Avivah Werner

Category: Parenting

  • Keeping my ‘side of the street’ clean

    Last week I shared about an unpleasant experience I had, in which someone said some insulting things to me.  (I’ve edited last week’s post to remove any mention of this incident, to protect the privacy of the person involved in case there are any local intrepid sleuths who will work out his identity based on clues in what I wrote. :))

    I thought a lot about what was said to me and where it was coming from.  My dh, who is Mr. Wonderful Character, easy going, and doesn’t let things bother him, told me that the person has an ego issue and has shown himself in every conversation to be easily offended and hard to please, and to stop looking for what my part in this was because I didn’t do anything wrong.  But I wanted to clear the air with this  person, and felt I had to honestly consider his feelings in order to do that.

    After trying hard to put myself  in his shoes and see it from his perspective, I thought perhaps I could have sounded as if I wasn’t valuing him enough for his efforts.  I decided that when I saw him again in person, I would apologize for any slight and let him know how much we appreciated what he’s done  in a given area.  Today I happened to see him again, so I went over to him and asked him if I could speak with him a few minutes.

    I told him that I realized I had said something that might have given him the impression we don’t value his input and help fully, and that I wanted him to be aware that we are very appreciative of his concern and time.  I apologized, then when I paused, he coldly said, “Okay, fine.”  And turned away without a further comment.

    I was a little surprised, honestly.  Though I certainly didn’t expect an apology from him for the harsh things he said,  I expected a bit more of a response than this!  In order to keep myself from falling into negative thoughts about him, I had to remind myself of my goal in speaking to him.

    The goal wasn’t to manipulate him with kindness and make him like me. It was to take responsibility for my actions, and to be sure to keep ‘my side of the  street’ clean.  I can’t do anything about what he said, how he chooses to respond to me, or if he wants to stew in hostility against me forever.  But I’ve cleared my emotional side of things – I was careful in my original conversation about his feelings, had no desire to be hurtful, and apologized for any unintended slight today.  And now I’ve done my part.

    Though I apologized because I thought it was something that would be of value to him, it was really me who benefited from the apology – now I can have peace of mind about the situation.  I don’t want to know that someone bears a grudge against me and speaks badly about me to others, without knowing that I’ve done my best to right the situation.  He can choose to hold on to his hostility (and apparently this is the choice he’s making) but it doesn’t mean I have get sucked into it – now I can let go of this scenario so it’s not taking up space in my head.  Which gets overly crowded without all of this drama.  🙂

    Avivah

  • Yerushalayim themed kindergarten party

    This past week I attended a special party at ds5’s kindergarten, as the gala event following weeks of learning about Yerushalayim (Jerusalem).   It was only for mothers and the children in the kindergarten, but the day of the party the teacher told me that I was welcome to bring my older girls.  They were happy to come along and share in their little brother’s excitement about his special party – there have been lots of preparations going on in his class!

    Ds5 with his big sisters in front of Kotel/Western Wall display

    It was beautifully set up, and what was unusual for Israel is that the children made everything – often you see a huge amount of teacher decoration and wonder where the kids’ part was.  This particular teacher is extremely good; she and I have very similar ideas about education at this age.  She does lots of educational games, integrates writing and math into the games, and so on, so the kids think of learning as fun.

    Every corner of the classroom had different aspects of the Yerushalayim theme  – for example, one side had a model of the famous outdoor market, Machaneh Yehuda – the boys had made tiny miniature fruits and vegetables and fish from clay, rolls of fabric from small pieces of cloth.

    Another corner had a replica of the Biblical Zoo, another was the transportation of Jerusalem and the boys built a city of blocks with roads and cars leading to it…all very nice.

    Then the boys performed a few songs – they were so cute!  The teacher had put music on for them to sing with, and as I listened, I noticed the music was from an American boys’s choir, with the American accents singing Hebrew words.  I suddenly and unexpectedly got a big lump in my throat hearing those familiar accents.  An Israeli mother commented to during the singing that ds5 was singing just like an Israeli, and he really was!  He was very cute as he did the hand motions to accompany the songs.

    Light refreshments were provided, and a couple of mothers brought themed cakes for the party – here’s one that was decorated as the Western Wall.  I enjoy baking but my creativity in doing stuff like this is very low!

