity had became a person who had gone through this accident and was living with the aftereffects. It seemed remote to imagine that I could have energy, feel well, exercise or stand in the sun for even a minute without fear of getting dehydrated. My limited physical capacity was who I had become.

And I had to completely let it go of all of it if I was going to heal.

I listened to the testimonies of others who had healed themselves from very serious ailments in this way; I had to fix it in my mind that it was completely doable and logical before I began. If they could do it for something much more serious, I could do it for a mild brain injury. After the accident I had tried positive thinking and meditations and affirmations but they had all fallen short – they helped me accept my limitations and view them as an opportunity to live more slowly, embrace intentionality and be able to be a basically positive person despite how I was feeling. But they didn’t help me move past the physical brain trauma.

I was finally ready to start and committed to use this process to heal. As soon as I put the youngest two boys on their school bus in the morning, I would lay down in a spot I loved on a sofa on our patio.

Then I would begin listening to a meditation; I used meditations by Joe Dispenza available free on Youtube. Part of the process was to clearly picture my present situation, and then to imagine how I wanted to be, and to internalize the feeling of the second image. I began in my mind to actively picture and feel that I was healthy.

After a week, something shifted and I started to do things that I couldn’t and wouldn’t do previously because it was outside of my capacity. At 8 am one summer morning, I started working in the garden, moving landscaping rocks around. I was perspiring when my husband came home a while later and I said to him jubilantly, “Look at me! Do you see something different?”

He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to notice. I exclaimed happily, “I’m sweating! I’ve been working outside!” Writing that makes me tear up, remembering how emotional that was for me. I hadn’t done that for three years. I was afraid to exert myself and definitely to sweat. Lifting heavy rocks? Working outside when the sun was up? Getting hot? Not a chance of any of those things happening. I couldn’t take the risk since experience had shown me that doing any of those things would trigger the dehydration cycle.

I continued living as if I didn’t experience any brain trauma, while hesitant to share anything about my process. I knew what I was experiencing was real but I didn’t want to share anything until a long time had gone by with no symptoms. There was a fear in the back of my mind that maybe the symptoms were waiting to cascade back into my life.

Months went by, and the symptoms didn’t return. While I occasionally get headaches and sometimes I feel nauseous, it’s been almost two years now that I haven’t experienced that dehydration cycle. While waiting until enough time had passed to share my experience with you, I got busy with other things and it seemed like old news to write about it when there were things that were current to write about.

This happened in the summer of 2022. My daughter got married in the winter of 2023, and two weeks before her wedding, we were approached about taking the twins. You can now understand why if I had been asked about this anytime in the prior three and a half year period that there was absolutely no possibility of taking on any extra responsibility. It took all my effort and a lot of help from my teen sons and husband to get basic things accomplished day to day.

When I was asked about the children, I was so thankful to have the physical recovery and capacity to seriously consider it. Hashem had helped me recover my health, and now I had the physical and emotional ability to help others. In May 2023, ten months after healing post concussive syndrome, the twins joined the family.

Avivah

Foster care – trying to place children in schools

parenting

Not long ago, a blog reader sent me a copy of an article that appeared in a Hebrew language magazine about foster care. It was so incredibly validating – I have said some of the exact same statements that were quoted, word for word, and I’ve experienced every single situation that was described.

Every single one. Money withheld and owed for a long time – I thought that when they owed me 6000 shekels for the expenses I laid out until I was reimbursed it was a lot. Then the office that the parents used to live in decided to decrease the stipend for the children, and then not to pay it at all, for months. When our social worker approached them about it, they said they want the new location to pay it, even though the file wouldn’t transfer until June 2024 (they began decreasing the funds in December 2023). That finally was indirectly settled when the GAL refused to let them transfer the file to the new area because she doesn’t want to work with new people.

Issues with not being the legal parent – ds7 didn’t have health insurance coverage at all for over a year and a half. Now he has coverage with the clinic associated with his bio parents. I’ve been trying for months to have him transferred to the local clinic that is a three minute walk from my home, where the pediatrician is excellent and is an endocrinologist, the specialty he most needs. Since I’m not his legal parent, I can’t do this; his bio parents have to transfer his file and they don’t want to.

The closest office for the clinic he’s associated with is a twenty minute drive away, and I still can’t take him there because I don’t have a member card for him, and he doesn’t have an Israeli ID number (and if he did, I don’t have him listed on my identity card as my child), so I have no way to get a card for him. His bio father has his card in his wallet. Effectively, that means for two years I’ve been unable to take him to a doctor or dentist, and that has been very stressful and upsetting at times. You might think this would be extremely urgent and would be taken care of very quickly. But no. I keep asking how for the first five years they able to put him on the same clinic as our family and why is it impossible now, but no one seems to know.

Now I’m dealing with school issues and I’m getting very exasperated.

To preface this, when we were initially approached about the twins, I asked if they could be educated in a charedi school framework. That’s not their background, but this is our lifestyle and it was critical to me that they be raised the same as all of our children. I was assured that there was no issue with that; the parents are traditional and are glad to have the kids raised religious. This was a critical point; if they had said no, I wouldn’t have agreed to take the children.

