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hat gas station-moment-of-shame had its roots a few years earlier, when I found myself a young single mother with an ex-husband who’d evaporated from the family picture, and four traumatized children who were looking at me to pick up the pieces and put them back together.

I didn’t know if I could even put myself back together, but I was determined to try.

Pushing through overwhelming pain, I worked hard, managed the finances, tried to spend quality time with each child, and kept moving ahead. From the outside, I looked successful. The house was reasonably neat, my kids looked fine, and my makeup hid the daily inner battles against loneliness, grief, and shame.

My children were also struggling terribly with the divorce. And my oldest daughter? She struggled the most.

At first, the battle was about school.

She wanted to switch schools, but I was determined to keep her in the system where she’d spent her whole life. I was terrified of pulling her out of a familiar environment during such a turbulent time. I thought I was protecting her and giving her stability. But Esther— my beautiful, brilliant, 14-year-old shining star of a daughter — needed to want to be where she was. She needed control in a life that had spun completely out of her control.

I refused to give that to her, so she took it anyway.

Stockings don’t morph into jeans in one day.

First came the skirts, hemlines creeping up. The stockings were replaced with socks that grew progressively shorter. The makeup grew heavier. And my neighbors kindly informed me that unsavory visitors hung out on my porch when I had to leave my daughter home by herself. My good, obedient, smart, wonderful daughter was turning into a stranger, and I had no idea what to do.

Except panic… which I did.

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needed to fix Esther, get my shining star back. I was sure she was still there under the layers of heavy black mascara, short sleeves, and ever-more-ripped jeans.

About a year after Esther began to change, I heard about a school in New York that specialized in cases like Esther’s. The steep tuition made me wonder if I would be able to afford food while she was in school, but I was desperate. If this was the magic fix that could help my daughter, it was worth it.

When I called Esther in school — and I called often (and even made the cross-country trip multiple times over the course of the year), she put on a cheerful facade.

“Yeah, Mom, everything’s great,” she’d say breezily. Looking back, I think I wanted to believe her, so I did. After all, we had a great relationship, and of course she appreciated how much money I was pouring into her education. And she sounded happy enough. She didn’t want to come home, preferring to stay with friends even over Yamim Tovim, and I let her, happy that she was in a warm, supportive environment.

While I mentally patted myself on the back for my great parenting skills — giving my daughter the space to be who she needed to be — Esther forged her own path through Yiddishkeit. She’d started keeping Shabbos again (I hoped) but replaced the yeshivish community and values she was raised with a more modern community. She found her way to NCSY, finished high school in her “special school,” and then moved on to a seminary in Israel that was known to be intellectual and focused on growth. It wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned for my daughter, but she’d come a long way, and I was so proud of Esther.

“It’s incredible here,” she told me when I called her, and she sounded genuinely excited, for the first time in years. In Israel, she connected with a local family she absolutely loved, and became one of their own. She thrived on the atmosphere, soaked in the learning, and shared her sharp, insightful comments about everything. She didn’t look exactly like me, but she was passionate about Torah and Yiddishkeit. I didn’t feel like a failure of a mother anymore.

Until her world came crashing down.

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sther was planning on making aliyah. She was learning a half-day in seminary, and spending the other half of her day working at a daycare center. She’d learned Hebrew and built up a network of friends and a surrogate family. While she called often, I hadn’t seen her in a while.

“I’m seriously dating a boy named Uri,” she told me breathlessly during one call. “I think we’re going to get engaged soon!” She was ready to build a life with Uri, and from what she told me, he sounded perfect for her.

And then, suddenly, it ended. He broke it off, I still don’t know why. Esther was devastated. She spiraled hard. Left Israel abruptly, came home, and moped around the house all day. She wouldn’t talk to me about what had happened. Told me abruptly that she needed to go visit some friends in New York. I thought maybe being around friends would help her deal with the heartbreak. I didn’t know that she was diving back into the behaviors and lifestyle of her rebellious teen years.

Esther returned home from New York with no warning. I opened the door to her lovely face, once so filled with laughter, now etched with sadness. She was wearing those jeans again, the ones I hated, but that wasn’t what held my eyes captive.

