Last week I came back from my break and I wanted to share a recap of where we went and what we did. This post ended up growing a lot longer than intended, so you’ve been notified. Austria was on my bucket list for years. My grandfather grew up in Vienna, and I grew up on The Sound of …
I asked an older friend/mentor for ideas about how to approach Elul this year, and she suggested that I learn about the basics of Elul and Rosh Hashanah from a sefer. She pointed out — and I have also seen — that learning about the things we did when we were younger, as adults, gives us an entirely new understanding …
Hello, all. Thanks for stopping by. I’ll be away through the end of next week, with iy”H a post on Monday after next. Wishing you a beautiful end of the summer season! I hope you get a chance to wrap up your summer bucket lists (I never did get to the beach, the horror). Can’t wait to share details of …
I just reread this Elul post about making changes and growing. One of the unintentional benefits of having this blog is getting to track my own thought processes over time. Since I’ve been blogging a lot longer than I ever thought I would (six and a half years!), I also get to see evidence of growth, as what was revelatory …
A friend sent me an absolutely beautiful article written by Chani Juravel, LCSW, in The Voice of Lakewood. I so appreciate supportive sentiments like these. So often, people fall short of being actually supportive by qualifying their statements instead of going in 100% in support without also mixing in some blame/responsibility. Grateful for an article that does none of that. …
I am so sad that Bed Bath and Beyond is no longer with us (yes, I know it’s merged with Overstock but it’s not the same as it was at all, so I don’t count that). I used to pore over bridal registries and even had a Pinterest board where I saved all the things I wanted to register for …
I got this idea from Gretchen Rubin, and a similar idea, position statements, from Mary Pipher. Then a friend mentioned something similar this week and I thought about how I might apply this concept to my own life. It’s a simple idea: establish a policy for how you typically deal with a given scenario, and outsource your future decisions to …
I can’t believe Rosh Hashana is in under six weeks. The Yomim Noraim always catch me by surprise; the summer seems to come to an abrupt end every year. Figuring out where I want to be for the Yomim Noraim is hard. I truly can’t believe it’s another year that I’m still having to figure this out. I was so …
Psychologist Christina Maslach, who studies burnout, identified three components of burnout (a result of chronic stress): exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. Most burnout studies focus on workplace burnout or caregiver burnout. I think this is a useful concept to think about regarding shidduchim.
I read this absolutely fascinating piece about Tu B’Av during the time of Sarah Schenirer and the original Bais Yaakov students.