    This is the second time that all the mothers have had an opportunity to meet, and with time, these are people that I would look forward to getting to know over the years as we would continue to meet for school events.  However, it looks like I’ll be sending ds5 to a different school next year than most of his peers.  Seriously, I don’t think that making a decision about first grade should be so heart wrenching.  But it is, and not because I’m overemotionalizing about it.

    Maybe I’ll write another post about the social realities here, the fear people have about sending to a school that’s different than their neighbors, the frustration I feel that everyone – everyone – that I’ve spoken to about the concerns I have regarding the popular local boys’ school choice seems to agree with me but practically still keep their kids in the same educational framework…

    Ds5 and best friend – hopefully when the year ends their relationship will continue

    For now, I’ll say just that going to these events is a bittersweet feeling; I hope that in the future we won’t be viewed as no longer belonging socially in the same way we do now.

    Avivah

  • Ds13’s big surprise

    I wanted to upload the very fun video of this special surprise for ds13, and waited until dd17 was available since I wanted her help with editing it before posting.  Unfortunately, tonight she told me when she loaded the video along with all of the pictures from the bar mitzva onto her computer, there was a snafu and everything was deleted.  This really feels like a loss to me (and dd’s even more upset about it than me); the video captured a very special memory, and the pictures from the bar mitzva were the first ones of our family all together for over a year and a half which I had also looked forward to sharing here.  But I can still verbally describe the surprise to you!

    Ds13 has been best friends with a certain boy since he was five years old.  It was very hard for him to say goodbye when we left America, and as a final parting comment to ds, his friend said with a big smile, “See you in a few months at the bar mitzva!”  Little did I know that this twelve year old really meant it.

    He got a job every day after school and started saving all the money he earned towards his ticket.  He earned a substantial amount, and family members contributed the rest, knowing about his relationship with ds.  He arrived in Israel on Thursday, then was picked up from the airport by a relative.  Later in the afternoon, he traveled by bus from Jerusalem to here with the daughter of a very good friend of mine who is studying here for the year, who was also coming for the bar mitzva.

    (By the way, this arrangement was made totally without my involvement or mentioning any names or details to either of the parties involved, which was wild.  This young lady mentioned her plans for the weekend to the daughter of a friend of ds13’s best friend’s grandmother – or something like that – and someone along the line figured out that the twelve year old boy coming from the US was going to the same bar mitzva as this girl, so they arranged for him to meet her so he wouldn’t have to travel alone.  The statistical likelihood of this connection being made in the few hours after his arrival is very small, but it just goes to show what a small country this is!)

    So ds’s friend called to ask me what the scenario for the surprise would be, and I told him it was his surprise, and he should tell me what he wanted to do.  We worked out that dd17 and ds13 would meet the bus a few minutes after it arrived, giving his friend a chance to hide and then trail them back to our house.  Then he would knock at the door, I’d have ds answer it, and voila – the surprise!

    But then I thought, what if his friend lost sight of them?  I didn’t want him to get lost on the way!  So I slightly rearranged it so that dd15 would leave a few minutes early, meet the friend, and then they’d wait together a few minutes for the the other two kids to meet the seminary girl.  And, I thought, if ds answered the door, none of the rest of us would be able to see his reaction.  So I’d have to have his friend come into the main living area where we’d all see the reunion.

    I asked him to call when he arrived so I could send dd15 to meet him, and he did.  I sent everyone out as planned, staggering it so ds13 wouldn’t see dd15 going out, but when they got to the bus stop, no one was there!  They finally came home without our guests; a short time later our guests called, it turns out they’d gotten off a stop early and gone into the local mall.

    So we sent everyone out again.  Dd17 and ds13 returned with the suitcase of both guests (ds thinking they both belonged to the girl – I told him he should go along to help bring everything), and then a few minutes later, there was a muffled knock at the door.  I answered it, and there was his friend!  I motioned him to come in, and went back to the living room without giving any indication of anything.  Ds13 was on the couch looking at a magazine, not having heard the light tapping at the door.

    His friend waited a couple of minutes while peering out at ds from around the wall of the entrance hallway, suddenly dashed toward him on the couch, jumping with a big plop next to him with his arm around his shoulders.  Ds13 got a slightly annoyed look, as if, ‘which of my little siblings is pestering me now?’, and looked up to tell whoever it was to stop.  And then he looked right into his best friend’s face!  He was so shocked that he looked almost dazed, then gave him a big hug while he kept repeating, “Oh my gosh, what are you doing here?”

