Yom Kippurs

On Monday, I sat down to write a post about Yom Kippur. I opened up my blog. Clicked on “add new.” Looked at the screen. Didn’t write.

 

On Tuesday, I sat down to write a post about Yom Kippur. Nothing.

 

On Wednesday, I clicked open a bunch of other tabs until I had to go to bed.

 

On Thursday…past midnight, no less — here we are.

 

I couldn’t write about Yom Kippur because I felt like a fraud and a hypocrite and I couldn’t write about Yom Kippur.

 

Then I spoke to my friend (who is also a therapist but no big deal 🙂 ) and she told me to write about feeling like a fraud and a hypocrite. (How’d I get so lucky to have friends like these?)

 

I am not having the Aseres Yemei Teshuva I wanted. It’s just been a tough week and I’m not doing too well with using the time the way it’s supposed to be used. Or the way I think it is, at least. I’ve basically been immobilized, to be honest. Not the greatest situation for the most dynamic and fertile time of year for making changes.

 

I want so many things. I want to be more forgiving. I want to be able to see and respect multiple perspectives. I want to be more optimistic more often. I want to be grateful. I want a thicker skin.

 

I want to stay in bed.

 

Maybe this year is a wash. Maybe I’ll pull something off. I don’t know. There are so many layers of confusion and resentment and pain and guilt I’m experiencing. I just don’t know.

 

Something to hold onto, though: itzumo shel Yom HaKippurim mechaper – the essence of the day of Yom Kippur is mechaper. Which means that even if you don’t prepare for Yom Kippur, it’s still Yom Kippur. And that’s what I’ll hold onto this year.

 

I wish I could do more. There really is so much I want to do and be. But for whatever reason, this Aseres Yemei Teshuva I just have to trust that itzumo shel Yom HaKippurim mechaper.

 

Last year I heard a great shiur from Rabbi Moshe Weinberger. The message was that sometimes in life when we have the strength to make a change or become a different person, it’s because of an accumulation of Yom Kippurs past. The avodah from year to year is never lost, whether it was fleeting, or made more of a lasting change, whether we invested a lot or a little. The essence of the day itself is mechaper and that never goes away, it lives in us.

 

This Yom Kippur, we should live and be well, will be Yom Kippur. It will live on inside of me. And b’ezras Hashem, next year we will try again.

 

Wishing you a gmar chasima tova and an easy fast. Please be mochel me if anything I posted on my blog was hurtful or insensitive to you. If there are any issues you would like to raise, please email me! Have a beautiful Yom Kippur.