Category Archives: Self-Growth

The joy of being known for who you are

aliyah, Self-Growth

You know what I think one of the hardest things about being a new immigrant is?

That you become a one dimensional person without a past.  Every time you meet someone, they have no frame of reference for who you are or what you’ve accomplished.  Every conversation is about you presenting yourself and being evaluated, which is humbling and exhausting. This is true of when you move to anywhere new, but particularly to a new country and culture.

Last night I went to a bar mitzva in Beitar.  I lived in Beitar for six years in the earlier years of my marriage and moved from there to the US fifteen years ago.  I visited for a Shabbos over four years ago but almost all of the people I was friendly with I haven’t seen in a very, very long time.

It was a beautiful bar mitzva.  And it was personally very enjoyable for me.  You know why?  Because I met person after person who I had a history with.  Right after I walked in, someone looked at me and said, “I know you… you’re the shadchan (matchmaker)!”  She didn’t remember my name but remembered I was the one who introduced the couple (over fifteen years ago!) who was making the bar mitzva.

I met someone else whose first birth I attended, three women who attended my childbirth classes, a friend who babysat my daughter when I was still a working mom, a friend who hosted the first parenting class I attended, someone who attended the weekly tehillim gathering in my house.  Last week I was at a wedding in Jerusalem and someone across the table looked straight at me and said, “Avivah, don’t you remember me?”  Of course I did.  Not only did I remember her, but I attended births of her sister and sister-in-law.

It’s really different having conversations with people who you have a history with.  Here’s an example.  When I tell someone I have a history with that I’m homeschooling, the attitude is that homeschooling is unusual but must be okay if I’m doing it.  When I tell someone who I don’t have a history with that I’m homeschooling, I sense people trying to size up if I’m a normal person who is doing something unusual, or a weird person doing something weird.

Our identities are built on years of relationships and activities, and when I moved to Israel I didn’t think about how hard it was going to be start over without the years of accumulated social collateral.  It was hard not to be known for who I was when I moved here, and it’s shifting very quickly now that I moved.

Another reason to be grateful for my move here!

Avivah

Miracles are happening and our moving plans are going forward!

aliyah, Self-Growth

In November dh and I began to reconsider moving to RBS, an idea we put aside last spring.  On Jan. 28, I consciously set an intention to be living in RBS by Pesach, two months later.  Considering that we hadn’t yet signed a purchase agreement on a home, this was an ambitious goal!

There have been a number of bumps in the roads, obstacles that made this vision of mine look highly unrealistic.  With each bump I kept holding on to my desire, reminding myself that while it would be impossible for me to accomplish this goal on my own, what are big obstacles to me are nothing to God.  There have been a lot of steps involved in holding on to my goal – it began with having the courage to admit to myself what I wanted, then having the courage to believe I could have it, and then continuing to believe it would will work out every time some new challenge made it seem impossible.

Remember I told you there were tenants living there and they had a contract to be there until the end of July?  About a month ago I was told that they found a place to move to and our new apartment would be vacant 2 – 4 weeks before we wanted to move in.  This was very exciting, it was the first of the three major pieces that needed to fall into place for us to move – and then those plans fell apart and ten days ago they told me they didn’t know when they would be able to find something else since it’s so hard to find rentals.

I kept holding on to my vision of moving before Pesach, picturing them finding an apartment that would suit their needs very soon.

Three days later, I called them and they told me they found something and would be moving a week later!  Today they moved out, less than a week before we want to move in.

On Thursday I spoke to my lawyer, who said due to a delay in some paperwork they were waiting for from the seller, it would be impossible to close the sale before our moving date.  It looked obvious that we had hit the brick wall at the end of the road.

But I didn’t give up – I still held onto my vision of moving at the end of March.  I decided to contact the sellers and ask them if they would consider letting us move in even if the contract wasn’t closed.  I trusted that whatever would they would say would be God’s answer to me.  If I wasn’t meant to move, it wouldn’t be because I gave up but because it was clear that was what was meant to happen.

While waiting to hear back from the sellers, I contacted our mortgage broker.  I had hoped to close within five weeks of the contract being signed, which is extremely fast for Israel.  Clearly with just two weeks to work with, he would need more time and I wanted to know how much more time he anticipated it would take.

