Avivah Werner

Category: Self-Growth

  • Creating an abundance mindset – how to upgrade your way of thinking

    Abundance quoteYesterday I spoke via teleconferencing at the Torah Home Education conference being held in New Jersy.  The topic of my talk was Creating an Abundant Life, a topic about which I have soooo much to say that a 50 minute session really isn’t enough.   Since my talk began late and I closed early for questions, that further cut down on what I shared.

    I’m fine with that, though.  Before every talk that I give, I always ask God to help me say what people need to hear, and this cuts the post-speech obsessing about if what you did or didn’t say quite a bit.  I assume that if I shifted from my planned points and added something new or left things out that I thought were important, there’s a reason for it all.

    Having said that, I thought I’d share a little on this topic today with you.

    Everyone defines abundance differently, depending on who they are and what is a priority in his life.  To me, a life of abundance is when you are living with passion, a sense of purpose, inner peace and clarity.  It include relationships, wider contributions, time and money, but the specific definition really depends on the person.

    Regardless of how you define abundance, it all begins in the mind.  We can live the same life from one day to another, and the only difference in feeling scarcity or abundance is in our thinking.  Here are some things that I’ve found helpful to shift your mindset to one of abundance.

    1) Get rid of unrealistic expectations – be realistic of yourself and those in your life.  Expectations that aren’t in line with who you are become the equivalent of a mental pile of bricks, guaranteed to squash your motivation and self esteem.  It will do the same to your children.

    2) Avoid silently competing and comparing.  This is so dangerous.  It’s a fine line to walk between being inspired by the actions and accomplishments of others and downgrading ourselves.  If you find yourself getting caught up in negative feelings when you see or view what someone else is doing, you need to consciously put a stop to this.

    I used to read several issues at a time of a particular magazine and noticed that each time I was left with a negative and inadequate feeling about myself – reading interviews with so many accomplished people caused me to eclipse and negate my own accomplishments entirely.  I put those magazines aside for a long time entirely until I could create some healthy mental distance; now I can appreciate and even be inspired by someone else’s accomplishments without feeling it’s a reflection of me lacking in some way.

    3)  Define your goal.  What do you really want?  Think hard about this because most of us are tempted to say what we think we’re supposed to say.  When you live life based on what’s important to you, you’re going to have a good measure of inner peace.  When you are living according to the goals of others, you’re setting yourself up for tremendous frustration.  Don’t adopt someone else’s goal – you can admire it from afar but be clear what really matters most to you and pursue that.

    4) Fill your mind with gratitude. Keep your focus on what you have, not what’s missing.  Focusing on what you don’t have is a guarantee for a bitter and miserable life.  You may wonder how to focus on the positive when it seems there’s nothing good in your life – if you’re alive and able to read this or hear someone read this to you, you have things to be grateful for!

    It can be hard to recognize the good if you’re used to looking at what you don’t have, but the more you look, the more you’ll find.  My life hasn’t been perfect and there have been and will continue to be small and large bumps along the road, but I often reflect on the overflowing blessings in my life and think: “Katonti mikol hachasidim umikol ha’emet asher asita et avdecha“(Bereishis/Genesis 32:10)- “I am too small for all the kindness and truth that You have done to your servant.” Here’s a beautiful version of this verse put to song – I love it:

    5) Remember you have a Partner in your life.  Often we get caught up in thinking our future is in our hands and if we make a wrong step, we’re doomed.  That sounds like being responsible but it’s actually a lack of humility.  You can make mistakes and get great results in spite of it, and do everything by the books and your result isn’t what you hoped for.   Often success comes from an entirely different direction than where we’ve invested our time and efforts, and failure comes from where we had the highest expectations.  Do the best you can, and recognize that your Partner will make some changes to your plans.  Know that there’s a reason that He’s directing things in the way He is and it’s all for your ultimate good.

    6) Trust that the end will be good.  It really will.  Sometimes there will be bumps on the road and the good will be temporarily obscured – sometimes it will seem it’s been permanently obscured – but keep believing in the good outcome.  Your belief is incredibly powerful.  Patience, humility and trust lead to wonderful results.

    Avivah

  • What the first emotional center is and why it matters to your health and relationships

    first emotional center roots>>I’m so happy to hear you are staying. When I read you were considering moving, my heart got this uncomfortable feeling. We moved five times during our 8 year stay in Israel. Moving is so extremely unsettling and destabilizing. So much change, plus you need to get to know and integrate into a totally new community and start putting down roots all over again. It’s like starting from zero.<<

    it’s so true, moving is deeply unsettling – literally! – and I’m very grateful to have made the decision to stay in one place.  There’s something very physically and emotionally grounding for all of us about this decision.

    A while back I listened to an interesting audio program about the seven emotional centers and their physical effect on the body’s health.  This is based on the concept that all illness has an emotional/energetic component, and this component is much more significant than most people would acknowledge.

    This is fascinating stuff and if you’re interested in details about all seven emotional centers, look at the link I put up above and you can see a summary of some basic information.  (Dr. Gabor Mate also has a great book called When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress Disease Connection in which he writes about the emotional state and how certain illnesses are later manifested as a result.)  What I’d like to do is is share about the importance of the first emotional center and how this was a factor in our our decision not to move.

    The first center is what your sense of self is built on, what provides you with a sense of grounding and belonging in the world, rootedness.  Physically issues connected to this center are related to the immune system issues, illnesses such as arthritis, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.  A person who doesn’t have a strong foundation in his first center with his family of origin will have trust and security issues.  Not being balanced in this center will affect a person’s ability to appropriately feel fear, when and who to trust, and how to be appropriately dependent or independent.

