It was a gift from my sister slipped through the mail slot in a large cream envelope; the professional pictures from her son’s bar mitzvah. She’d developed them all and those of our family she gave to us.

When I lifted the envelope from the doormat I knew just what they were: it was typical my sister she’s always been thoughtful that way. I even felt a tiny shiver of excitement — the bar mitzvah had been a beautiful evening and I’d recently lost a lot of weight and bought myself a new dress for the occasion.

But when I opened them it was like being punched in the gut.

Of course I know what my kids look like. But really I don’t. Because when I see them I don’t see a face a posture an expression. I see the composite of a thousand images starting from newborn and up to the present all colored by my love for them.

But pictures can be cruel. As I looked through again and again I saw my daughter Zisi — she goes by Zara now — and I saw her as a stranger. For the occasion she had consented to wear a new top I bought her: one with wide flounced sleeves that dropped just below the elbow. I had looked through a thousand online stores to find it then without time for a home delivery option had braved the crowds of a distant store to pick it up. But when she tried it on I knew it was worth it. She was actually wearing something that looked acceptable to our circle our family.

There was the small matter of the pixie cut the strappy leather boot-thingies in the middle of summer and the skirt length. There was the small matter of the piercings around the circumference of her right ear. But okay. The top was okay.

Until I looked at the pictures. In every one she had draped one arm over someone’s shoulder. The sleeve had slipped exposing her elbow — and her tattoo.

That tattoo. I remember the night she got it, she had stumbled into the house at 3:24. I know; I was awake. She wasn’t drunk, but definitely tipsy, and she had this unfamiliar sweetish smell I knew boded ill. She took off her leather jacket, exposing her bare arms, and I saw it.

I yelled.

She was taken aback, though I don’t know why; did she think I would welcome this?

“It’s so sweet, Ma!” she protested. “And so tame. A seahorse. What’s your problem?”

I spun around and ran to the laundry room, where I locked the door and sank into a pile of sweet-smelling sheets. She didn’t understand! How could she be so dense?

I thought of my Zeidy, the tattooed numbers on his arm. As a child, I used to roll up his sleeve, slip into his lap and rub my finger up and down those inked digits, as if my love could remove the pigment injected into his skin. As if my love could remove the horrors of Auschwitz. He spoke to me about it once. “Of all the things the Nazis did to me, I hate them the most for this,” he said, pointing to the numbers on his arm.

“Why?” I had asked.

“Because I can never wash it away. It is always with me, always.”

I had nodded, in the way children do when they pretend to be wise, but that night in the laundry room, I finally understood. I could never wash away the change that had come over Zisi. It was there, indelibly printed into her skin, into the fabric of my family, into my torn and bleeding heart.

Three months later, when Zisi/Zara accompanied us to the bar mitzvah, the pictures had done it again. Her face, again and again, her arm, her tattoo. The ugliness of the person she had become, the pain of what she’d done to our family. The shock of seeing it there, separate from your worry or love, just a picture on a piece of photographic paper.

And so that day, I closed my eyes to the image of Zeidy’s face, and ripped each picture into shreds. If I’d had a fireplace, I would have burned them all.

Time passed, and we learned a lot. Family therapy, guidance from rabbanim. We learned about unconditional love and building a child from the foundations. It wasn’t easy, and you know how it is when you look for results — every tiny act on her part was interpreted and reinterpreted, for the good, for the bad, it means something, it means nothing.

But always, there was a bitter taste at the back of my mouth — the pictures that I had torn up. Zeidy’s instructions meant that this act may have some kind of impact in the Upper Spheres, there was some mystical rule I had broken, one passed down to me by my Zeidy.

On a practical level, the pictures came up in conversation at times: My sisters all had one or two from the event displayed in silver frames. Why don’t we have pictures, my younger kids asked. When you’re uncomfortable about something, kids notice and persist. It became the subject of embarrassment.

One evening, after a particularly grueling session with a rav about unconditional acceptance, I decided to do something for myself, my family, for Zisi/Zara. I would find a photographer and commission a family portrait. Nothing formal, everyone in weekday clothing (okay, coordinating, but I would leave it at that). No symmetrical formations and poses. Everyone would be who they were, the way they wanted, and we’d catch that on camera.

It was a mazel: The day the photographer came, the sun shone and we moved everyone out into the garden; the little ones dangling off tree trunks, the baby playing in the sand pit, Zisi sprawled on the lawn. Everyone as they were, who they were.

I had chosen my artist well; the pictures I received back were a mix of black-and-white, colored, and sepia, and each had a certain artistic flair that you can’t miss though you can’t quite describe it. The photographer had caught the way Zisi tips her chin at an angle, that she thinks speaks defiance but when I saw it on the picture showed me fear of being vulnerable. She showed her eyes, and somehow, I don’t know how, the photographer caught something of confusion in them. She showed me a whole new picture.

We blew some up, put them on the wall. I thought I’d feel at peace, but I didn’t, not quite. A good friend, who’s also a rebbetziny-type figure, told me that every day I should look at the picture of Zisi and talk to it. Give it positive affirmations: I know that you’re in pain. I know that you’re confused. I believe you’re going to get out of this a stronger person than you came in. I believe you can find in yourself the courage to truly find yourself.

I did it. It’s so not my style, but I did it anyway. She told me that all this positive energy would spill over into our relationship. I didn’t see it, but I continued anyway, just like I did everything I was told might help Zisi.

Until a particularly difficult Shabbos, when I ended up in my bedroom in tears. I snatched up the picture of Zisi that I kept on my night table. I held the picture between my two hands, so that the paper was straining in the middle. And I shouted, “I hate this. I hate the way you act and dress. And I hate what you’ve turned me into.”

Because it was true, it wasn’t just her own life she was ruining. She had weighted me down with worry, sapped me of the emotional resources I needed just to be a regular, kind person. To greet my kids with a smile instead of a forced grimace. To be able to laugh at mishaps instead of feeling like I might snap in half.

As I cried that Friday night, I realized how I’d been so focused on the positive stuff — get her therapy, get help, adjusting our parenting styles, whatever — that my own heart had been left out in the yard. I could say all the positive affirmations in the world, but if in the depths of my heart I was seething with anger and pain and grief, then Zisi, always sensitive, would surely detect it.

From that Shabbos on, I changed my nightly conversation with the picture of my daughter. I didn’t just tell the picture how much I loved her. I told her that she was hurting me. I told her how it made me feel when she staggered, drunk, into the house, slept every day until the afternoon. I told her how hurt I was when she used foul words at us in our family therapy sessions, how I had dedicated my life to my daughter since she was a tiny baby in my arms, and how far, just how far could she push my love?

It’s hard to pin it down to this, as there were so many other types of hishtadlus we were doing at the same time, but I think those one-sided conversations did something. When I met her, stumbling downstairs in the afternoon, I was able to put my hand on her arm and ask if she wanted me to switch on the coffee maker. I did it from a place that was real, and I think she sensed that. Because she didn’t just shrug off my touch; she nodded, mumbled her thanks.

And when she joined us for a Shabbos meal and I thanked her for being with us, she didn’t roll her eyes, but nodded in a way that made me think that she accepted my words.

It’s not the end of the story, but I’ve come to realize there never is an end. What has changed is our relationship. What has changed is the picture of my daughter that I hold in my heart.

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 550)