Born for Greatness!

B'SD


21 Adar 5772


The attacks on Israel have not stopped. I have spent significant amounts of time speaking with affected people, doing what I can to help them to calm down, to cope, and to cry as necessary.


Tears, trembling and sadness have their place in promoting mental/emotional health. As trauma therapist Miriam Maslin teaches, "Wisdom often means letting go of what was in order to make room for what needs to be."


A person who has been traumatized needs the freedom to express their sorrow, their fears, their sense of betrayal, their grief, their loss and everything else on their mind and heavy heart. That helps them to let go of the trauma, to some degree, then to get beyond it to a measure of peace and increasing productivity.


It is a cruelty to tell someone "Stop shaking like that," or to "Stop crying! Get over it already."


Trembling and crying serve some coping purposes: 


1) To alert observers to a perceived trauma so that they  can provide needed compassion and assistance. YOUR "it's not a trauma" interpretation of someone else's trauma is not necessarily relevant to the sufferer. In that person's mind and heavy heart, something terrible has happened. 


2) To quite literally help the suffering person to release their fear, shock, and other negative reactions, so that they can return to a relatively calm state again.


Trembling and tears are specific signs of emotional turmoil. The person trembling and/or crying needs compassion, not dismissive remarks and behaviors.


There is significant psychological evidence of the above. It is presented in case studies and other materials within the mental health world.


There is also significant evidence that people who can envision themselves overcoming problems do overcome those issues.


If you want to consider the fact that you were born to rise above your problems, born for greatness, this tune just might make you smile with wonder and happiness: Born for Greatness!

Want to know how BIG a part of the awe-inspiring universe YOU are? Click on http://vimeo.com/38101676

If you know of a female who needs extra encouragement to achieve her potential, show her this video









Want more inspiration to overcome a setback? Read EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge.

Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.

How to Cure Sadness at Holiday Season

B'SD

2 Kislev 5772



Hey, that high-stepping turkey looks happier than some of the people who survived this part of the holiday season. Somehow, holidays don't seem all that bright and cheerful when you're mourning the memories of loved ones no longer able to celebrate them with you.

Hanuka doesn't even look bright despite all those pretty candles.

Xmas and Kwanzaa seem to just bring you down with a sense of sadness and emptiness. But consider this: those holidays are about spiritual realities after all.

How about letting them help you?

Do yourself a favor. Look at this recreation of today's http://jewishworldreview.com/ page and follow its directions. Click the link for it. You won't be sorry.

JWisdom.com

A PERSONAL FAVOR!

By Binyamin L. Jolkovsky

Please Listen to this Godcast

We are doing something VERY different. Most of today's 5-MINUTE offering is music. You will find it inspirational. At the very least, I can guarantee it will be thought provoking.

There's a backstory.

PLEASE give us your feedback!

Go ahead. Help yourself or someone you know to feel even better. Read the soothing thoughts and cost-cutting information in EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Buy it at Booklocker TODAY http://booklocker.com/books/3067.html!




Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.

Death and Dying: Addressing the Hardest Medical Subject with Compassion

B'SD

28 Nisan 5771

Today this blog is part of a Virtual Tour for the book you see above. I reviewed it months ago and came away deeply impressed.

Though the author and I do not think nor behave completely alike in spiritual terms, I want to praise Susan Avitsour for her candor and honest search for meaningful spiritual reconciliation with the death of her deeply loved child. Here is my review:


And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones Author: Susan Petersen Avitsour
Publisher: ZmanMa
Reviewer: Yocheved Golani http://itsmycrisisandillcryifineedto.blogspot.com/

And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones can take you far from your expectations of a book about losing a child to cancer. The amazingly clear, honest prose can ennoble you no matter what you believe before reading the memoir. Listen as Susan Petersen Avitsour narrates - in her words and her daughter Timora's - the drama leading up to, during and beyond Timora's diagnosis. The family had learned it days before her bat mitzva.