    These first center emotional issues almost exactly parallel the issues Dr. Gordon Neufeld describes as the outcome for children who are inadequately attached to their parents, though he gives them different names – emotional defendedness/hardening and peer dependency are a couple of concepts that he discusses at length that tie in well to this.  It’s all about building a sense of connection and security in the world; when that is missing, you have first emotional center issue that if held long enough without being addressed in some way, will eventually show up in the body.  I’m starting to wonder if the real reason that new immigrants tend to get sick when they move here isn’t about our bodies being hit with germs that we aren’t used to, but about our immune system being weakened due to being emotionally uprooted.

    The health of this center is the healthy capacity to hold two things at one time: the vulnerability of belonging and depending, and the power of being able to stand alone and be independent.  That really means being able to be interdependent, which is the highest level of interpersonal functioning and is much, much more difficult than independence.  This is especially hard for those of us growing up in Western cultures, that place a very high value on independence as an ideal.

    If you’re missing this as an adult, you can work to bridge the gaps of your childhood by consciously creating relationships, connections and routines that bring a sense of continuity and grounding to your life.  If we can provide our kids with a sense of connectedness when they are young, that goes a long way through the years in helping them develop a sense of trust in the world.  It’s always more effective to invest in prevention rather than trying to fix something that’s already broken.

    Since moving here my kids have gone through some really difficult stuff, things that shook the foundation of our family.  When I thought of moving them again after the trauma of my recent burns and subsequent hospitalization, I knew that I couldn’t do that to them.  I didn’t want to do it to myself, but for my kids it was clear to me this would create a first emotional center issue that would affect their sense of security and safety in the world.  This sense of stability and security is so foundational to a person’s emotional health and future relationships, and eventually can affect one’s physical health.

    Does that mean that everyone should stay in one place his entire life?  No, absolutely not.  Sometimes you need to experience the discomfort of change to get a place that will ultimately be better for you.  I firmly feel that  moving to Israel in August 2011 was the absolute best decision for our family even with all the upheavals that we experienced afterward.  What I do mean is that as parents we need to think very carefully about how to provide our children with a sense of continuity and consistency, both emotionally in how we raise them as well as physically where we raise them.  The more deeply rooted we can help them to be, the stronger their sense of security and immune system will be.

    Avivah

  • Big shift in moving plans

    Putting down roots!

    After months of research, planning and networking in order to make the move to the center of the country, we’ve had a change in our moving plans!

    We’ve decided to stay put in Karmiel.

    Before sharing why, let me recap.  What prompted us to consider moving was our desire for our older kids learning in Jerusalem to be able to live at home.  The second tier of the decision was that we would have more and better educational options for the middle kids, and more medical/therapeutic support for our T21 needs .  The third tier of the decision is that we’d have more support of all kinds – social, homeschooling, rabbinic advisors and Torah learning…

    All of those reasons are still valid.  Nothing has changed as far as all of those potential benefits.  Some things have changed for us, though.

    Firstly, if dd19 comes back in the coming year, she’ll be studying at a seminary with a dorm.  Dd17 is seriously considering switching to a seminary with a dorm.  Boom – the two kids we thought needed us to be in the center the most aren’t so critical anymore.  At this point we reassessed the wisdom of moving for our older kids, who could very well all be married within the next two years, and disrupting the lives of our younger kids at home, who are all happy here and don’t want to move.

    My husband had some reservations about living here when we first discussed moving back in October but with time those have faded away and he’s happy to stay.  I had one personal concern about staying here that I resolved inside myself, though I’ve been sad about the thought of moving ever since we made the decision.   I couldn’t see this feeling as valid because it felt irresponsible of me to put my desire to stay where I am before the needs of my kids.  It’s not easy starting over and I felt depleted most of the time when thinking about it, but tried to focus on the positives – and there were lots of positives about moving.

    Getting to this decision, being willing and able to think through all the changing details, was mostly due to my recent hospitalization after being burned almost six weeks ago.  All that quiet time gave me the ability to recognize my inner voice, the one that I too often subdue in order to do the responsible/logical thing.  Recognizing that voice was critical in being willing to listen to the voice that kept saying, “I’m happy here and don’t want to leave and don’t want to start over somewhere else.”  I’ve been hearing that voice for months and kept overriding it with my long list of reasons to leave and the need to be in the center of the country for my kids.  Finally I could recognize this was my inner voice rather than the voice of fear (which is what I was attributing it to), and change plans accordingly.

    There are a lot of parts to this decision – my desire to put down roots and stay in one place, recognizing that I need to trust God that if there’s something I don’t have now and will need in the future (this is specifically regarding schooling alternatives for the older grades), remembering to live in the moment and not get caught up planning too far ahead, my mother living a fifteen minute walk away from us now and the importance for us all in being able to be there physically for one another, looking at other communities underscoring how very many things we like about being here….but it honestly comes down to listening to what my heart is telling me.

    I’m not sorry that we planned to move even though it took up tremendous head space, since it gave us a chance to reevaluate from a different perspective; my husband and I are in full agreement that this is the right thing for us.   When I told him I thought it was a mistake to move and all my reasons why, his response was total agreement – he said he had felt the same way but since we had agreed to make the move he didn’t want to back away from it!  I do feel a bit of regret that I won’t have those advantages that I was looking forward to in being in the center of the country.  But mostly I have a sense of peace and being settled, and after so long being in limbo about moving, that’s a really wonderful feeling.

    Avivah

  • Since I know you’re wondering about how I look…I’ll tell you! But no pictures.

    In the last week I’ve begun venturing out and that means that I’ve begun to see people.  And people have begun to see me.

    I’ve been noticing a very interesting reaction that almost everyone is having.  Most people aren’t looking at me directly when they first see me; they keep their heads tilted away and then take a quick furtive glance when they think I’m not looking at them.  I don’t know if they’re afraid what they’re going to see of if they don’t want to make me feel self-conscious.