I wasn’t prepared for his answer.  He told me he should be able to push our paperwork through by by Sunday (the day before we move), possibly even by this Thursday.  I already posted about him and told you he’s amazing but this puts him up in the miracle worker category, seriously.  I’ve never ever heard of anyone in this country being able to get their mortgage paperwork done in a week and a half.   I told him I didn’t see how he could do this so fast, and he said, “Well, you told me you scheduled the movers on Monday!”  God has many messengers.

Later that same day the sellers called me and said they’d be willing to let us move in before the sale was finalized if a few conditions were met (all of which we agreed to).  I told them this was our backup plan, not our first choice, and that if things go as expected the sale will be completed before we move.  They were very pleasant to deal with.  It’s a wonderful feeling to know that whatever happens, we can move forward as planned.

All of this happened yesterday and I’m so grateful to have this confirmation a full week before we move!  There’s been a lot of uncertainty.

This experience has been very powerful for me.  Once everything works out, it looks like it was a natural matter of course for things to fall into place as they did.  But when you’re on the other side, it doesn’t look like that at all.  A couple of days ago a friend said that when I told her I was planning to move to RBS for Pesach, she thought to herself, “She’s dreaming, it’s impossible!”

Someone else called me yesterday to tell me she hoped I wasn’t going to be too disappointed when nothing worked out the way that I wanted, that I was hoping for things that weren’t realistic and I needed to accept God’s will and timing.  I told her that this is all about me accepting God’s will and timing – instead of living down to my old ‘realistic’ expectations.

Miracles are happening!

Avivah

The power of interacting with others from a place of inner strength

Self-Growth

inner-strength-2[1]Someone asked me if I’m happy to be leaving Karmiel because of some less than pleasant experiences I’ve had with neighbors, and someone else asked if I’m relieved that once I move I will no longer be the building representative.

The short answer is that I’m not running away from anyone; my neighbors are for the most part nice people but at times I was given the opportunity to work on being compassionate without losing my sense of myself.

While I can’t claim my thinking created miracles (though someone else who used to live in my area said my relationship with one of these people is miraculous), I’ve always been pleasant to my neighbors and am leaving on good or at least neutral terms with them all.

Now for an update on being the building representative!

As the volunteer building representative for my apartment building who handles the finances and maintenance for the building, I’ve experienced some challenges in dealing with people who are used to communicating very aggressively.

This week, I hosted a meeting of building residents for which I had a list of things I wanted to go over.  In addition to electing a new representative to replace me when I move, I also wanted to give a financial report, establish a set policy for dealing with those who don’t pay, get approval for electric repairs, decide about what to do with the tiles I bought that weren’t used, get agreement to hire someone to find the source of the new leaks, and changing to a different cleaner.    Meetings usually take a long time but my goal was to finish the meeting in an hour.

Prior to the meeting, I repeatedly mentally set my intention to have a positive meeting, to be of service and to stay calm and focused.  I wanted to be very settled internally because a lot of emotion comes out in these meetings.

I started on time and went right down my list of issues.  Sure enough, someone started attacking me, saying I did something against what was agreed on.  I took a report from a past meeting out of my file and read it aloud to everyone, noting everyone had agreed to the action that I had consequently taken regarding a given repair, with signatures – including the person who was making claims against me.  Two more times in the meeting when I was attacked I pulled out minutes from past meetings to prove that everything I had done was in accordance to what was agreed on by everyone.

There were times when people began to argue and yell.  Each time I cut them off, firmly reminding them that right now we’re only discussing things that relate to building business, and only discussing what the issue at hand.  I also told them to lower their voices and speak calmly so we could have a productive meeting – and though I had to do this several times throughout the meeting, they were responsive.

I saved the topic of elections for last.  I hadn’t yet told anyone that I’m moving, and some people thought it was the actions of someone in the past against me that was causing me to step down.  One woman told everyone that there’s never been a time in this building that everything has been taken care of so well, and she’s renominating me.  Everyone began to agree, so I had to let them know at this point that I’m not going to be living here much longer and that’s why I need to transfer this position.

