One of my social worker friends was super-encouraging of my going back to school. She said, “I think it will really give you satisfaction to be a therapist, and aside from that, I think you’ll love the process of becoming a therapist.” Well. I thought I knew what to expect. I know from therapy. Many of my friends are …
Sorry it’s been awhile — I’ve been very distracted and busy with school (plenty to say on that a different time…) but I just spotted something on the coffee table that I had to comment on. We have the Family First in my house this week. I noticed the cover feature. Can non-maternal women succeed at motherhood? Full …
This is just a brain dump of thoughts and questions I’ve been thinking about, regarding how to define myself and my standards in different areas where there is a choice in how much of a connection to have to secular culture. Often it feels like I’m walking a tightrope between the purity of Torah and the offerings of the …
I write in my journal almost every day. Sometimes I write a few paragraphs and sometimes I write more than five pages. I write about anything that comes to mind — stuff going on in my life, creative ideas, to-do lists…Sometimes I reread what I write and sometimes I don’t. I try to keep to it regularly even when I’m …
I love this quote from Theodore Roosevelt: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who …
I’ve been thinking over something that came up a couple of times at my sister’s vort/wedding. Some well-meaning people who also had married younger siblings wished me a “welcome to the club.” But…I didn’t want to be part of anyone’s club. I wanted to be free to have my own process, and to get to a place where I was …
A few weeks ago, a family friend called and said, “I was working on a shidduch for you and the mother said she spoke to your references and they told her you’re not interested in someone who X.” Now, this was inaccurate and I told this person as much (and I highly doubt my references, who know me well, worded …
For three days before my first first date ever (not a typo), I could barely eat. Looking back, I can identify what fears were running through my mind, but at the time I had no idea. My pre-first date nerves have calmed way down, but it’s still a challenge to maintain complete presence of mind. I wrote down some things …
I stumbled upon an interesting concept in a book recently. Social psychologist Roy Baumeister studies “anticipated aloneness” and the effects that envisioning being alone in the future has on people. Just imagining future rejection and loneliness actually knocks people’s IQ down a few points and makes it harder for them to engage in rational thought about anything. The problem …
A few days after my younger sister got engaged, my friend’s younger sister also got engaged. Similar situation, same age difference. And I had this moment when I went, Oh! I get to pay it forward already! Because over the weeks around the engagement, I had experienced just how amazing it feels to receive empathy from others who can put …