    Once they look at me, most people tell me how good I look, that it’s not nearly as bad as they were expecting.  That’s probably because they’re thinking I’ll look the way I looked in the beginning!  I’ve been healing amazingly fast and often I have a hard time believing that it was less than six weeks ago that my entire face was a swollen mass of blisters.  Other than the medical staff, only my husband saw me at that point – last week he told me in the beginning he honestly wondered if and when I would look like myself again.  It was very bad.

    At first when people were telling me how it didn’t look so bad, it felt a bit invalidating.  Like, oh, we thought something serious happened but it couldn’t have been so bad if you look like this now.  That’s just how it felt to me, that’s of course not how it was intended.  While I look a lot better now, no one is dreaming of looking like me and I don’t want to stay looking like this forever either.

    I was wondering objectively what I look like since everyone is saying how good I look but I have a mirror and I know what I look like!  Then a couple of evenings ago I went out and happened to bump into someone who didn’t know about my accident.  She looked startled and after a couple of minutes of small talk while looking at me searchingly, asked straight out, “What happened to your face?”  

    So do I look amazing or do I look really bad?  I look amazing, relative to what I went through.  The redness of the new skin mostly covered the scarring in the initial period and for those who saw me then (on Pesach and right before) it looked like a very bad sunburn.  Then the redness passed (in just a week! – the burn specialist told me it takes between 2 weeks to six months) and the scars were obvious.  The front of my face is where the obvious marks are left; l have a lot of splotches across my forehead and all the way down to my chin, including my eyebrow area, eyelid and under the eyes. The splotches are a dark reddish color.  But they’re fading and getting smaller.

    The scars on the front of my neck up along to under my chin are sizeable but have faded to a light skin tone so while it’s visible it’s not jumping out at you, either.  Twice a day I use a special cream to help with scarring that I got from the burn specialist in Jerusalem.  The splash marks that were across the outer two thirds of my cheeks are totally gone.  On the side of my neck and ear you can’t tell anything happened.

    I have one burn mark on my hand that I didn’t treat at all – not purposely, just my face was more important and I didn’t pay any attention to it.  This now serves as a reminder to me what my face could have looked like, what people are expecting it to look like, and what I was afraid I would look like.  That scar is slightly raised, wrinkled and discolored and if the scars on my face looked like this it would be disfiguring.

    I’m not going to post a photo of myself though I’m tempted to show a before and after picture (though I don’t have a picture from when the burns were the worst) just so you can appreciate how miraculous the difference is.  People keep asking me when my face will be fully healed and the answer is, I don’t know.  No one will tell me that I will totally heal – though I’m very optimistic that I will – and I  certainly haven’t been given a timeline.  I’m going back to the burn specialist in Jerusalem today and am looking forward to hearing her feedback.

    I’ve been extremely conscientious about skin care and sun avoidance, and this is part of why my healing has been so good.  The bigger part, I’m positive, is the prayers of so many people on my behalf.  Thank you all!

    Avivah

  • Why do bad things happen to good people? – my thoughts

    question markSome people have commented that it’s not fair that so many difficult things have happened to our family in the recent past.  I don’t agree – I think we each get what we’re meant to get, and what’s fair is what we get.

    I also think that I’ve been very, very lucky.  My burns were extremely painful and traumatic, but it could have been much, much worse.  When I went to the burn specialist in Jerusalem and she heard what happened, she told me that wax usually penetrates through an additional layer of skin; if this would have happened I would have had third degree rather than second degree burns.  She couldn’t explain why this didn’t happen to me.

    When I got home from the hospital it  was the first time I could see the small details of my face very close up, since in the hospital there was a counter between me and the mirror.  At home I was able to see what the staff was referring to when they repeatedly said how lucky I was.  I knew that the only place not burned was around my eyes, but I didn’t realize how very close to my eyes it was – just a centimeter and a half at the most around each eye.  One eye didn’t even have that much.  God was very kind to me.

    Someone at the hotel who I had just met told me she read about me in the Pesach issue of the Hebrew language Mishpacha magazine and gave me her copy so I could read the article myself.  When I spoke with the  interviewer about six weeks before the issue came out, the woman told me she enjoyed speaking to me but didn’t think what I said would fit in with her angle.  She later called me and told me that she rarely hears someone speaking the way that I did, that she was so inspired that she decided to write up some of what I shared with her.   I’m usually not sure what people are referring to when they say that I inspired them, but in this case I think it was my attitude toward seemingly negative events.  

    After we moved to Israel, our peaceful and pleasant life was turned upside down.  It was a marathon of challenges, and every time I would think things were about to get easier, they got worse.  Some people have asked me if I’m sorry if I made aliyah, since it’s unlikely any of these difficulties would have occurred if we stayed in the US.  My answer – and this is what I shared with the interviewer- is that I’m very glad we moved to Israel, despite the challenges.  It’s true that I wouldn’t have had these difficulties if we hadn’t come, but I’m sure we would have been sent different challenges instead.

    Why am I so sure of that?  I believe we are each a soul given a body so that we can actualize our mission in this world.  The problem is that while the soul knows why it was put here, the physical self  is generally oblivious to having a soul.  It would be hopeless for us to hook into our spiritual selves and accomplish this mission if we were left to our own devices, but God sends us regular reminders and nudges towards our mission every day via the circumstances of our lives.  Sometimes they’re smaller and sometimes they’re bigger.

    Everything that happens to us is meant to bring us closer to our soul’s purpose, and everything we are given is a tool to help us. Sometimes our tools includes wealth, beauty, loving family and friends.  Sometimes it doesn’t include any of those.  Every person has a unique mission and has the tools he needs for his mission.  Sometimes we veer off course and things happen to help us get back on track, to move us closer to our mission.  Sometimes we misread the messages and they get sent to us again and again in different ways until we get the message.  Those messages usually come cloaked as difficulties.

    What about the pain and suffering we sometimes – often – experience?  Hard things happen to all of us.  Sometimes It can feel painful and horrendous.  Sometimes we cry and scream, and ask why did this happen to us, why are we being punished.  That’s our perception and it’s valid.  But it’s not complete.

