November 2004

I’m not like my sister, who gets her fingers smashed with the wooden spoon whenever Dad does spelling words with her and she gets distracted. I get smacked when I forget things or do something bad. At least I’m smart enough to do homework on my own. If I just do everything right, I won’t get hurt. I need to be better at everything. I need to remember things, and I need to stop talking back, and I need to be more respectful, and I need to be less lazy, and I need to listen, and I need to stop fighting, and I need… a lot. If I can just manage to beat the system I won’t get hurt anymore.

My paternal grandparents were my refuge. While my mother is Jewish, my father is not. When her grandparents were alive, we kept some Jewish rituals, like going to their house for a Pesach Seder. We also lit Chanukah candles. But most of my childhood was spent with my father’s parents.

June 2005

I spend time in the only place I feel loved. With Mommom and Poppop. Their house is a safe haven for me. They don’t realize how bad I am because I always behave with them. I love them. I love the VHS tape cabinet and the Lincoln Logs in the side table drawer. I love the two lamps that twist on and off. I love the glider on the front porch and the little ladybugs that love the back porch. I love how Mommom is funny. I love how Poppop is gentle and kind. I love fiercely and hard. I will do anything for them, and I will go anywhere with them.

They treat me like a child and I don’t have to be my tough self like at home. It’s very different from home. I get a lot of food. I don’t ever get smacked. They have this weird thing called a time-out where you sit in a chair. I’m happy with them. I enjoy the beauty of the pretzel jar with its fun glass shape and metal lid. I eat pretzels with cream cheese from the foil block in the fridge. I drink sweet tea that I see Mommom make with eight tea bags and three scoops of sugar. I’m content, until I have to go home.

As a little girl, I’d go to church with my grandparents. Even as a young child, I was searching for G-d, and this was the only spiritual experience I was given. I was always a thinker, philosophical. I sat in the pew next to my grandmother, and I spoke to G-d with my eyes closed: “Please, I want to feel connected to You.”

I knew there must be some Power, or there would be no way to explain the wonders in the world. I felt the pull back and forth between believing in G-d and believing there is no G-d very strongly around the age of ten. “Your father believes once you die you are gone,” my mother would say to me. But then I began to speculate: “If there is a G-d, then He would know the future just as well as the past. Does that mean that our actions are decided beforehand or do we get to choose? If G-d knows what will happen maybe that means He controls what will happen?” I had no one to discuss these questions with, and I spent a large portion of my childhood struggling with G-d’s attributes and abilities — and what that meant for me individually.

January 2008

There’s a massive evergreen tree of some pine variety in the front yard. The branches fill the vertical space to the ground. The widest branches on the bottom hide a secret. If I enter through the brush on the back left side closest to the farmhouse and across from the pink dogwoods, I can push my way to the trunk and start my ascent. When I climb, I have to shimmy through tight areas and figure out where to place my feet and hands each time I move them. The sap sticks to me if I’m not careful. I avoid the thick orange drops and the random bird droppings. Three quarters of the way up I can go no further because the branches are too close together. There’s a branch with a string tied to it that tells me when it’s time to stop climbing. This spot has a perfect seat to sit, rest, and observe. There’s a gap in the branches where I can look out at the barn and driveway without my vision being obscured. Somehow no one sees me despite how open this section is. Maybe it’s because I’m so high up no one can find me. I absolutely love the feeling. I’m not afraid of heights here. I’m safe. I’m alone. I’m happy.

Beginning in third grade, I went to Hebrew school through a Reform synagogue, where I learned alef-beis and the basics of Judaism. I felt inexplicably connected to Yiddishkeit, and from that point on I grasped at anything connected to Jewish life. We would eat challah slices and drink white grape juice and I thought that was the epitome of Jewish food.

When I started high school at age 13, I joined the Reform synagogue’s youth group, which provided me with an out-of-school social life and more Jewish culture. I really loved learning about Judaism and being around other Jews. At school, I didn’t fit in, but here I did.

At a teen convention I found myself listening to a man speak about keeping kosher. “Try not eating pork for two weeks and see what happens,” he told the crowd of teens sitting on the floor in the convention room.

I can do that, I thought to myself smugly. But my parents were not happy. Standing in the kitchen my father fumed at me. “What do you mean you won’t eat pork? What is wrong with you?” He saw this as a personal attack on him, but I didn’t let it deter me. My boldness and strong-willed nature were traits my parents tried to destroy, but these exact traits kept me motivated when all I saw were obstacles.