It was the tattoos, livid against her pale skin.

Not one, or even two. One arm, up the other arm, down her leg. Jewish symbols, I could tell, so that was something I could cling to.

It could be worse. Maybe.

A lion on her ankle, the word “Israel” inked across her wrist. A heart on one arm, two stars behind her ears when she pushed her hair back. Each tattoo was a raw scream of pain I wasn’t prepared for, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

“Uh, hi, Esther,” I forced out between lips numb with shock.

I had the sense to keep quiet about the tattoos, to thrust away the fury at my daughter for marking herself with ink into my heart. But Esther knew.

Her eyes lit up, but it wasn’t with joy. What I saw in her face was white-hot rage.

“I’m not talking to you,” she hissed and stalked off to her room, leaving me to hold on to the door handle with ice-cold fingers.

What was happening? Why was she so angry with me?

I’d thought we were close. But that day I discovered her hatred, and how I had no idea what was really going on in my daughter’s mind. Through random tirades and explosive rants over the next few days, I felt my foundations shaking. It turned out that Esther resented being sent away to school, felt abandoned and betrayed, and blamed me for the direction her life had taken.

All the sacrifices I’d made for my daughter resulted in this shattering anger and my pain. I realized that I didn’t have the tools to deal with this. Esther wasn’t a teenager I could send to a special school. She was 20. And I wasn’t equipped to handle the tattoos, the rebellion, or her anger. It’s hard for parents to see their children as individuals in their own right, to try to separate a child’s behavior from “What will the world think of me?” I saw that I couldn’t do it, that Esther’s rebellion hurt me personally. And she felt my resistance, my disapproval, my inability to show up for her in the way she needed.

There’s nothing harder than being confronted with our parenting mistakes. I looked at Esther, at the tattoos that seared my eyes, and I knew I had to change. Parenting is learned on the job, and I was going to need to work hard to build the tools I didn’t have.

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or a long time, I’d felt like Hashem was punishing me.

I was divorced, raising four children alone, and now my daughter was rejecting everything I had raised her to believe in. I joined a woman’s support group for struggling youth, searching desperately for the answers. Week after week, we sat in a circle, I shared my struggles, bared my soul, and felt the weight of the world on my shoulders.

And then, one week, the woman leading the group snapped at me in front of the rest group.

“Sheva,” she said, her voice sharp, “you are not a victim. You are totally fine. You have so many blessings.”

I was so furious I couldn’t answer her. Why did she have to yell at me in front of everyone? Humiliated and angry, I drove home, unseeing. “How dare she?” I growled, punching the steering wheel until my knuckles ached. What did that lady know about my life?

But somewhere deep inside the anger, a small voice — a calm voice — asked me an uncomfortable question: Could she be right?

As soon as I got home, I searched online: What is victim mode? And more importantly, did I have it?

What I discovered was eye-opening and painful.

Victim mode isn’t just about suffering; it’s a mindset. It’s when we see ourselves as powerless, when we believe life is happening to us instead of recognizing the inner strength we have to shape our responses. Victim mode convinces us we’re being punished, that everything is unfair, that everyone else has “it” better. But as I tried to process this worldview — which admittedly sounded an awful lot like the voice in my head — I realized I wasn’t being punished at all.

In my simple living room, not far from the bedroom where my daughter was doing who-knows-what, in the heart of my loneliness, I found the truth: Hashem had given me so much.

I had a home. Health. Healthy children. Beautiful friends. A life full of growth and meaning.

For the moment, I felt fulfilled, but I knew I’d need to learn to hold on to this realization when the days got overwhelming and I couldn’t handle seeing Esther’s tattoos or listening to a random acquaintance in the grocery asking if that was really my daughter?

That’s when I found Kesher Nafshi, an international organization for parents of children who are struggling or off the path. They changed everything for me, taught me how to shift my perspective, how to support my children without being consumed by guilt or blame, and how to take care of myself in the process. They showed me that my Esther’s challenges were part of her journey… and mine… shaping both of us into who we’re meant to become.