    It was really beautiful; in the video you could see ds18 in the background watching with a big smile, and my mom smiling on the sidelines, but all of us watching had big smiles.  The older girls knew about the surprise for a while, and ds18 learned about it when they all went out to meet the bus.  Watching this video afterwards, I got very choked up, and so did my mom.  Dd17, who videoed their meeting,without knowing what was going to happen, managed to catch all of it from the beginning to end, and you could really feel the emotion of it all, even without sound.

    I’ll share more about the bar mitzva in my next post, but to say it enhanced the occasion for ds13 would be minimize the experience.  My older kids said that it’s strange that while so much has changed and we’re living in Israel now, somehow it seems perfectly normal to see the two of them together here – it’s just the same as always, but in a different country!

    This morning they left to spend a few days in Jerusalem together – they gave us a basic itinerary of what they want to do, but I’m sure that wherever they go, they’ll have an amazing time together!

    Avivah

  • A day of bar mitzva preparations

    Today has been a busy day from the minute I woke up!

    My mom was scheduled to arrive at 5:30 am today, but we don’t have any way to get to the airport that early.  The trains run through the night, but buses don’t, and from our city, we have to take a bus to connect with the train.  So dd17 went to Haifa last night, spent the evening with friends, and got up super early to take the train to the airport in Tel Aviv.

    My mom arrived at 6 am, and at 7:45, just after ds12 and I were commenting that she and dd17 must already be on the train to come home, I got a call from her – dd didn’t show up.  This was a little concerning since dd is super responsible, and I knew she planned to take a train that would get her in by 6 am.  This call coincided with the littles needing to leave to school and  my husband needing to leave to a job interview, so there was a bit too much going on for a very overtired me (I woke up so tired that I told myself I’d take a nap as soon as the littles went to school – but I didn’t) for me to feel relaxed while I was trying to figure out what to do.  After my first frantic thoughts of ‘oh, no’, I suggested to my mom that she wait another 45 minutes and then if dd wasn’t there, I’d come get her (about a three hour trip in each direction).

    Fortunately it wasn’t long before we got a call that they met each other in the airport – there was a mix up about where we had said the meeting place would be, and though they were both there for over two hours by that point, dd had been sticking to the agreed on meeting place and my mom was walking around, so they kept missing each other.  A little frustrating but the main thing is they found each other!

    Back at home, dd15 and I were planning to use the day to do the bulk of the cooking for the bar mitzva this Shabbos.  We prepared a number of salads, chicken, and desserts; though there are more things left for tomorrow morning than I had planned (I only wanted to bake challah then), it’s not overwhelming.   Dd17 made a few more beautiful layer cakes after I listed what we were baking last week, and dd15 made a couple of large pudding layer cakes for lunch dessert (one strawberry, one lemon).

    Ds12 went with dh to get a suit in Haifa last week, and he was so happy with the place he raved about it to his older brother.  So they agreed it would be a good place to go for ds18 to freshen up his wardrobe, plus ds18 wanted to buy some things for ds12.  Ds18 came directly from Jerusalem to Haifa, and ds13 took the bus there to meet him; they spent the whole day there together.

    I went down to the hall we’re renting for the weekend to get the keys and got into a conversation with a man in his eighties who works there.  He told me how Orthodox Jewish women are oppressed, and how women are treated better in the secular world – this was spurred by his question about why we were renting the hall, and when I said a bar mitzva, he said to the other person working there, a foreign worker who wasn’t sure a bar mitzva was for a boy or girl,”it’s for a boy’, they don’t care about the girls”.)  I don’t mind talks like these, as long as people are reasonable.  After about twenty minutes I told him I had to get home before my mom arrived from the airport, and invited him to join us at the bar mitzva reception on Shabbos morning.  Very nice man – before I left he told me how unusual it is for someone ‘secular’ like him to be able to openly speak to someone ‘religious’ like me.  He’s right, and that’s a shame that we allow ourselves to build walls between ourselves and others who have different lifestyles than us – we’re all just people trying to live life as best as we can.