    If a parent yanks his child’s arm painfully hard to pull him out of the path of a truck barreling towards him at high speed, is the parent being cruel?  Is he punishing his child?  Most of us would agree that inflicting this short-lived pain on his child is the most loving thing this parent could do, because the alternative would be so much worse.  

    I believe that God loves us more than we can imagine, and everything He does comes from a place of love.  (I was recently speaking with someone whose husband was killed on a bus that was blown up by a suicide bomber, and she agreed with me that there are things that you can say about your own situation but others shouldn’t tell you.  This is one of those things – when someone told me a day after my accident that it happened because God loves me so much, I told her that I know God loves me very much – but that I didn’t appreciate her comment because my knee jerk reaction to it was negative.)  I believe my accident was an act of kindness for me, to help me shift out of the thinking that was taking me in the wrong direction, and realign myself in a way that will bring me more happiness and contentment.

    If everything that happens comes from a place of love and for our ultimate good, can it be bad?  My personal belief is that no, it can’t.  It can feel bad.  But it can’t be bad.  

    This thought has helped me tremendously in difficult circumstances.

    I don’t pretend to have a wide angle view on why things happen to me, let alone to anyone else.  That’s not my realm and it’s not necessary.  I relate best to the concept of a tapestry – on one side, it looks like a bunch of knots that seem random and ugly.  Turn it around and look at it close up and even when looking at the correct side, all you can see are specks of color that still seem random.  It’s only when you look at it from a distance that you can see the whole picture, and the picture is breathtakingly beautiful.  And all of a sudden, the knots and randomness all makes sense, as it becomes clear that each tiny detail had to be there for the tapestry to be complete.

    Avivah

  • A healing Pesach for our family

    healingWow, what a wonderful Pesach we had!  It was so restful and renewing.

    It didn’t start off so smoothly but that’s how beginnings often are, and fortunately the longer we were there, the better it was!

    The most challenging thing was the communal seder, which was very different from our usual seder.  Our family had a huge table – they didn’t want us to be squished so they gave us a double sized table that would have easily seated 22 people instead of just the 12 of us.  That was very thoughtful of them but the table size combined with all the noise of the dining room meant we couldn’t hear each other talking!  I had two boys who were literally crying at the seder from confusion, my two youngest boys (except Yirmi) weren’t even aware of what was going on at our table, the older kids were grimacing and it was pretty much impossible to conjure up the atmosphere we usually have at home.

    We decided to follow the leader of the communal seder rather than do our own thing, and it got better once we had the meal.  Our family sang during the meal and other people joined in with us, and at the end of the seder everyone who was left put their chairs around the table in the center and sang together.  It was really nice.  I was later told by the organizer how grateful they were that we were there, since she had tried unsuccessfully to find yeshiva guys to come to add a nice holiday spirit – and then we showed up.  🙂  So it was very different but ended up being a nice experience.

    This wasn’t a Pesach hotel, but a hotel people go to for Pesach.  That means that there weren’t inspiring speakers or a lineup of activities – in fact, even what I had been told to expect wasn’t quite accurate.  I was told there was an exercise room, a basketball court and an Olympic size pool with separate swimming.  I was also told that an outreach organization had rented out most of the hotel for all of Pesach and we would be able to attend their lectures and participate in their day trips.  

    However, it wasn’t quite as I expected!  Isn’t it funny how often life is like that?  There was no access to the exercise room without paying an extra fee since it isn’t owned by the hotel, there was no basketball court and the pool not only wasn’t large, it had minimal hours for separate swimming that coincided with breakfast and dinner.  The outreach organization was there only the first and last day of Passover, so for most of the time there were no lectures and definitely no day trips.  The internet in our room was only available for an extra charge and the free internet in the lobby wasn’t working for most of the time.  That meant it was quiet and even a bit boring after the first couple of days – and it was the absolute best thing for our family.

    What did the hotel have?  A ping pong table, two huge jumping structures and a play area for younger kids in the inner courtyard.  A lobby where we sat around for long periods together hanging out.  Delicious meals three times a day on Shabbos and yom tov, and twice a day otherwise.   We had lots of time to just be together without any pressure to be anywhere or do anything, and this is exactly what we needed for emotional healing for everyone.

    My kids were really traumatized by my accident.  Dd13 is the one I told to call for help and she was very frightened and overwhelmed; she didn’t know what to do.  I gave her instructions but she was – understandably – very shaken up.  Ds4 was standing next to the bathroom door solemnly staring at me frantically splashing my face with water while waiting for the ambulance, until I noticed him and shut the door so he wouldn’t be scared.

    When the ambulance crew got there, they asked me what happened.  As I began to answer I saw my kids were there and told them to leave the room before I continued.  I didn’t know what I looked like by then – I had seen a glance of my face in the mirror above the sink a few minutes before while I was splashing and saw the contours were beginning to change and my skin coming off – and didn’t want them to see anything that would scare them because it sure did scare me.  But despite my efforts it was very frightening for them.  Ds11 told me a few days later on the phone that hearing me scream when I was burnt was what frightened him most.

    A day or two after I was in the hospital I was talking to ds6 on the phone, and he asked me when I was coming home and then he asked, “Are you going to die?”  I said, “No, I’m not going to die but that was very scary for you, wasn’t it?”  He quickly changed the topic and said, “I’m just joking.”  He wasn’t just joking.  Our little kids have such big feelings…My younger boys have been talking a lot about things coming to an end and fulfilling their purpose in their world, toys and things in nature and people.  Some of their comments are pretty intense.