In February, I began researching schooling options for the twins. I know how important it is to have children registered as soon as possible before the class fills up. I researched, called schools, decided on the best option and then checked with my social worker to confirm that I could send them there.

She needed to check. It took weeks to get an answer. Finally I got the response that any school that has the legal status of ‘recognized but not legal’ is not an option; they can only attend public schools. Boom – that took out almost every single charedi school in the country, which have a parochial school status.

I began having sessions with the therapist/foster care advocate, recognizing I’m going to need to build a paper trail to support any choice I make for the twins. That means I don’t make any move until it’s approved with her. In our first meeting, she agreed that the recommendation for ds6 to be placed in a small special ed classroom within a regular school was the right choice for him.

Two months ago I went to the local school placement official at the municipality. I told her I need a charedi school that has a public school status and a small special ed classroom in a charedi school. She told me she can’t help me until she sees the files for the twins, which she’ll need to request and will take two weeks. I told her that she doesn’t need to see anything first; she needs to tell me what the options are within the parameters that I described. She’s new and doesn’t know any of the necessary information, but told me she’s pretty sure there’s no option for a small special ed classroom for ds. I also told her that it was urgent that this happen immediately as the classes were going to fill up and they wouldn’t have a place.

She told me there’s no rush, placement for special ed schools hasn’t begun yet. I reminded her that dd needs a regular school and as it was the beginning of April, it was already very late to register her.

Meanwhile, I continued my own research and found there is one school in Tiberias that has the legal status that we need. I called to register dd and was told they were full, but I explained our situation to the principal and begged her to put dd at the top of the wait list and she agreed that I could register her as a standby. Which I did.

Back I went for a meeting for the foster care advocate with the new information that the school option for ds6 isn’t available. I was and continue to be very concerned they will place him at a school for children with emotional and behavioral issues, which would destroy him (I don’t mean that hyperbolically). The therapist agreed with me completely and said our next option to explore is for him to go into a regular first grade classroom with an aide.

Off I went to find a boys’ school that has the necessary status. I found one, called and was told they are full. I explained our situation and how important it is since I have no other charedi educational option available. I was told that I should have contacted them much earlier and what did I expect if I waited so long to register him. Very pleasant.

The following week I learned that dd won’t be accepted for the coming year since there’s no room in the school where I registered her.

I told a friend that I’m holding on to the belief that Hashem has something better for both kids because after a tremendous amount of time and effort, every door is slamming shut in my face.

I kept our social worker appraised of everything going on and at this point she called the municipality rep to get assistance. The representative called her supervisor to get more information and a few days later I got a call reminding me about our meeting six weeks earlier, and that now she had an option for a small special ed classroom for ds6 in a charedi school in a city an hour from us. I did a bit of research, heard really good things and a day later called her and asked her to submit his file immediately for registration. (Special ed enrollment has to go through the municipality.) I was ebullient and so thankful to have found a good option for him.

As far as finding a school for dd, I’m still looking.

I went into the municipality a couple of days ago to make sure the representative understands that dd has special ed status and is still entitled to transportation even if she’s going into a regular classroom. At that point I learned that she still hasn’t sent ds’s file in. Why not? I enquire. I thought it was a done deal and it was a huge weight off of my shoulders.

In order to transfer his educational file to the new school, she needs a signature from his parents on a confidentiality waiver. She’s been in touch daily with our social worker, because to get that signature the social worker has to forward it to someone else, who has to forward it to the parents social worker, who has to give it to the parents to sign, and then the process has to be reversed as it’s sent back. Over a week had passed with no signed waiver.

I called the school principal for the boy’s special ed track. I told him about ds, told him about our situation, and asked if he could please reserve a space for him in the first grade. No, he has numerous inquiries every week, doesn’t know who we are and if we’re seriously interested in enrollment, and even if he did, he hasn’t yet seen ds’s file to appraise if he’s a good candidate for their program.

I called my social worker to find out if I can physically drive the paperwork for the file to the principal and place it in his hands. No, that’s not legally allowed.

She explained that in the past it was very difficult to get the parents to sign this waiver. Both signatures have to be on the waiver and now they’re separated, further complicating the signature acquisition. One parent isn’t tech savvy and neither are motivated to sign this.

I am willing to drive to each of the cities the parents are living in and give them the paperwork to sign, but my identity is blocked from them so I can’t contact them directly. I asked, can’t the parents’ social worker physically give them the form and get the signatures? No, it’s not that important to them.

You know what is important to all the people involved? That they come to our home for another visit to inspect how pink the curtains and sheets in dd’s bedroom are. They’re right now preparing a group to come visit in the next week or two, with supposedly four different social workers (almost all who have already visited previously and given their approval) in addition to the supervisor of the foster care agency and the GAL. All coming from different cities to convene on my home because the GAL has been very negative about us so they want to have more eyes on our situation.

But I can’t get any assistance to get a signature so the children will have a suitable school placement.