Not long after this I heard a Hebrew school classmate, with a Jewish father and Reform convert mother, explain how her family kept “kosher” at home. “We don’t mix meat and dairy together at my house,” this girl said with derision. I decided that if this mean girl could do it, I could do it. My mother agreed to cook special meals for me without my father knowing.

I ran into some issues, especially at school, because I didn’t know what exactly was in foods. If I ate something that I later realized was an issue, I would throw up from the disgust of mixing meat and dairy. I still ate nonkosher meat at home because I felt obligated because our family business was a meat farm.

Then I stopped eating shellfish. This was probably the hardest change, considering I grew up in blue crab country and our neighbors would bring us bushels of crabs they fished regularly and it was my favorite food.

For Pesach I went even further and avoided all leavened products for the whole Pesach.

August 2012

I’m ready to leave home. I was accepted for the spring semester at Brandeis University but that means I have to find something to do for the fall semester of my freshman year. Should I go to Paris to work on my French, or London through one of their midyear programs?

I think I’ll study in London because I’ll be able to cook my own food there. I started to wear skirts this summer and committed myself to learning as much as possible about Judaism. I feel this strong desire to learn. I am so excited to grow up and be an adult in the world. I get to make my own choices and take care of myself. I have an entire semester where I can live and be as I please, alone, overseas, autonomous.

My dorm in London was near a Modern Orthodox synagogue, and I was drawn to the place. I started going to shul every day for Shacharis and on Shabbosos, joining the minyan of elderly people who davened there.

At this point I went from eating kosher-style and dressing modestly to keeping most of Shabbos. I still knew close to nothing about proper observance, but every time I saw or learned something new I’d take it on. I recall making the decision not to carry ChapStick in my pocket on Shabbos. It was a big deal.

When I finished the semester in England, I went to Brandeis, where I became part of the Orthodox student group and took whatever classes the on-campus rabbi offered. I jumped full force into this new frum identity, and I loved it — the rules and the structure and the simplicity and the community. I loved being part of something bigger.

My parents, though, absolutely lost their minds when they saw I was becoming more observant. My father threatened to work me so hard on the farm I would forget about it. I was still 17 years old, but I didn’t go home that summer. Instead, I worked at a summer camp and then went to Israel with Meor Boston.

The frum families in the Boston Jewish community became my family. They hosted me for Shabbos meals, and through them I saw what living Judaism looked like. I spent summers learning in Israel, and took a semester off to go to seminary as well. In my senior year of college I lived with a local Chabad family instead of the dorm, and spent the year just observing and learning. I’d had no real Jewish upbringing; through my new family, I learned everything from what foods to serve for Shabbos, to learning and davening, to minhagim and chumras.

April 2019

What does hopelessness feel like? When no one understands what “everything is wrong” feels like, but you can’t explain. When everything seems okay to others but it’s really, desperately, not. The emptiness is overwhelming. It sucks away every ounce of life, limb by limb. It consumes me. There’s a black hole inside my core, and I feel it tearing away at my flesh. Thoughts struggle and gasp for breath as they attempt to claw their way out of the pit. Threads of hope float into the abyss. All that exists is emptiness. Even pain has met its match today. Despair has been reduced to a hallucination. Fear is a fleeting vision. Self-preservation is trapped beneath the frozen waters, staring up in fear through the cloudy ice.

My first marriage did not end well. In truth, I should never have married my first husband, and certainly I should not have stayed married to him. But with my rock-bottom self-esteem, when he was suggested to a young, 20-year-old me, I was so flattered that someone actually liked me, it was a no-brainer to say yes after each date and yes when he asked me to marry him.

I’d done basic research about him, as much as I could do as a single girl without any connections. But he wasn’t an emotionally healthy person due to childhood trauma, and it didn’t take me a long time to realize that our marriage was a horrible one. The way he spoke to me would shock any person, and the way I was physically threatened and hurt could have cost me my life.

Because of my unhappy upbringing, I was so used to being treated badly, so used to having to fight for emotional survival, I didn’t fully comprehend that this wasn’t okay, or think that I deserved better. Not long after we got married, when I found out I was expecting, I didn’t think there was anything to do but to stay in the marriage.