    I was worried for dd17 and ds15 that this Pesach break was turning into a repeat of last year, when I was in the intensive care unit with Yirmiyahu, with all of the emotions that was bringing up.  Yirmiyahu was extremely unsettled and clingy no matter what anyone did.  It wasn’t until we were at the hotel a couple of days that he returned to himself, relaxed and cheerful.  I remarked to dh that Yirmi is like the emotional barometer of the family; his behavior reflects what everyone else is feeling.

    Dd19 said it was a very hard home environment to come into (she came home from the US after 13 months away the day after my accident).  I asked why, and she said that everyone was afraid and tense; at that point none of us knew what the long term repercussions of my burns would be or how long I would be hospitalized  Going to the hotel gave us a chance to move past the immediate trauma of the accident, to unwind and feel taken care of, to have a chance of scenery and being in a different setting that was so pleasant helped us all shift our focus away from the accident.

    There were three other families there during that week who we had a chance to get to know; by the end of our stay we asked that our tables be put together for meals.  For the final day of Pesach our four families were given a private dining room and this was really nice – it was a more personal feeling than being in a huge dining room.   The families were all so nice and it was also nice that they were all so glad that we were there.  One of the women told me on the last day what happy children we have, and especially now that was a really gratifying observation to hear from someone who had been seeing our kids close up for the entire week.  

    I felt a sense of sadness when we left the hotel and some of my kids did as well.  (When I told ds4 we were going to go home, he insisted that the hotel was now our home, that we had brought our stuff there and he wanted to stay forever!)  It was sad, but a good kind of sad that comes from having had such a nice experience and it coming to an end.  I had such a peaceful Pesach and it was an amazing gift to our entire family to have been able to go away!

    Avivah

  • On giving and being given to

    charityFrom the time I was twelve, I’ve had a favorite mitzva – giving maaser (tithes).  When I was young this meant putting ten percent of all my babysitting money in my own charity box I kept on the ledge of my bedroom window.  When I got older, I set up a separate checking account linked to my main checking account; as soon as money came in, the first thing I would do was transfer 10% to my charity account.  This account had its own checkbook and I delighted in being able to regularly respond to requests for help from others.

    Now I’m in the position of being helped, and it’s a very different experience than giving.

    A dear friend called me at the hospital and asked me if we would go away for Pesach if she would make arrangements.  I immediately refused; I told her it was a luxury and we would manage to prepare for Pesach once I got home from the hospital.  (If you’ve been reading here long enough you know that in almost 22 years of marriage I’ve never hired any kind of cleaning help so you can understand that going away is far beyond my frugal way of doing things.)

    Then I thought about how much stress we’ve all gone through, how traumatized the six kids are who were at home when the accident happened and what a huge relief it would be to all of us to not to have to keep pushing on.  When I was honest with myself and allowed myself to picture not having to prepare for Pesach, I felt almost weak with relief.

    When I saw that a fundraiser was initiated by this same incredible friend to help our family with the many expenses we’re facing, including the costs of Pesach at a hotel, it was very hard for me.  I didn’t know about it in advance and finding out about it was very, very hard.  This is so contrary to my nature in every way.  I didn’t want to be seen as needy and pathetic.  I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me.  My ego was struggling in a huge way.  And then I saw the incredible response to it within 24 hours of when it began, and I was shocked.

    It made me think of this email from a friend right after the accident.

    “But the only way I am making sense of the idea that something bad could have happened to you is that this is going to generate such an unbelievable amount of compassion and chessed in the world that it will be just awe-inspiring. I think that people will rally so much around you and take on so many extra mitzvos and daven with so much extra koach and say so much extra tehillim that this must be what the world is in need of right now.
     
    As your friend, I can’t say I love the idea that you are the vehicle for all of this to take place, but I can completely see you as the catalyst for something huge.”
    I thought she was sweet to want to make me feel good.
    I had no idea.  No idea.  She was right – people are just so good.

    I am overwhelmed, totally overwhelmed.  The tehillim, the davening, the people who were willing to make challah before Pesach instead of buying or taking from the freezer as a merit for my healing.  The money people are giving at a time of year when finances are especially tight due to Pesach expenses; the notes and good wishes that accompanied those donations showed how much people cared.  It’s hard for me to digest.  I could never have imagined having been the recipient of so much generosity and good will.  I am just overwhelmed with gratitude, and don’t have words to say how much it all means to me.

    In Jewish tradition, we learn that God created people who need help in order to give others the merit of helping them.  It’s very uncomfortable to be on the receiving side.  Very. But when I see the outpouring of goodness that is being brought into the world right  now, it’s also obvious that all of this would be blocked from entering the world if there weren’t someone in need – unfortunately, me in this case – to be the conduit for it.  Our world is so fractured and these acts of kindness are bringing wholeness and healing to our entire planet.    

    Thank you all so much for your caring and compassion.  I look forward to very soon being back on the giving side, and wish for you all that you be blessed with being givers rather than receivers!

    Avivah

  • Leaving the hospital

    goodbyeI’m leaving the hospital! The staff would have had me stay longer but I told them I have little kids who are really missing me.  I also told them this last week and they told me there’s no doctor in the world who would release me in the state I was in.  But now it’s okay.

    I am so grateful for this hospital experience.  I’ve unfortunately had a lot of experiences with hospitals in the last 22 months – two different wards for me after my last birth, six hospital stays with three of my kids that were each at least ten days long, then my mom had two hip replacement surgeries and was in the orthopedic ward and then a couple more weeks each time in the rehabilitation hospital and now I’m here.  So I’ve seen a number of different hospitals and different units and have plenty to compare to.

    My stay here has been wonderful.  The staff has been compassionate, kind, respectful and reassuring.  I had a very pleasant roommate for my first four days who didn’t have any visitors and came over to introduce herself to me and to wish me well.  She looked me in the face the first morning that my bandages came off without flinching – she’s the only one except the staff who was able to do that except for dd19 – she talked to me the way she would have spoken to anyone.  When she left I hoped that I would get another roommate that was just as nice since I felt very fragile and didn’t want someone who would fill the room with lots of loud visitors at all hours of day.