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sther’s journey involved rehab, multiple therapists, and a lot of hard work as she battled the demons that had turned her into a sullen, angry young woman.

My journey was no easier.

I traveled past my roles as mother, teacher, daughter, friend, and woman, into the heart of who I was and who I needed to be. I also learned about the concept of tafkid, my unique, Divinely assigned mission in This World.

I heard Rabbi YY Jacobson explain that each of us has a purpose, and it’s not the purpose we imagine or plan for ourselves. It’s the one Hashem assigns us. Accepting that was incredibly hard for me, because I didn’t always want this tafkid. Sometimes, I felt like my purpose in the world was drowning me. But through Rabbi Shimon Russell’s classes, lectures, and private sessions, I came to understand that even the pain was part of my purpose.

That didn’t always make it easier, but it made the struggle feel worth it.

I also began to understand that trauma doesn’t live in painful events, but in the feeling of being alone in that pain. When I was able to show up for my children, and let them know I’m here, I see you, I love you, I healed that loneliness. Esther was the reason, but her teenaged siblings also benefited from a mother who stopped and looked into their eyes and understood what they were saying… and what they weren’t.

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story is short, but life is long — and change is even longer.

Weeks. Months. Years.

Esther and I rebuilt our relationship, one word at a time. Slowly, she began to share her experiences, her pain, her perspective.

I listened. I didn’t fix. And then came the moment that tested everything I had worked on.

It was the end of a long day, and Esther dropped her bomb abruptly.

“Mommy,” she said, “I have a lot of trauma. I need to shave my head.”

I had to let the words sink in while I willed my legs not to stop holding me up. My beautiful girl wanted to shave her head. She wanted to be bald.

Inside, I was shaking. I didn’t understand, and I was afraid.

This isn’t about you, the new voice I’d worked so hard to hear whispered. Don’t think about what the neighbors will say. Don’t let this be like the tattoos.

I took a deep breath, looked into her lovely hazel eyes, and said, “You’re going to look beautiful with or without hair.”

Esther sagged with relief, and some of the taut fear melted from her face. She was an adult, but still, she needed me, and she needed me to be okay with what she was doing. For whatever reason, a shaved head was going to be my daughter’s new look.

When she came home from the beautician sporting her new non-hairdo, I smiled.

“You look gorgeous,” I said. And I repeated that every time I saw her rub the smoothness of her empty head. And in a way, she did look beautiful — with her high cheekbones melting into her low brow and smoothly tapering into the roundness of her skull. Behind her ears, I could see the deep blue of her star tattoos, bringing out the purity of her skin.

We went out together, me and my bald daughter.

People stared. Whispers followed me through the store aisles (this may also have been because it was winter, and Esther refused to wear a hat).

I held my head high and ignored the trail of startled glances. Esther was the only one who mattered, and she needed to know, deep in her bones, that my love wasn’t conditional on her hair or her clothing or her life choices.

Those tattoos had taught me a harsh lesson. My job wasn’t to control Esther’s path, but to love her every step of the way.

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oday, Esther still lives at home. She’s not fully observant, but she connects with Hashem in her own way. And we talk all the time, about her day, her thoughts, her life. We have a wonderful relationship. And I hold my love and my pain and my joy and my disappointment together, because my heart has expanded enough to hold it all.

This past Purim, Esther joined me in shul. She stood beside me, in her clothes that don’t look like mine, with her tattoos and her luminous face, cradling her siddur gently as she swayed to the familiar words of the Amidah. Watching her whisper the tefillos, the tears came.

In the hush of the moment, on this day of v’nahafoch hu, when we can see what’s really there, I turned to Hashem and said, I see You. I understand You. It was all the pain and struggle and growth crystallized into a mother and daughter davening together in shul on Purim.

No, my life isn’t easy. But it’s rich. Full of meaning and all the blessings I couldn’t see when I was standing at that gas station, paralyzed by shame, filling my tank with diesel.

For now, I focus on walking my tafkid, step by step, moment by moment. And I look forward to the day when I will walk down another path, as I stand under the chuppah and watch my children get married….

All my children. All my shining stars.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 983)