    My mom and dd17 finally got home at noon (we were originally expecting them by 10 am), and of course my mom immediately unpacked all the stuff she had brought for us.  She really spent a lot of time looking for things she knew we needed, and I appreciated all of her time and effort.  It’s not easy to shop for someone else, particularly for things that involve personal taste.  (My mom and I have different styles, as do I and my girls!)  She didn’t hit the bullseye entirely but she did really well, and even if she hadn’t, I would still appreciate the enormous amount of time she spent going to different places to get things she thought I would need.

    Ds13 came home from his day with ds18 a little before dinner time, and my mom gave him a couple of cards and gifts from friends in the US that they asked her to deliver.  He told me it was the best day he could think of and listed all the things that made it so nice!  I didn’t tell him that his day was going to be getting even better later that evening, when he got a huge surprise for his bar mitzva.  (I’ll post about this in detail when I have time to upload the video of when he saw his surprise.)

    This morning, dd15 said that we should have made 2 ‘to do’ lists; one for us, and for to give out jobs to people who keep calling to ask what they can do to help!  That’s something I really appreciate about living in Israel – people truly want to help in some way and be involved.  In the last couple of days I’ve had a few people ask me what they could cook or bake for me, and today got three more requests to help.  These aren’t necessarily all coming from people I know well – I don’t know many people here well – but from people I’ve gotten to know on a casual basis (three of ds4 and ds5’s teachers have all repeatedly offered to help).  I had things pretty much organized by this point, though dd15 pointed out that I could have asked them to make dips, since I only have a couple of those so far.  And those who asked before I had it all cooked/baked myself are definitely helping out – two of the three kugels we’re serving for the lunch meal are being prepared by other people.

    Just three weeks ago, I was feeling so ‘blah’ about this bar mitzva, feeling alone and lonely, and now I’m in such a different headspace.  I’m so warmly appreciative about every one of our guests coming from outside of Karmiel to spend Shabbos with us, and look forward to seeing many more people at the reception.

    For the meal following the reception, despite out efforts to keep things small, our count has gone from 50 to 70 (this happens very easily since for a Shabbos meal you’re inviting entire families rather than couples – we had to really limit this since it could get huge so quickly) , so dh had to go out today to buy more groceries.  It’s still pretty small though, relatively.

    Thankfully, our plans seem to be moving along nicely even though I don’t feel like I’m especially busy – I mentally predicted I’d be running at top speed to get everything done in time these last couple of days.  I know that tomorrow there will probably be a good number of little details that fall below my radar that may not get done until it’s too late to do anything about them, and I’ve mentally told myself it’s okay.  Better to be a pleasant and calm person than to stress about having every single detail exactly as I want, if it looks like those details aren’t happening as I would like.  It’s so easy to lose sight of why you’re doing all of this, and get tense and irritable with those you love the most – I don’t want that to be me.

    Avivah

  • Government funded playgroup for Israeli 3 year olds next year

    This morning my husband came home with our mail – our mailbox is about a five minute walk away, in a direction we don’t usually go in, so we check it about once a week.

    Thanks to my new subscription to the Shaar Hamatchil, the easy Hebrew language newspaper, I have been an educated Israeli citizen for the last three weeks.  (Said tongue in cheek.)  On last week’s front page was an article about a new law that just passed – the mandatory age for school children has been dropped from 5 to 3.  Currently, children who are in kindergarten in Israel have fully subsidized education, and apparently beginning in the coming year, three year olds will have their full day daycare experience paid for by taxpayer dollars as well (it’s not clear to me if this would apply to the programs that end at 1 pm).  Yay!  You can just hear the cheers around the  nation.

    Anyway, I’m not going to go into my thoughts about if this is a good thing or not.  Obviously if you would have to pay these funds privately and now you don’t, you’ll be happy.  And it’s not clear to me that the government is lowering the mandatory school starting age with this law or not, which would be a bad thing since lowered starting ages doesn’t correlate well with national academic success.

    Here’s something that struck me as interesting and ironic, though.  In our mail we received approval for ds12’s hot lunch program that we filed and paid for in August.  Not so speedy processing, but nothing new for government agencies.  And as parents of a child who will be three in the coming school year, we also received a registration form for school.  Now how in the world could an incredibly inefficient government pass the law just one week ago, and already have the forms in my mailbox?  This seems strange to me, and though there are lots of areas of government in which increased efficiency would be welcome, I’m wondering about this incredible and unusual efficiency for a brand new law.  I’m guessing it was a done deal for a while now and they were just waiting for the official vote to roll it out.