There was hesitancy to volunteer so I reminded them that they don’t have to start from scratch like I did.  When I took over in Aug. 2013, no one was filling this role for a number of months.  There was hardly any money in the account, there were repairs that hadn’t been attended to for years, the electric bill was overdrawn by six months and the building was filthy.  No one wanted to take on the job because frankly, it’s a thankless task and in this case, there was so much that hadn’t been dealt with for so long that it was a bit overwhelming.

Now  the building is clean and for the most part in good repair (there’s always something new that comes up), there’s a healthy balance in the account, and all the technical aspects of smoothly transferring the position up are in place.  Finally three people agreed to jointly take it on.

An hour and three minutes after we began, I officially called the meeting to an end and thanked everyone for their participation.  We covered every single item, voted on a new committee and I felt very positively about how it went.

One woman waited for everyone else to leave and said to me, “You’ve transformed how meetings in this building are run.  There’s never been so little fighting and so much accomplished, and it’s because of how you manage things people are willing to participate.”  I was doubtful that anything I did would have made such a difference but she insisted that in twenty five years meetings have never been as efficient and productive as when I took over.  I thanked her for her feedback and told her I hope that whatever positive change there was will continue when I leave.

Often when  people ask me about how to deal with their children  I say it’s important to find a place of loving strength inside themselves.  This is a hard thing to put into words because it’s something you sense rather than see but it’s critical in giving your children the confidence to follow your lead.  Finding this place in yourself is true not just in parenting, but in other situations as well.

It’s taken time to get to know the different people here and understand their way of communicating.  When I began, I felt my effort to treat others respectfully was construed as weakness.  I spoke to a businessman about how to handle the dynamics of the situation and he told me in such a difficult situation as what I was dealing with, it would require bringing in a very aggressive outside person since they would only respect someone like that.

But in the end, I was able to be effective in this situation by finding my place of inner strength and calm, and communicating with the people here from that space.

With all the challenges and frustrations I’ve had while in this position, I’m nonetheless very grateful for the opportunity to internalize certain qualities in myself that I wouldn’t have been forced to develop had I been consistently treated as I would have liked.  It’s been a real growth opportunity and what it brought out in me is something I’ll take with me when I move.

Avivah

How to let go of negative thoughts and believe in a good outcome

Homemaking, Homeschooling, Marriage, Self-Growth

images-411[1]>>I just read your post about wanting to move before Pesach, and how you tell everyone that you are moving even though you haven’t finalized anything yet.

This has resonated with me a lot, because now I am expecting, but I am scared to tell people. Even though I am showing, I am not telling to people who don’t see me, because I am very anxious – what if something happens?

I am generally not the type to tell people about my plans if it’s not 100%, because I guess if it does not work out, it will look like a failure.<<

Let’s say someone tells you they’re moving, or expecting, or something else.  And then something happens and it doesn’t work out as that person planned.  Do you think, “What a loser”?  Or do you understand that things can change unexpectedly?

Last year I was planning to move and told everyone, and then I was burned so we changed plans.  This year when we decided to move, I didn’t want to tell anyone because I was afraid they would think, ‘Yeah, right, that’s what you said last year.’

Did people who heard about our decision not to move at that time wag their heads knowingly and tell one another, ‘She’s an indecisive, wishy-washy person who can’t make a decision and stick with anything she says’?  Most people are compassionate and understanding, or at least neutral, rather than judgmental if something works out differently than planned for someone else.  We’re much harder on ourselves than other people are.

>>Anyway, do you think that pregnancy is different?<<

There is no failure in pregnancy or giving birth, no matter what the outcome.  Embrace every moment of your pregnancy for the miracle and gift that it is.  Don’t steal this special time from yourself with your fearful thoughts.