    Early Friday morning I got my new roommate, whose husband was verbally abusive and I didn’t know how long I could bear what I was hearing through the curtain.  They took her for surgery less than an hour after she got here and then the nurse told me she was going to transfer me to another room.

    I really didn’t want to transfer.  I felt very vulnerable and my room was the last one along the corridor, on the far side of the room, where people couldn’t peer in and see me when they were walking by.  I was afraid to be in the bed next to the door, to have a roommate who would gape at me, visitors who would stare at me….I didn’t want to step out of my room and definitely didn’t want to have a new roommate watching me as I came in and got resettled.

    I told the nurse I didn’t want to transfer.  She said there’s nothing she could do.  I told her it would be really hard for me.  She told me she has to move me because of concerns about me getting an infection from the person in my room who is having surgery, and they can’t put two surgery patients together.  (I’m in the burn unit but it’s combined with a surgical unit – there was only one other person here with a burn during my hospital stay so everyone else is here for some kind of surgery.  That’s why I’m noticeable, even here I look unusual.)  I asked her if they did  move me if I could be on the far side of the room and she briskly told me that there’s no way for them to guarantee that.  I wanted to ask her why she couldn’t move my roommate, who had only been in the room for less than an hour, but that sounded like a petulant child so I didn’t say anything.

    A few hours later I noticed that they had taken the belongings of my new roommate away and put her in a different room.  Without saying anything to me, they decided to leave me where I was; although I didn’t make a big deal about it, they realized that I was distressed to move and changed their plans to accommodate me.

    Aside from giving me a feeling of security that I could stay where I was, I had the luxury on Shabbos of having my own room (that continued for an amazing four days!).  I was able to close the door to my room and have an unusual amount of privacy for a hospital patient.

    I didn’t think my feeling of privacy would last long – my experience in all the other hospitalizations is that the staff habitually fling curtains opens, turn on lights irrespective of the time of day or night and chastise you if you make any attempt to turn off the overhead light or close the door.

    Do you know what happened here?  For the entire time I’ve been able to have only natural daylight in my room and keep the bright overhead lighting off.  One of the first days a nurse asked why the lights were off and turned them on, but when it was evening I turned them off again and no one said anything again.  For a week and a half!  A couple of times when they came in the late evening to take my stats they turned on a little side light but even then turned it off when they finished, without me saying anything.

    When I closed the door, no one told me I wasn’t allowed to do that.  In fact, some of the nurses and cleaning staff even knocked before they came in!  Knocking, in a hospital!  To me this is a contradiction in terms.  Almost all of them closed the door behind them when they went out.  They not only sensed my desire for privacy but have actively been respectful of that.

    I have a window on my side of the room and I’ve been able to keep it open all day and most nights and have plenty of fresh air.  I’ve been able to talk to my family on the phone without worrying about disturbing a roommate.  I’ve been able to listen to relaxing music and an audiobook played aloud.  Since each room has an adjoining bathroom, I had my own bathroom and didn’t have to time my showers or bathroom visits with anyone else’s needs.

    I don’t want to give you the wrong impression – it’s not at all like being at a luxury hotel – but hospitals can be a hard place to be emotionally when you need to recuperate.  God clearly knew I needed a lot of quiet and space to feel my way through this situation and find a perspective that is nurturing and respectful of myself.

    I wasn’t sure when I would be ready to leave, and for a while I wondered if I’d ever be ready.  Yesterday I felt a strong tug that I needed to go home because of my kids, but I didn’t feel ready yet.  Making the decision to stay one more day has given me a chance to have a sense of closure and to express my gratitude to the nurses who were so kind to me at a time when I really needed that kindness.  I wrote a letter to all the staff here – and noted on the envelope that it included the cleaning lady – to tell them how much their compassion and sensitivity meant to me.

    I wrote another letter to the head nurse, telling her I’ve overheard a lot of staff interactions during my stay and there’s a noticeable lack of yelling, shaming and blaming.  (Without going into specifics, I can say this is totally different from things I’ve overheard in different hospitals/wards.)  I told her that it’s a testament to the environment that she’s spent years creating – beginning with the respectful and non accusatory way that she treats her staff – that we patients are able to benefit from a calm and pleasant atmosphere.

    Particularly during the first two shifts after I was admitted I couldn’t see the nurses who were taking care of me (after that I could see a shadowy outline and then eventually could see normally) but the sound of their voices and the feeling of their hands bandaging my face was very soothing.  Five days after I was admitted, two nurses came in to change my linens, and one told me how good I looked.  The other one told her that it was a huge change, that she had been the one who admitted me.  I exclaimed in surprise, “Are you Rachel?” I told her that I had been waiting for her to be on shift again to tell her how much her care meant to me in those early hours.  I felt her kindness coming through without being able to see her – and when I saw this older nurse with a stern face I realized that just like she saw past my burns to me as a person, hearing instead of seeing her made it possible for me to see past her businesslike exterior straight to her kind heart underneath.

    How often do we miss what the true essence of a person is because we get distracted by how they look?  Probably most of the time.

    Here’s a song that I’m listening to today – now with headphones since on my last morning here got a roommate. 🙂  This is from an audio program by Louise Hay titled ‘How to Love Yourself: Cherishing the Miracle that You Are’.  I love music in general and songs used well can be so powerful – if they’re filled with good messages they have an added benefit since as they begin to play themselves over and over in your mind, you create new neural pathways in your brain that will better serve you than the old scripts they’re replacing.  This feels like just the right message as I wait to be discharged and get ready to face the real world.

    I love myself just the way I am
    there’s nothing I need to change
    I’ll always be the perfect me
    there’s nothing to rearrange.
    I’m beautiful
    and capable
    of being the best me I can
    And I love myself just the way I am.