    I can’t help but wonder how this new law will affect the choices of parents who might otherwise consider keeping their child home at this age.  And since it seems the law applies to full day daycare, will more people opt for the longer day? After all, it’s nice to have the kids out of the house and it gives us more time at home to get things done without them being in the way – and it’s paid for, so why not?

    Earlier this year, ds18 commented to me that it must be pretty dull for ds2 to be home alone with me, after being used to the stimulation of so many siblings and constant action who were home all day.  Then one day he was home with the two of us when everyone else was in school, and he told me clearly saw how nice it was for ds2 to be home.   Not because I do anything exciting – I do the same basic things as everyone, getting the house in order, cooking, some errands.  People constantly talk about how important stimulation is for young children, they rarely talk about the need of a child for quiet space.  Being constantly stimulated is not a good thing.

    In any case, these aren’t forms I’ll be filling in and sending out!

    Avivah

  • Is it fair to have children closely spaced?

    I started writing this post over a year and a half ago, and I had to smile when I recently checked my drafts file, since so many of the topics that I wrote about then are still things I think about!

    There’s a lot of strong opinion on the topic of ideal spacing of one’s children.  This is a highly personal decision that is fraught with emotion – I know I’ve had a negative knee jerk reaction to reading some of what is written on this topic, and I’ve had to remind myself that people are entitled to do whatever is right for them.

    I’d like to address to a particular sentiment regularly expressed by real food devotees, the nutritional argument.  Those in the real food camp (where I consider myself) try to follow traditional food practices – to eat food as it was eaten for generations, because this has been key in the health of many generations.   As we’ve gotten away from this inherent wisdom of our bodies, our collective health has suffered.

    Many people have noted the significant spacing between children in traditional societies, and felt that this is important to implement in our lives.  This is in order to give a mother time in which she can rebuild her nutritional stores after being depleted by pregnancy (and breastfeeding).  An unborn child can only ‘take’ from the reserves that the mother has in store; if it’s not there, his body won’t be able to use it.  And by carefully spacing one’s children, each child can be granted his “birthright of perfect health” (sorry, lost the complete Sally Fallon quote I wanted to share with you).

    Now obviously, since I’ve had nine children born within fifteen years,  you don’t have to be a math whizzard to work out that I haven’t followed the ideal child spacing of three to four years between children!    And I’m not going to be an apologist for that.  Rather, I want to question what I perceive to be a dogmatic belief that ideal nutrition trumps the value of bringing children into the world, as well as the idea that you can eliminate any variables in the development of an unborn child.

    (Parenthetically, something that is usually not mentioned when making the argument about what traditional societies did regarding child spacing, is that this was accomplished in large part because men had several wives and weren’t intimate with each wife for a lengthy period of time after childbirth.  True, we can replicate traditional spacing by using birth control rather than polygamy, but long term usage of chemical birth control (versus natural family planning) comes with it’s own related health concerns.  (Edited to add: how timely that after posting this I saw Kelly’s post about the dangers of birth control!  Definitely take a look so you can see some of the issues involved.)

    There are those who feel passionately enough about this topic that they are willing to not have another child at all if it means that he won’t be conceived from a position of nutritional strength.  I respect that this is their belief and priority, and there would be a lack of integrity for someone who believed this to make any different choice.  For me, it’s not a choice I have chosen, even knowing all that I do about how prenatal nutrition affects a growing child.

    I’m going to write a post (hopefully sooner rather than later!) detailing the physical differences that I’ve noted in the  jaw structure of each of our nine children depending on what I ate during pregnancy as well as birth order.  And though I can see that some have better facial bone structure than others, I don’t believe in even the tiniest part of me that because one had teeth that were more crowded than another and needed braces, that I shortchanged them or made a mistake by bringing them into this world.

    I believe that there’s an inherent value to having a child, a spiritual piece of eternity that a mother can be part of.  That doesn’t mean that no matter what your current reality is, that having a baby is a good idea right now.  As I said earlier, this is an extremely personal decision and I can only share the criteria that I personally use in determining if pregnancy is a good idea at this time – a woman’s physical and emotional readiness to nurture a child.