>>On the one hand, I am really anxious, and on the other hand, I think it is not positive thinking and not helpful to always think that something bad will happen to me. Is it a lack of bitachon (faith)? <<

Yes, being anxious is a lack of faith – and it’s something we all experience regularly.  When I feel stressed, I take a deep breath and remind myself that I just have to do my part and G-d will do the rest, the outcome isn’t all up to me.  Lately I’ve been saying the Serenity Prayer several times a day, particularly when I feel anxious about something – it’s very powerful if you focus on what you’re saying:

“G-d, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

>>Is there a way I could overcome my worries? <<

I do believe that our thoughts are very influential in creating our reality and it’s worth the effort to make them work for you rather than against you.  My suggestion to help change your negative thoughts is to ask yourself, what am I worried about?  Get a clear idea of what your concern is.  Then, flip it around and picture the exact opposite situation.  For example, someone worrying about giving birth prematurely can picture her healthy full-term newborn infant.

think-positive[1]

Any time you feel this worry start to slip in, replace it with a better thought.  At first this will feel impossible because your worry seems real and your positive picture is totally fake.  But if you keep it up, your positive picture will start to feel real and that’s the place you want to get to, when your positive thoughts take on their own power because they feel real.

Avivah

 

A final opportunity for forgiveness

Self-Growth

Forgiveness-and-Freedom[1]Several weeks ago, I got a call that a family member I’ve been out of touch with for many years had been hospitalized.

Despite him playing a significant role in my life when I was younger, I didn’t initially feel a strong emotional response to this news because I made the choice not to maintain a connection with him.

Over the years, I’ve thought about this situation and several times tried to identify what I did wrong in this situation.  But despite my efforts I just couldn’t see it; it seemed clear that I was the one who was wronged.

Last week with the encouragement of a friend who pushed me to do this, I finally identified my part – that while I had let go of resentment long ago, I continued to feel judgmental of him.

A day and a half ago, I talked to my sister about this situation and told her I had identified my part in the issue and wanted to make amends before it was too late.  An in-person visit wasn’t possible since we’re not in the same country, so my sister offered to read aloud a letter if I wanted to write one.  He was unconscious and seemingly unresponsive but we both felt it was likely he could hear.   I told her I preferred to speak to him by phone if the nurse would agree to hold the phone to his ear, but would e-mail a letter if I couldn’t speak to him.

As you know, my laptop is broken and my online access is very limited, so after getting off the phone with her, it wasn’t until 24 hours later that I was able to check for the email she sent with contact information for the hospital.  By then, there  was already another message in my inbox, that he was deteriorating very fast and to send the letter right away.  I immediately called the hospital to speak to him, but the connection was very bad and the receptionist couldn’t understand a word I said.

I tried to call my sister but she couldn’t understand me, either.  I immediately got online, and began to quickly write the letter, hoping against hope that it wasn’t going to be too late.  When I tried to send it, it kept stalling instead of going through.  But finally I got an email confirming it was sent, and my sister sent a message that she was going to go back to the hospital with my letter.

This morning my mom stopped by and while she was here, received a Facebook message on her phone that our relative had passed away.  The time of his death was posted and it was apparent that he died before my sister got there to read my letter.  I was glad I had written the letter and released all remaining negativity, but was extremely disappointed that he wasn’t able to hear it while he was alive.

It was the early hours of the morning in the US when I called my sister to let her know I heard the news, and I realized she wasn’t able to read the letter.  She corrected me, saying the relative who posted the time of death was in a later time zone than she was, and she did make it to the hospital before he died. And what she told me was incredible.

The entire day she had repeatedly told our relative, “Avivah said she has something she wants to say, she’s going to write you a letter.”  And she kept checking her phone, wondering where my letter was and what was taking me so long (this was all taking place during the hours I had no online access), until finally it showed up.  By the time she got my email, she was back at her house but despite the expected snow storm and the hour long return trip, she felt an urgency to get to the hospital.

When she arrived, he was still alive but the hospital chaplain already there and a rabbi said the final prayers.

As soon as he finished, she began reading my letter as fast as she could.  I wrote about my appreciation for the positive memories, I apologized for being judgmental, and then I said that I forgave him.

And as soon as she finished reading those words – “I forgive you” – he took his final breath and died.

Blue sky with clouds and sun may be used as background

Afterward, the nurse said it seemed he was holding out for something, and my sister believes he was waiting for my letter.

I am so, so, so full of emotion and gratitude for the opportunity to have closure from a place of forgiveness and love.

This has been an incredibly moving and powerful experience for me to be part of, it’s something that a week ago I could never have imagined being possible, and it has left me with a sense of emotional peace that I couldn’t have anticipated.