I am mentally exhausted by all the meetings and phone calls that I’ve been involved with since February, and here we are at the beginning of June and neither of them have a school placement yet.

Well, they have to have a school, don’t they? Yes, they do. And if these options fill up before our children are registered, they will force us to enroll them in minimally religious or secular public schools, which would delight the GAL but would be antithetical to our home environment and put the children in a situation of dramatically conflicting values and behavioral norms.

Here’s a small example from when the kids first came to us and continued attending their secular kindergartens in the city they had previously lived in. I sent dd in dresses and knee socks, and learned that when she would wear a jumper, the assistant would take it off, supposedly because dd was hot (in her air conditioned classroom). Since she was wearing the thin dance shorts that many people use for little girls in place of underwear, they let her wear just this and the shirt, rolling up her shirt sleeves, pushing down her socks. Then they would put the dress back on when it was time to go home. I was appalled to learn she was running around her class in her underwear; the social worker got involved and learned the teacher had already spoken to the assistant and told her it wasn’t unacceptable to do something against a family’s wishes. It was such a relief when I sent her to a religious kindergarten this year and all the girls were dressed like her.

It’s really important for the children’s well-being that they are educated in a way that is compatible with the family they live with.

At this point the municipality representative is stressed about the time factor as well. I didn’t point out that if she had started the process two months ago when I first turned to her that there wouldn’t be the urgency that now exists.

This is why when I hear about how foster care agencies offer so much support and assistance, I mentally snort. I have found the bureaucracy to make everything so much more complicated and take so much more time. As I said above, it’s been two years without health insurance for ds7 and every time I ask about it, they tell me it’s in the process of being taken care of. Now this signature is in ‘the process of being taken care of’, and my past experience does not give me reassurance or comfort that things will be done in a timely way for the best interest of the children.

I do believe it will all work out in the end, so I’m trying to stay positive and optimistic.

Avivah

Stuck in the car for 5 hours with bored kids – an opportunity?

parenting, personal development

On Sunday morning, my husband and I traveled to Jerusalem with the five youngest kids (almost 15, 11, 7, 6, 6) to be with my oldest son’s family for the “chalake” (first haircut) of his three year old son.

I was apprehensive about attending; this was the first time since the twins came over a year ago that we planned an outing like this and I was concerned about how they would deal with the long travel time, the large number of people, and the kind of effort it would take to supervise them.

But they handled it beautifully! I marvel thinking about how carefully we had to navigate every small situation a year ago, and now there were loads of people in an unfamiliar setting with stimulation of all kinds, mostly things I didn’t know to expect so didn’t prepare them for – and they took it in stride and enjoyed it all.

The chalake was beautiful; our son and his wife are a great team, it was a beautiful event and of course our grandson is adorable. It was lovely to be with all of the extended family on our side and my daughter-in-law’s side, whom we only see when there’s a family celebration. The company and food was wonderful and we spent four hours there instead of the two hours we anticipated.

We finally headed for home at 5:30 pm but hit unexpected delays on the highway. By 7 pm, I thought it would be a good idea time to stop at a rest stop to give everyone dinner and let them run around. My past experience has been that stopping for a break at a time of congestion ends up saving travel time: by the time you get back on the road the traffic is flowing freely again so you can travel much more quickly.

That was unfortunately not the case that night. After an extended dinner and play break at the rest stop, I assumed the children would fall asleep quickly in the car; if we had been traveling faster than five to ten kilometers an hour, that probably would have happened.

Instead, our tired and overextended children couldn’t stop picking at each other, physically and verbally. I commented to my husband that all that irritability is why people have screens in their vehicles to keep their children occupied instead of having to deal with their boredom and behaviors.

We’re faced with choices every day; how you respond time after time determines the person you become. My husband and I could verbally agitate about our own exasperation at the unusual congestion at a time and place there is rarely traffic and the difficulties of dealing with the kids in this situation. We could try to control our growing irritation at the repeated picking at one another, and try to patiently remind them to keep their hands to themselves and speak kindly.

Or we could embrace it as an opportunity. If it was sent to us, there’s something better we could do with it than tolerate it.

We decided to put on some music to shift the mood.

It instantaneously changed the atmosphere in the car. Not just for the kids, but for me. I was driving and was so tired that speaking was an effort; I had been up since 4:15 am and it was about 8:30 pm by that time. Initially I wanted to listen to something different we hadn’t heard before, and then realized the kids would enjoy familiar music much more.

So my husband put on a song they knew well and the kids cheered in delight! That was the end of any conflict and quarreling for the next two hours. We sang song after song together for the next ninety minutes, sometimes with clapping, sometimes with exaggerated funny or happy voices.

At 10 pm the traffic finally broke up and after ten minutes of driving at a normal speed, the four youngest were all soundly asleep. I turned off the music and my husband and I enjoyed an adult conversation for the final forty minutes of the drive. (Yes, it took us over five hours to get home.) At 10:45 pm we finally got home and we walked the kids straight to their beds.

It wasn’t an easy trip, but it was a very good trip, and all of us were left with a good feeling about the entire day.

Avivah