    While there are nutritional concerns that the expectant mother would benefit by addressing when children are close in age by being particularly careful that she has a high nutrient diet,  I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that there are benefits to a mother and child to being spaced more closely.  Each child has a constant playmate and companion, which often develops into a close relationship that is maintained over the years.  When children are each other’s entertainment, this makes the physical aspect of parenting much easier than for a mom of a singleton or those who are widely spaced.

    A mother absolutely should not deplete herself  to the point that she has nothing left to give.  But there’s a lot of ground between absolute physical exhaustion, and striving for the physical perfection of child.  It’s this sentiment of idealizing perfection that I’m disturbed by in the real food community.  I’m not a fan of striving for perfection in any area, since I think it’s stressful, depleting, guilt inducing, and not productive.  (Excellence, yes, but definitely not perfection!)

    It’s true that the mother of closely spaced children isn’t likely to be able to replenish her nutritional stores like someone who has worked on it assiduously for several years without the draw from pregnancy.  However, let’s not forget that there’s plenty a woman can do to eat well during pregnancy to improve her unborn baby’s health.  This is not an all of nothing process.  (I’ve written about guidelines for high quality prenatal nutrition here.)

    And on the other side of the equation, there are no guarantees in life.  There’s a conviction in the real food camp that if you eat well enough, nothing can go wrong with your child’s prenatal development.  Guess what?  It doesn’t always work like that.  It’s wonderful that there are so many things that we can affect with good nutrition, and this is very empowering.  But there are always going to be potential issues we can’t control for, as comforting as it is to think that we can.

    What do you think the ideal child spacing is?  How has that worked for you and your children?  

    Avivah

    (This post is part of Monday Mania, Real Food 101, Fat Tuesday, Traditional Tuesdays, and Real Food Wednesdays.)

  • Toddler repeatedly leaving bedroom at bedtime

    >>my son (2.5) takes 3 hours to go to sleep now- he finds any excuse to come out of his room, and if i lock the door he screams and i cant bare it. hell ask for food, tissues, bandaids and anything else.  PLEASE any advice is gold right now!<<

    I wouldn’t suggest locking the door when your son goes to bed, since it’s a scary thing for a child.  It’s much better to leave it open when he goes to sleep so he can see that even though he’s going to sleep, you are still there for him.

    Here are a couple of things to consider before taking any action steps: is he tired when you put him to bed?  Is he taking a long or late nap during the day and he’s really not ready for sleep later in the evening?  If not, maybe he needs to take a shorter nap during the day, more time outdoors in the afternoon to burn off some energy, or more of a bedtime ritual to help him unwind.  If he’s tired and ready for sleep when bedtime comes around, go on to the next thing below.

    The next issue is to be sure that bedtime is positive and not punitive.  Look, none of us want to stop doing something we’re enjoying, and for little kids, it’s more fun to be awake than to go to bed.  So we have to make an effort for bedtime to be nice time together.  To start, maybe you can sit next to him for a little while when he goes to bed so he doesn’t feel that bedtime means a sudden big separation.

    Then, once you’re doing the bedtime ritual with a child who is tired and ready for bed, he needs to see you’re consistently having the same expectations of bedtime.  Before he goes to sleep, offer him a drink and remind him that once he’s in bed that’s it.  If he asks for something once he’s in bed, tell him pleasantly but firmly, ‘Now it’s time for bed, tomorrow when you wake up you can have a (whatever it is).’
    Broken record with this – he needs to keep getting the same response again and again, without you escalating emotionally or verbally.  You don’t have to say this forever – if you’ve had enough after three times, you can tell him, “Mommy said we’re not getting/having that right now. Mommy’s not going to talk about it anymore.’  And then don’t talk about it. Just sit quietly next to him and put your finger to your lips with a little bit of a smile (so you don’t look mean and threatening) if he says something.
    Can you visualize this?  Firm and loving.
    Good luck!
    Avivah

  • Struggling to feel mothering is enough of an accomplishment

    I’ve been feeling kind of down lately, and went to sleep last night feeling especially discouraged.  There are a few reasons for that, one of which is that during cold weather it gets into my bones and I feel like huddling under a blanket all day.  (This is definitely related to living in a stone building without insulation or heating.)  Because it’s cold people stay inside more, so then I feel socially isolated and as a person who is energized by interacting with others, I get down when I spend so long hardly seeing anyone outside of my family.  That’s the reality of the winter – when I feel warm and I can see people when I go out, I feel like a different person.