Avivah

How to stay calm when important things don’t seem to be going your way

Self-Growth

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It felt to me a little like going out on a limb when I said we’re planning to leave Karmiel.

And for me to now tell you what I really want to have happen regarding our move feels like going out on a teeny tiny limb at the very end of the uppermost branches.

The reason it feels so sensitive to me is that I’m in the middle of a situation in which none of the important pieces are yet in place and yet I’m emotionally committed to a certain outcome.

Here’s specifically what I’m talking about.

We found a home that seems just right for us and finished negotiating the price and terms three weeks ago.  However, the owners live overseas and waiting for the some hard copies of important paperwork to arrive has taken a while.  Meanwhile, my desired moving date is by the last week of March at the latest.  Here are the seeming impediments:

– It’s mid February and the contract isn’t yet signed.

– The apartment is currently rented out to tenants who have a contract until the end of July.  There is no clause in the lease agreement to give them advance notice that would allow us to move sooner.

– We need to find a tenant for our Karmiel home.  You can probably understand why it’s a dilemma to commit to rent out your home beginning April 1, 2015 in order to move to a home that you haven’t even signed a contract on, that will be occupied by others for another six months.

And six weeks is of course much too short a time to remedy any of this…

But.

I believe differently.

I believe that it would be best for us to move before Pesach.

I believe that God wants what is good for us.

And I believe He’s right now making miracles happen behind the scenes so that everything will fall into place for us to move in less than six weeks.

What does this mean?

It means that I’ve told people who asked about our moving timeline that we’ll be in our new home for Pesach even though I don’t yet have external confirmation.  It means that I’ve begun selling furniture that won’t fit the dimensions of our new home.  It means I advertised our apartment for rent with availability listed as April 1.

It also means I contacted the real estate agent and asked him to speak to the tenant and ask them if they’d be interested in moving sooner rather than later, and told him honestly when I’d like to move in even though I felt uncomfortable that it would seem unreasonable.  I told our mortgage broker and real estate lawyer that we would like their help so we can be in our new home for Pesach, too.

While I’m taking these forward moving actions, I’m working on letting go of the results, of trusting that everything will work out as I want without me getting stressed.  I’ve noticed in situations in which I’m powerless, I have a tendency to get anxious or worried because it makes me feel like I’m doing something at a time that I’ve reached a point that I have no more actions to take to affect the outcome.  Because obviously all my stress and negative energy  is creating the outcome I want, right? 🙂  When I write it like that, it’s obvious that it’s ridiculous but it feels like doing something.

It can be so, so hard to let go of the results when something really matters to you, to trust that everything will fall into place and work out for the best.  I’ve been really working to keep my serenity and that means for me, finding a daily balance between taking actions while letting go of the results.  It’s not so easy.

But I’m feeling an unusual amount of peace in a situation that would usually have had me pulling my proverbial hair out, so that’s a sign I’m finding the balance.

Sharing here with you is part of my process.  I tend to be hesitant to share about things that aren’t yet firmly set, because maybe it won’t work out.  And then I’m afraid I’ll look foolish and flaky and feel embarrassed.

But what would I do if I knew it would work out, if I already had the technical external details in place?  Well, if I really, really believe that everything would fall into place before Pesach (and I do), then it was clear to me those are the actions I should be taking right now.  I would actively prepare to move and part of that is telling people about it now.   So that’s what I’m doing!

I’m looking forward to seeing how everything comes together to make our plans to move for Pesach happen (‘in a calm and pleasant way’ – that’s part of my vision).  I will definitely keep you updated with details of how it happens!

Avivah

Why everything breaking at once is a good thing!

Homemaking, Intentional Spending, Self-Growth

On Friday, my washing machine broke.  A few days before that, my laptop was declared corrupted and unfixable.  My phone stopped working completely last week, along with our haircutting machine.

Ds7 exclaimed, “It seems like everything is breaking at the same time!”

Hmm.  It does seem like that.

While hanging the first load of wash from my new machine this morning, I was thinking about what a gift it was to me that all of these things broke simultaneously.  It not only forced me to replace each item with something more suitable (other than no laptop yet :)), but showed me some subtle ways that I’m not honoring myself.