    (skipping two stanzas)

    I love myself
    the way I am
    and still I want to grow
    The change outside can only come
    from deep inside, I know.
    I’m beautiful
    and capable
    of being the best me I can
    and I love myself
    just the way I am……
    I love myself…. just the way I am.

    Grateful for my hospital stay, grateful that I’m ready to leave and looking forward to being home!

    Avivah

  • Getting better!

    This will be a bit of a roundup post!

    On Thursday night dh told me Yirmiyahu was throwing up and out of sorts.  I asked dh to take him to the doctor just to check that everything was normal – I worry about him more than the other kids because of his history.   The doctor said a stomach virus is going around.

    Yirmi under the weather and missing his mommy
    Yirmi under the weather and missing his mommy

    But in this case I think the virus isn’t the problem; I think he’s heartsick that I’m gone.  Interestingly, ds15 and dd19 both came to the same conclusion independently.

    I speak to him at least once every day and yesterday he sounded much better!  Dd17 took Yirmiyahu to his speech therapy appointment yesterday.  We’ve had two appointments with her in the last nine months but once again she established a nice rapport with Yirmiyahu and he had a good time with her.  Dd called to tell me that the therapist said Yirmiyahu is very cute, intelligent and highly communicative.  I can’t argue with that!

    Yirmiyahu, 21 months, In pajamas blowing an early morning kiss
    Yirmiyahu, 21 months, In pajamas blowing an early morning kiss

    Here’s a picture that warms my heart.  No, ‘warm’ is too lukewarm a term.  It gives me tremendous joy to see dd19 with her siblings again and I was so happy they came to see me here at the hospital.  She is awesome.  Every one of them is awesome.  I am so, so, so blessed.  From left to right, dd19, dd17, ds15.

    My special visitors!
    My special visitors!

    Some nurses at the hospital asked me if its true I have ten children – not sure how they found out since I don’t remember saying anything – and one asked me, “Isn’t that hard?”  I’ll tell you what I told her, it felt like a lot when they were growing up, but all the work that I put in was a drop compared to the oceans of joy that I have watching them as they’ve gotten older.  Did I say how lucky I was?  I positive I’ve gotten some of the most wonderful children on the planet.  It’s very humbling.

    As for me, I am doing really well.  I’ve been enjoying the hospital cuisine – seriously, the food is quite decent and I don’t have to shop for it, cook it or clean up after it, which makes it taste that much better!  I haven’t been able to get extra protein even though the doctor said it’s very important to regenerate the skin on my face.  Dh brought me a container of roasted chicken to keep in the patient fridge to supplement what I get here but it disappeared within a day before I had a chance to eat any!  At every meal I ask them if someone doesn’t take their tray if I can have the extra protein from it and though I don’t love having to ask and feel like a nudnik every single time, sometimes I end up with extra.  I look at asking for extra portions as a way to nurture myself even when it’s uncomfortable.

    My face is looking wonderful.  Well, me and the doc tors think so but obviously we have a different perspective than other people.  Other people look at me and then quickly look away, and then when they think I’m not looking, look at me again.  It’s hard to see people look at you and flinch.  The first week I kept my face turned away and couldn’t look at anyone who wasn’t on the staff but now I keep my head up and meet people’s eyes when they stare at me.  This is such major progress for me – I couldn’t bear the thought of having to walk out of this hospital.  When I say I couldn’t bear it, it would have been literally impossible for me to do.  Even mentally I couldn’t picture how I would do it.

    I had something wrong with my eyes after the accident and when they told me they were going to send me to the eye doctor in another part of the hospital to have it checked, I refused to go.  The doctor here wanted to know why I was refusing and I told her, I can’t have people staring at me.  She understood and offered to send me with my entire face bandaged but that doesn’t exactly keep people from looking at you, you know?  When I was bandaged I didn’t want anyone to look at me, but when my bandages were off I felt so exposed and vulnerable.  (My eyes were very sore from the fluids draining out of my wounds and one eye was turning in – maybe the trauma to the nerve? – but I’m happy to say that with time it’s gotten better.)

    Ds20 (who stayed in Jerusalem since I wasn’t home for Shabbos) asked the other kids who visited me how I looked and dd17 carefully said, “It’s a little surprising.”  That’s a nice way to put it and I was so grateful to my kids that they were able to look beyond the externals and have a nice visit while they were here.  

    But really, I do look much better.  Like a thousand times better, without exaggeration.  It’s in the foreseeable future that all the blisters and burn marks will be gone.  I hope I won’t have scarring but the doctors won’t comment on that, they said they can only talk about what is front of them right now and have no way to know what will happen later.  Right now they’ve given me clear instructions for the next six months that I’m to have absolutely no exposure to the sun.  Living in a Mediterranean country with nonstop cloudless sunny days, that’s not a simple matter and this is going to require some lifestyle changes for me in many ways.

    The first change will be on the fashion front.   When I leave the house it can only be very early in the morning or late in the afternoon when the sun is at its weakest, and I’ll need to wear a hat and the strongest sunscreen there is.  So I’m going to have to find some awesome hats.  If you have suggestions for where to buy nice hats at a good price in the Jerusalem area, please let me know!  (They have to be some color except for black because black doesn’t suit me.)  It’s going to be a long time until I can do window shopping – unless it’s at night! – so I’d appreciate your help in finding suitable stores.  If there’s a website that I can order from here in Israel, all the better!

    A number of you have mentioned Mrs. Green in Jerusalem who is famous for her knowledge about burns and her creams.  Dh got her cream from someone in Karmiel within 24 hours of me being hospitalized but Mrs. Green told him while I’m in the hospital I should do exactly what they say and not use her cream.  She doesn’t give advice over the phone; she needs to see you before making specific recommendations.  Hopefully dh will be able to borrow a car to take me to her on Thursday night (she only sees people on Sunday and Thursday nights) for an appointment. 