    But a bigger reason is that I’ve been allowing lots of negative and self-defeating thoughts to enter my mind and particularly because of the above situation, those thoughts have been finding fertile soil.  Usually I shake it off pretty quickly and wasn’t going to share about any of this, but then I thought that it would be good for people to realize that we all struggle sometimes.  People have often told me how positive and upbeat I am, but you know what?  It doesn’t always come naturally, and sometimes I have to really work at it.

    So what are some of those negative thoughts that were having free reign running through my mind?  How lazy I am, unproductive, and not accomplishing anything with my life.  Then from there I went on to think about how so many people in the world are able to motivate themselves to do something impressive with their life, and I’m not.  And I won’t, because I don’t have all their strengths and I’m too busy and too tired.  And too busy making excuses about how busy and tired I am when if I really tried, I could be doing more.

    Then I went on to think how everyone else has so many friends and family that care about them, and I don’t.  This has been exacerbated by the reality that my husband and I come from very small families with just one second cousin living in the same country as us, we’re living in a new community where we mostly know people in a casual way, and we’re making a bar mitva in a week and a half that will reflect that.

    And yuck, look at how out of shape I’m getting.  I haven’t exercised for a few weeks (since I use a dvd on the computer and dh is now using my computer all day long), and of course when I’m in this kind of mood I won’t count my daily half hour walk to get my littles from school or the fact that my stamina is better than it has been for a long time.

    So this is kind of how the negative cycle in my mind sometimes sounds, usually most focused on not feeling like I’m accomplishing anything in my life and not so much the latter two issues.  Basically grappling with my identity as a full-time mother.  A few weeks ago I was at a reception when the grandmother of the honoree spoke, and she said something that I really appreciated hearing.  She said that her children have often told her how accomplished she is, but to her, there’s nothing in her life that has been a bigger accomplishment than raising her children.

    Afterwards I went over and thanked her, and told her I was struggling to find value in all that I do every day, since mothering isn’t recognized by the outside world at all.  But this is really the area where I’m most invested at this stage of my life and where I’ll be invested for the foreseeable future.  I told her that the messages from the outside that I needed to be making money or earning a name for myself in some public way sometimes find a foothold in my mind, and it’s hard to continually pat your own back and reassure yourself that what you’re doing is important.   Particularly since I don’t think I’m doing such an outstanding job as a mother right now – I feel adequate, but not amazing (which is how I usually feel).    Parenting is a long term project and there aren’t major milestones on a weekly or monthly basis that you can check off and know you’ve done well.

    She told me she had a similar struggle since she has a sister who has a very successful career, and just being able to honestly speak to someone about this feeling I had, and to hear her validate it and share her own perspective from a lifetime of looking back at what was truly valuable, really was encouraging to me.  This is the kind of message I need to periodically remind myself of when I’m getting too focused on the short term view.

    What else do I find helpful in breaking the cycle of negative thinking?  Writing a gratitude list – I’ve been doing this somewhat irregularly since I was 17, and have found it very valuable in keeping me focused on all of my blessings instead of what I lack.  I also mentally make gratitude lists, but I don’t find this as effective – there’s something about writing things down that makes them register mentally at a deeper level.

    I have to consciously fill my mind with positive thoughts at times like this, even when it’s the last thing I feel like thinking of.  It’s like reprogramming my brain so it will automatically run good programs even when I’m not trying.

    Can you identify with any of this?  How have you resolved any of these feelings for yourself?

    Avivah

  • Young mom protects self and infant from intruder

    Some days it’s a really nice thing to see the news!  This story was from a few days ago, but since my husband’s laptop broke a few weeks ago, he’s using mine most of the day.  That means by the time I can use the computer, it’s usually late in the evening and I’m too tired to post.  But this is worth sharing even four days late.

    An eighteen year old mother of a three month old baby was at home alone, a week after the death of her husband to cancer, when two men began trying to break into her home.  She called 911 and pleaded with them to send help immediately.  In the meantime, she loaded her shotgun and kept it aimed at the door while on the phone.  21 minutes later, no help had yet arrived, and the man battering her door down was finally successful and entered her home.