Our phone was having problems for a while – the phone itself was fine but the answering machine was the source of a malfunction.  If we didn’t answer within four rings, instead of the answering machine picking up the caller would get a message that our line had been disconnected.  The electronics store wasn’t close to where I do my regular errands and so I kept pushing off making this purchase.  We lived with it like that for quite a while – for much too long – until the phone totally stopped working and we bought a new one.

I called in the washing machine repair guy a couple of months ago to fix my machine when it wasn’t working.  He told me that it would be so costly to fix it that I’d be better off replacing it but that it would be usable for a while longer if I wanted to play around with the buttons and coax the wash cycle to begin.  That’s what I did, until no amount of coaxing worked.  I got my new (to me) washing machine yesterday, and it’s bigger, faster and more efficient.  It’s a big help in getting through the backlog of laundry I have from four days of not doing wash.  🙂

I’ve been thinking about where frugality ends and self-denial begins.  On one hand, it’s a good thing to use something fully and well, to appreciate it and not be hasty to discard it if it can still serve you.

On the other hand, it’s not a good thing to hold onto things that are hampering your functioning in the name of using it up.

These things were functioning.  They weren’t working well but I didn’t feel a sense of urgency to replace them even though they were inconveniencing me and others.  I move clutter out of my house regularly and often and don’t think of myself as having a clutter issue, but these items showed me that nonetheless I sometimes still hold onto things that aren’t serving me well.

Whenever we hold on to things that we don’t need or that don’t serve us, to some degree we give ourselves a subtle unspoken message about our own personal value as well as reflecting a lack of trust that our needs can and will be fully met. Just like by keeping clutter around, I was compromising myself by not prioritizing my needs and getting what I needed when I needed it.

Getting rid of what doesn’t serve you makes room for better things to come into your life.  Thanks to these items breaking, my life is now filled with more things that meet my needs and that makes me feel abundant.   Out with the old, in with the new!

Avivah

A return visit to the burn unit to say ‘thank you’

Healthy Living, Self-Growth

I’m sorry I haven’t been around much lately.  I’ve been super busy and on top of that my laptop has been out of commission and when I have access to my husband’s computer in the later hours of the evening, I’m too tired to think straight anymore!  But I miss you all when I don’t write.

A while ago I took Yirmiyahu for a standard hearing test.  It wasn’t clear at that time if he was hearing well or not.  Initially he responded to all the tones but after several times turning his head to the sound of someone calling his voice and seeing no one there, he began to look intently at the woman in the glass enclosed room when she spoke into her microphone (though her mouth was covered) instead of looking to the speakers that her voice emanated from.  I’m not concerned about his hearing but this is something that has to be checked out to be sure there’s no issue and the way to do it with a child this young is via the BERA test which tests the brains response to auditory stimulus while a child is asleep.

To make a long and exhausting story short, after traveling for the BERA test to a hospital in a different city that’s only a thirty minute drive away but an hour and a half trip on two different buses, he fell asleep after being given the medication.  The technician attached the electrodes to his head, and as she was almost finished, he stirred and sleepily opened his eyes.  If he hadn’t seen a strange woman looming over him and had black wires hanging down over his eyes, he probably would have fallen right back to sleep but he was very alarmed.  I waited 2.5 hours for him to fall asleep again, but the same thing happened then. So I had no choice but to reschedule for this week.

It was very frustrating to spend so long traveling and then waiting there for four hours and return home late in the afternoon not having been able to get the hearing test done, which takes maybe 15 minutes at the very most.  But one thing I was able to do while walking him around in the stroller trying to lull him to sleep was to visit the nurses in the burn unit where I was hospitalized in April so they could see how well I’m doing.

I had such a powerful emotion that came over me as I walked into the unit.  I had never walked in to the unit before – when I was admitted ten months ago, I was wheeled in with bandages covering my face.  Though my eyes weren’t burned, my sight was affected for the first few days and on that evening I could hardly see anything.

