Home: a refuge; a safe place; a nurturing replenishing loving environment that heals supports and sustains a person on his or her life’s journey. Imperfect chaotic messy flawed — it is still home when acceptance tolerance and forgiveness fill the air. Home is a place that expands to make room for error and growth. Ever-changing in constant flux home is stable and secure because its essential qualities remain the same: Home is where the heart is where kindness and compassion reign.

Making it So

Home is a work in progress the result of careful consideration and planning and tremendous personal effort. It doesn’t happen “by itself” but rather by the prayers and visions of those who build it. A joint effort and the product of a chorus of voices home is nonetheless the primary product of one person’s energies: it is the wisdom of a woman that builds a home.

Hashem granted women an extra dose of interpersonal know-how giving them a head start on relational and emotional functioning that helps them effectively set the tone in the home. Internal and external stressors can sometimes block a woman’s intuitive guidance but when she takes good care of herself her wisdom flows again. Her voice quiets down love pours from her heart patience and understanding return. A well rested well cared for woman (it doesn’t matter who it is that does the caring!) relaxes into her role. She returns to her true Mother Self — a wise nurturer who stands steady as a lighthouse in the storm.

Qualities to Cultivate

Although each woman has the ability to provide safe nurturing to every member of the household the full expression of this healing balm must be cultivated. A good listener by birth the astute woman studies in order to raise her skills to the level of gifted empath. She not only hears but she feels and knows what is needed. She senses. she cares she responds. Her soft voice is more than the sound of gendered vocal cords — it is the purposeful restraint born of strong drive and sincere effort. She’s keenly aware of the destructive forces created by loud and harsh communications and fights a personal inner battle daily so that her family can thrive in an atmosphere of peace and harmony. The model of personal striving that she offers her household is as powerful as the peace itself. Her children learn that moving forward is natural and wholesome and thereby lose their fear of being wrong or defective. In this house it’s all about self-correction and aiming higher getting closer to Hashem with every step forward in character development. Patience generosity joy trust and faith — these are the traits that Mother strives to emulate and encourage not through the gift of inborn temperament but through her prayers her studies her strategies for growth. The atmosphere of her home is established as a product of her values — her living Torah that sends a constant message of the need to reflect and improve to become the embodiment of “all its ways are peace.”

Making it Real

Teen: Ma! She took my sweater and now it’s got a stain on it! She ruined it! She owes me $100 right now!! I’m never talking to her again!

Sister: It had a stain on it when I borrowed it liar! I was so embarrassed when I saw it. You never clean your clothes — it’s not my fault! I don’t even want your smelly clothes — you can keep them! I hate you!

Mother: Okay okay everyone is upset — you think she stained your sweater and of course you’re very upset and you think she gave it to you that way and you’re very upset and honestly I have no idea what happened. I just know that you two are too upset at this moment to be speaking to each other about this. The yetzer hara is flying all over the place here and having a field day. Neither of you is calm enough to resolve this problem respectfully at the moment so I would like you both to stop talking to each other right now because we’re just not allowed to hurt each other like this; you both need to take some time to calm down and return to yourselves. Then we’ll meet and try to resolve this.

Can the atmosphere of a home be beautiful and harmonious every minute of the day? No. Everybody is too busy growing. We’re all too much in process. But parents can certainly steer themselves and their children toward the target by keeping their eyes constantly on their elevated goals and doing that creates the right atmosphere in the home.