    Overall I’m quite optimistic.  When my husband met me in the ER, he heard me tell the doctor I couldn’t feel my lips.  I don’t remember what the doctor told me – probably something like ‘It will be fine’ because that’s what everyone said – but my husband realized that I was asking if I still had lips.  It was a huge relief when my husband reassured me that they were still there.  After the accident I was afraid I had lost my face forever, but I haven’t.  It’s going to take time but my features didn’t melt, it’s only the old layers of skin that are gone.

    The nurses have jokingly told me that I’ve gotten the equivalent of a deep chemical peel that people pay a lot of money for and I’m going to look better than ever when I heal.  I smiled but told them, “I also paid a high price for this”.  I didn’t have wrinkles or fine lines in my face so I can’t say getting rid of them was a side benefit but I’m sure my pores could have used a deep cleaning and now even better than a deep cleaning – I’ll have new pores!  🙂

    Avivah

  • Letting the tears come

    tearsThere have been a few things I’ve wanted to write about, but haven’t done it because people might falsely assume I’m always positive or upbeat.  A lot of the time I am but sometimes I’m not.  I’ve always tried to be honest with you here and the last thing I want people to come away with is that you have to be smiling and thanking God for every bad thing that happens to you, no matter what.   Sometimes life hurts – a lot.  What I want to write about today is the tears.

    The morning of the accident, I was contemplating a question someone sent me about disabilities.  I was thinking about how hard it is when you look visibly different because people don’t give you a chance to show who you are.  As this thought went through my mind, I realized I had never consciously been grateful that this wasn’t my challenge.  Right that minute I said out loud, “Thank you God for giving me a normal face.”

    I find my tendency towards premonitionary thoughts like this a bit unnerving (eg mid pregnancy repeatedly feeling Yirmiyahu would have T21, the highway accident I was almost in a few years ago).  Why for the first time in forty years did I have this thought a few hours before my face was badly burnt?  I’m positive the soul is whispering to us at these times but what I wonder is, why?  Is it is a knowing something is going to happen, or a shadowy sense of warning that you’re slated for something to happen?  Is it a fleeting opening to help you prepare for your new reality before your reality changes?

    When I was in the ambulance, I kept whispering into the wet towel I had brought to keep on my face, ‘please God, give me my face’.  And then I thought, ‘Maybe you don’t need this as part of your soul’s mission anymore and this isn’t what you should be asking for.  What you need is to ask for in help accepting God’s will’.  I swallowed hard, very hard – and thought, “Please Hashem, help me to accept whatever Your will is for me.”  After a long pause I whispered, ‘And if it’s Your will, please give me back my face.’    

    I screamed twice when I was burnt, but I haven’t cried that much.  There have been a few little times here and there but mostly whatever tears I felt welling up could be swallowed down.

    But in the last couple of days I’ve had some intense waves of sadness come over me.

    On Friday morning dd19, dd17 and ds15 came to visit me for the first time.  My face was much better by then – every day is a visible difference – but I was worried how they were going to react when they saw me.  I heard ds say, “Hi, Mommy” as they came into my room but before they saw me I covered my face and started crying.  I couldn’t keep my face in my hands forever so I took my hands away as I stood up and hugged them, still crying.  As I hugged dd19 for the first time in over a year she asked me if I was crying from happiness or sadness and I said, ‘I don’t know’.  It’s a mixture.

    On Friday night I went to the nurses station to light Shabbos candles, feeling upbeat and cheerful.  This was the first time I was able to venture this far from my room into the public domain – it’s about five or six steps away – but mentally letting myself be somewhere that someone who wasn’t on the medical staff would see me took a lot of courage.  As I waved my hands in front of my eyes three times and opened my mouth to say the blessing, I started sobbing uncontrollably.  It was like something cracked open inside of me.

    I felt subdued as I  began my Shabbos meal in my hospital room.  As I sang Aishes Chayil/ A Woman of Valor, and got to the line ‘She is robed in strength and dignity, and she smiles at the future’ I faltered and couldn’t swallow the lump in my throat.  I took a couple of deep breaths and my voice quavered but I continued, until I got to ‘Grace is elusive and beauty is vain’.  I tried to sing this but broke down a few times before I could compose myself enough to finish the line – but a woman who fears God — she shall be praised.

    After Shabbos was over I washed my face and thought how amazing it was how much better I’m doing.   Until now I’ve only asked the staff how much longer I have to stay in the hospital and assumed that their answer meant I would be better by the time I left with a little residual pinkness that would fade in a very short time.  When the nurse came in, I asked her how long it takes an injury like mine to heal. For the first time last night I had a sense that it could be much longer than what I’ve been telling myself.  Despite that I wasn’t ready for her answer.

    The nurse responded that I’ll have to stay out of the sun for the entire summer – and summer isn’t even officially here.  The concern is about scarring.  My eyes welled up with tears and I couldn’t answer her without a break in my voice.  Another six months?  I needed some time to process that.  Last night I was very sad and I couldn’t sleep for a long time.

    Why am I telling you all of this?  Because it’s not good to say everything is fine and not acknowledge to yourself how you’re really feeling.  Feeling your sadness and your anger and everything else we tend to not want to feel or see – and other people don’t want to see – is a critical part of coming to terms with your life and eventually having emotional peace.

    This would be a much more upbeat post if I didn’t tell you all of this but one day you’re going to go through hard things and I want you to remember this – that you don’t have to be strong.  You don’t have to smile and be grateful that something bad happened to you.  You don’t have to assuage the anxiety of those around you who are much more comfortable with you smiling and being positive than with your raw emotions.

    Feelings come in waves…you have to be willing to feel them when they come even if they threaten to engulf you.  Eventually the waves subside.  The waves will keep coming but each time it will get a little easier.  A storm doesn’t last forever and our tears are a tool to help us through the storm.

    Avivah