I didn’t expect the nurses to recognize me since I looked very different at that point than I do now, but both nurses I saw remembered me when I started to speak.  I started to say hello, and I hardly had a chance to say anything before I started crying.   It’s interesting that other than the exceptions that I wrote about, I didn’t cry much during my hospitalization but since then, I’ve had a  number of waves of emotion that come over me when thinking about my accident and God’s amazing kindness to me.  I told the nurse I don’t know why now I’m getting so emotional when everything is fine and then when things looked so bad I wasn’t crying.  She smiled and said, “They’re happy tears,”  and she’s totally right.

She told me how wonderful I look and told me that she would have to look with a magnifying glass to see the remaining signs of the burns. To me it’s noticeable but many people have said they can’t tell I was ever burned, and I’m not going to point out the signs of the accident!  That same evening I went to an event and saw many people who I hadn’t seen since before I was burned, and all of them were exclaiming that they couldn’t believe that I look ‘perfect’.  I’m telling you, you get so many compliments on how good you look after an accident like this!  In all the years before this put together I didn’t get as many compliments as I have in the last eight months.  🙂

Beginning three days after I was burned, I took a picture each morning while in the hospital.  Not because I wanted to see how bad I looked – I didn’t – but because I believed that one day I would be healed.  And I knew that I would look back and think it must not have been so bad, that in the intensity of the experience it felt worse to me than it really was.  The pictures are a tangible proof for me to remember that, yes, it really was that bad, but I don’t have to look at them to appreciate how incredibly fortunate I was.

Avivah

Win win for adults – setting aside your ego and being willing to hear the other person’s side

Self-Growth

I’ve been absent from my blog for these last couple of weeks because I’ve been involved in a complicated situation that’s been taking a huge amount of emotional energy.

There have been two other parties involved, and it seemed like whatever we did, at least one of the three parties would be upset at the result.  And one particular party seemed determined to be sure if he didn’t get what he wanted, he would make sure the other two would be dragged through a lot of unpleasantness.  I couldn’t see any possibility that would end up being win-win for everyone involved.

I’ve been having a lot of negative thoughts about this party and as much as I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, it didn’t extend to being willing to stand in his shoes and validate to myself why he felt he should have things go his way.  In my own mind, I was dismissing him as selfish and manipulative.  When I would give a pretense to myself of looking at things from his view, I would think, “I see why he thinks this but…. he’s totally wrong and self-centered and irresponsible and why can’t he be reasonable.”  At first I didn’t think he was a bad person but if you saw the way things you were going, you would excuse me for mentally going down that road.

Well, I took a huge step back and mentally went back to the beginning to start over.  This was really hard for me because at this point, him not getting what he wanted was just as important to  me as me getting what I wanted.  I wanted to do whatever I had to do to get out of this situation and never hear his name again.  But it was clear he was going to be sure that if he couldn’t win, no one could win.

Mentally starting over helped me feel compassion and understanding for him, and I was able to see he was lashing out because of his fear of losing something important to him.  From that position, I approached the other person and said, “Let’s start over.  It seems to me you feel like you want to have this outcome, and I’m happy for you to have that if you can make sure that I also have what I need from this situation” (which initially he said wasn’t possible).  The third party had agreed that they wouldn’t mind if I reopened the conversation with the other party, and they would be fine with whatever we worked out between us.

Amazingly, it looks as if it’s going to be possible for all three of us to come out ahead in this interaction.  Right now we’re at the discussion stage and it will take another week to hammer out all the specifics, but it’s incredibly encouraging and rejuvenating to be able to even consider an ending like this.

While dealing with this, I’ve continually been thinking about win-win, and really debating if given the cultural and personality differences we were facing if in this situation it might be impossible to use these principles.  I’m amazed what can happen when you put aside your ego and are willing to honestly step into someone else’s shoes and really understand them.

It’s been a huge energy shift and finally I feel the head space to write again!

Avivah

 

Dealing with bullying neighbors

aliyah, Self-Growth

Last night I was walking home from a lovely dinner with my mom (her birthday treat to me) when I encountered one of my neighbors.  He’s usually quite taciturn but he walked directly toward me with his dogs, making it impossible for me to easily sidestep him as his two dogs went to each side of me.  He angrily told me that he heard I had changed a lock in the building a couple of hours before (I’m the building representative – vaad bayit – and take care of repairs and maintenance for the apartment building – it’s a volunteer position, no perks :)) and that it was illegal to lock that room.