    Having told the 911 dispatcher what was happening, she asked if she could shoot him if he entered her house.  And basically, she was told to do what she had to do if he entered.  As he came into her home, she shot and killed him.

    There are too many news stories of horrible crimes, particularly against women, because they can’t protect themselves.  Being that one of these men had a twelve inch hunting knife with him, it’s pretty obvious that they weren’t there for a pleasant social call and this would have ended horribly if she hadn’t been armed.  You could almost cry for all that this very young woman has gone through, and that she had the nerves to do what she needed to do to protect herself and child is wonderful.

    I think it’s critical to know how to defend oneself, though unfortunately I don’t know how to shoot.  It’s one of my regrets that I didn’t learn while I was in the US – my husband went to the shooting range but I was pregnant so couldn’t go with him, and then we never got around to it, though we talked about it.  It’s not much of a consolation that at least I learned how to load and aim a handgun.

    The day before this story, a neighbor from the Seattle area in which I used to live told me last week that there have been a recent rash of burglaries in that area, about one a week.  She told me that one homeowner came out with his gun (Seattle being the liberally leaning area that it is, this was expressed with some shock) and held down the attempted robber until the police came.  I thought that was fabulous.  If  more responsible and law abiding people had handguns and knew how to safely use them, we’d see the crime rates drop like a stone, because criminals would think twice before attacking someone if they thought they might encounter serious resistance.

    Avivah

  • Booked a hall for the bar mitzva today

    I’m not a person who waits until the last minute to do things; my feeling is by thinking and planning ahead, you can minimize pressure and stress.  So why in the world am I so not on the ball about our upcoming bar mitzva?

    I started lists…and I left them incomplete.  I kept losing them, and forgetting what I decided, and then making more lists, and losing them…  Every time I thought about the bar mitzva, I felt down, almost depressed.  This is not typical for me.  On Thursday night, I told myself that it was time to stop procrastinating- after all, it was only three weeks away –  so I made calls that night to organize the details of the kiddush for the bar mitzva.

    We were planning to have the  kiddush at the bigger shul that my husband davens (prays) at, followed by the bar mitzva meal, since that day is the actual day of ds’s birthday.  Getting off the phone, I felt even more discouraged and less motivated; I felt such a lack of warmth and connection.  I felt like I was pulling teeth to get basic information, and I felt so frustrated that I couldn’t get an answer to the basic questions of how many people usually showed up to a kiddush, a low and high end estimate.  Everything about the planning was making me feel lonely and alone.

    When I got off the phone, like a flash of light I suddenly realized why I was so unhappy that it was keeping me from doing anything.  I didn’t want to make the bar mitzva in the very large synagogue area, which since it’s in the process of being renovated, has bare cement walls with high ceilings that make it feel cavernous.  The big open space would just highlight how few people we knew and make it feel more lonely.  I didn’t want lots of people who didn’t even know us to be there gobbling up cake, and even worse, I didn’t want no one to show up because they didn’t know us!

    So I did a mental 180 degree turnaround, and determined that we’d do whatever we had to do to have it in a place that we could feel good about it.  This morning we went to take a look at another hall close by, and I feel like the cloud over my head about planning this bar mitzva finally lifted!   It’s a nice open space, with a warm feeling – not huge, but nice.  There’s a full kitchen to use, and an additional room that’s included in the price.  Even though we only needed it for about five hours, we have to pay the bigger amount since they charge for the entire Shabbos, and we have to pay an additional 100 shekels for electricity since whatever lights we need will have to be left on the entire Shabbos.  But that’s okay, since we’ll be able to use it from Friday noon through Saturday midnight, which will make getting ready so much easier!

    It will definitely be more expensive than the other place – because the synagogue basement isn’t yet finished, the fee to use it is very nominal.  But I’ve said before, frugality isn’t about spending as little as you possibly can in every area – that’s called miserliness – but budgeting your funds so that you can spend your money and live your life in the way that is meaningful to you.  So although we do have to be very careful about our expenses, particularly since dh isn’t yet working, to be so cheap on a special event that none of us would enjoy it isn’t really a savings, you know?

    Since we’ve delayed everything, there are no invitations printed yet that have to be changed, so dh was able to make that change today without any difficulty.  It feels so good now to jump into the planning for this now!

    Avivah