But by the time we had three children in the first few years, I could no longer live my life in a state of survival. During this time, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that restricted the use of my hands and feet and required regular immunosuppressant injections. These dark years were marked by my complete dissociation from my life. Then at one point, I felt I was going to fall apart emotionally and physically from the pressure of living with a man who was a tyrant to me and our children. I could no longer work full-time, raise children full-time, and day by day lose who I was as a person. I also felt terrible that my kids were growing up in a home that was just as unhappy as the one I’d grown up in.

I had a newborn, a one-year-old, and a four-year-old, and despite no family support, I pulled myself together and got us out of there, taking out a restraining order against my husband. What followed were years of legal battles to get a divorce and custody of the children.

January 2022

We sold the house. I have my get. I moved my children to a new apartment, which we slowly filled with discount furniture. I am still fighting to get the legal divorce finalized. I found a new job that allows me to work from home and make enough money to live. I affectionately call my baby my emotional support baby because she helps soothe the heartbreak of my older children going away every other weekend. I have nightmares and flashbacks. I get anxiety at the grocery store, expecting an expletive-filled call at any moment. I buy prepared food with gift cards because I am so overwhelmed and traumatized that I cannot manage to cook after work and caring for three small children. I lose a lot of weight from not eating. I buy pink linens and cute pillows for the couch to perk myself up. I try.

Building myself again was excruciatingly difficult. I was overcome by anxiety and became afraid of men, afraid of meeting new people. I started taking medication to help me handle my trauma. My children and I also went to individual and group therapy. During that time, my almost-exclusive focus was on my and my children’s emotional health and empowerment. Through therapy, we learned how to set boundaries with others, to think of ourselves as being worthy, of being lovable and likeable.

I poured my body and soul into my children. I spent every night for months on the couch because the children would pile into my bed at night for comfort, and I couldn’t bear to make them go back to their beds alone. I knew the trauma they were dealing with.

I began to learn Shaar Habitachon in Ibn Pakuda’s Chovos Halevavos, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe often instructed people to do. This began my quest into understanding why my life had turned out this way. I grappled with the idea that before we’re born, our neshamos choose our nisyonos. That was a huge burden on me. You mean I caused this? I asked for it? It’s my fault? This isn’t Hashem’s doing, but my own? I discussed the idea with Rabbi Manis Friedman, who reassured me that nothing happens without Hashem’s approval. I took some comfort from this exchange.

In his sefer Emunah and Bitachon (translated by Rabbi David R. Nakash), the Chazon Ish writes: “An old misconception resides in the hearts of many regarding the concept of bitachon… the term ‘bitachon,’ which is lauded by the pious as a praiseworthy and fundamental trait, has become misunderstood by many as an obligation to believe that any situation that a person encounters which places him in a position facing an undetermined future, with two possible outcomes, one of which is good and the other is not, they think that one is required to believe that it will definitely be good. This definition of bitachon is not correct…rather the concept of bitachon is the belief that there is no happenstance in the world, and that everything that occurs under the sun is all a result of a decree from the Almighty.”

Trusting Hashem can be incredibly difficult, especially when you’re constantly faced with trials and tribulations. A natural inclination is to blame yourself and fall into self- loathing, which can lead to depression, as Rabbi Shalom Arush writes in his sefer The Garden of Emunah. That was most certainly my experience.

I first accept what the Chazon Ish said: Nothing is by chance, and a bad outcome can occur just as much as a good outcome. I then acknowledge that the bad I experience is truly hard and causes real pain and suffering in my life. I don’t allow myself to sugarcoat my experiences. In therapy I learned the concept of needing to process trauma fully before it can leave your body. By allowing myself to fully feel and process a bad thing I can more effectively leave it behind and move forward.

Then I remember what chassidus teaches: While Hashem only does good, there is concealed and revealed good. While I might be faced with a situation that feels like unbearable suffering, it’s truly a concealed good sent from Hashem. While I may not understand why something happens, I find comfort that Hashem sent this to me for a greater purpose.

August 2025

My new husband and I often have this conversation. I ask, “Why is there always so much happening to me?” and he says, “It’s all temporary.” Challenges come and go. Some are mountains and some are valleys. Some are buzzing mosquitoes and some are large black bears blocking the path. There is always a place past these obstacles, before another shows its face. I know I am capable. I look back at the obstacles I struggled through and I am amazed at myself. I am the toughest person I know, but in each moment I have to muster up the strength to remember I will manage. And Hashem always ensures I can do it.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 960)