I told him while I had no desire nor plans to lock the door, if the door would be locked at any point it would only be with the legal guidance of the office for building committees.  He responded, “Don’t you dare lock that door; if you do a day won’t go by before I’ll break the lock.”  He accusingly told me he knows why I’m doing this.  I asked him why and he said I’m in cahoots with another neighbor.  I asked him why I would be in cahoots with anyone and what that has to do with getting a new lock put in.  He changed the topic and began yelling at me about other things.  It was so irrational.

I changed the lock because there was no key for it and the building representative is supposed to have a key.  Why should someone care so much about changing a lock on a door that is going to stay unlocked when it has absolutely no effect on their lives?

Maybe you care when it’s the door to the water meter room and you use the water meter as a way to harass your neighbors by turning off their water repeatedly.  Maybe they assumed their actions were a factor in the new lock and felt angry that there was any potential for them to be restrained in bothering others.

Early this morning morning, his wife wrote a nasty note about me and posted it in the building entrance about how I’m using my position to further the interests of my religious friends (yes, because I changed the lock) and I shouldn’t be allowed to continue in this position any longer.  Another neighbor saw it and took it down.  The woman who wrote it saw him remove it, followed him upstairs while yelling and carrying the garbage can from the entryway, threw the garbage on him in front of my door.

By 8:30 am the police had arrived and I spent an hour talking to them together with the other neighbor.  It was initially frustrating because the officer was unwilling to listen to the full situation due to false presumptions but eventually I think he understood we’re dealing with someone irrational.

The police said they’ll talk to the screaming neighbor, which I doubt will do anything because you can’t use legal means to mandate good character.  The other family (whose husband had the garbage thrown at him) has filed for a restraining order and put their home up for sale.  They’re really nice people and I hope they sell their home quickly and find a place to live with other nice people; they don’t deserve to be treated like this.

The unpleasant couple has made being the building representative here extremely difficult – I get yelled at and gossiped about for everything I do and what I don’t do.  They refuse to pay the monthly fees and at the same time, complain about how the building is cleaned, who cleans it, get angry about repairs I’ve made to the building that were agreed on by all the tenants – really anything and everything…it’s a difficult situation.

When I took my kids to the park in the afternoon there was another note taped up in the building railing against me.  (This time she dropped accusations about helping religious friends and wrote that I’m acting for my own personal interests.)  I took it down, went to the park, then decided to make a copy and put the original back up.  But by the time I returned to my home ten minutes later, there was already another note up, this time a pithy version: “Mrs. Avivah is unworthy of being the building representative.”  I left it there.  It shows more about her than me.

Actually, I’m happy to pass the job on to someone more ‘worthy’.  But there’s no one else who is willing to take on this job because no one wants to deal with the difficult people here; the building had no maintenance/cleaning/electricity paid for eight months until I took over, and had years of neglected repairs that no one could agree to take care of because of constant arguing about every detail.  It’s been grueling but I’ve been able to take care of some important things.

It’s nice to think that if you are pleasant and respectful of others, they’ll respond in kind but it’s not always true.  I’ve spent almost 3.5 years being very careful to keep a positive relationship with this woman and her husband despite the many challenges they have presented me with.

We’ve all spent years making choices based on our paradigm of the world and our coping skills.  When someone is abusive or unbalanced, their years have been spent making unhealthy choices; they’ve literally grooved-in patterns to their brains and are no longer wired for responding differently.  Just like anyone else who has a pattern that they want to break, it would take a huge amount of awareness and conscious effort for them to respond differently than they have been for their entire lives.

So where does this all leave me?  I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to respond to these provocations because in the heat of the moment when I’m being insulted or attacked I’m not likely to be able to summon up my higher self.  I’ve decided to ignore the notes and anything she says about me.  I felt very threatened when her husband was so hostile last night but I’ve had time to work down those feelings and am trying to keep these people and their actions in perspective.

I’m actively working on courage, not letting myself feel defensive and scared in response to their bullying.  I have to stay very conscious so I hold my ground and don’t slip into backing down.  I’m not good at shrugging off attacks; I’m sensitive to criticism and take insults personally but this is something I have a chance to practice doing differently now.

Avivah