On page 75 Avitsour relates that Timora, receiving chemotherapy and radiation suppressing adolescent development, "couldn't find her place in the world of young teenage girls…" Her body had reacted violently to the potentially life-saving chemicals. They filled her increasingly frail body while wreaking havoc on her emotions, as chemotherapy tends to do. Timora's poem about her predicament, on page 122, concludes "Please, /Open up a little crack/So I'll know – The world still contains a little light."

Timora would giggle, prepare craft projects, write poetry, dote on her parents, brother and sisters, act in school plays and pursue scouting activities while suffering two close calls at saving her life in six years. Her family faced them as mortals would: alternating between hope, despair, admirable emotional restraint and the exhaustion which opens the floodgates to pent-up emotions. Page 107 records the author wondering "And when Timora came down on one of her siblings [ed: tired of holding back for Timora's sake and of losing time with parents who necessarily supervised –and performed – Timora's medical care], whom was it more important that I protect – the child being unfairly attacked, or the child suffering from a mortal illness? There was no simple solution."

Observers don't necessarily appreciate the physical or psycho-spiritual pain influencing ill people and their loved ones. On pages 164-167, we hear proof of that as the heartbroken mother cries out for help during a support group meeting for halachically observant Jews. Tired of meaningless maxims about spiritual healing versus physical curing, Avitsour begs for genuine solace from the rabbinic speaker. Battered by ensuing insults about her theological beliefs, then by proclamations of religious superiority from the crowd, her agony lifts off the page: "A wave of exhaustion suddenly struck me; I didn't have the strength for this. I didn’t want to argue theology I wanted to connect emotionally. Wasn't that what we all had in common?"

Many readers will be able to identify with the author's sense of abandonment at the least expected of times. Clergy and therapists can gain insight into meeting the emotional needs of such people from the incident. Avitsour's search for meaningful spiritual comfort to her family's agony is the focal point of her book. She describes the unconditional love of fellow congregants in her Israeli bet knesset (synagogue) and her husband's delighted astonishment at an over-capacity crowd bone marrow drive publicized in a community newspaper. These and other uplifting parts of the Avitsour family's life enervated the parents, Timora and her siblings, as they faced six years' worth of unpredictable days.

Within a circle of female dancers on page 241, Avitsour describes her joy at the wedding of a bride the same age Timora would have been had both classmates reached that calendar date. "I couldn't help but share in the general elation at the young couple's happiness… But then I was struck once again by a fleeting vision of … Timora as she might have danced at her own wedding… I do not want to spend the rest of my life overcome with grief for what will never be… At the same time I don't want to run away from my sadness for her and all she might have become. To do so would mean running from Timora herself…"

On page 262, Avitsour concludes "G'D in His grace has granted me – indeed, granted to all human beings, wherever they stand [on the spiritual continuum] a healing force, a source of strength that exists quite apart from the dilemmas and doubts that inevitably arise in any intelligent religious discourse, and replenishes us when we are at our most depleted." Her prose dignifies the oft-misunderstood agony of parents before, during and after each stage of bereavement. 263-page paperback And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones invites unshed tears to fall and for honest communication to prevail so that emotional relief and repair can happen. It ends with one of Timora's poems, calling out across time:

And why.

Why live. Suffer. Fight, struggle.

Why pull and pull

like a wretched

miserable beast – For what.

In loneliness, in the dark,

in the cold.

How much have I asked,

and how much will I ask.

And I am not the only one
Not only when sorrow

blinds the eye

like a veil of tears.

But within me I know
And sometimes, like a flame
The answer blazes before me

- Love.

Therapists and bereaved relatives would do well to read this memoir several times.

Yocheved Golani is the author of highly acclaimed E-book "It's MY Crisis! And I'll Cry If I Need To: EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge" (http://www.booklocker.com/books/4244.html)

Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.

Purim Kipur?

B'SD

13 Adar 2, 5771


Yes, that's me dressed as "Boo-Boo Barbie" a few years ago, as I faced losing my dominant arm to CRPS/RSD after delicate surgery had just saved it from amputation. All that happened following an accident that had crushed my elbow.

Why did I have the guts to pull such a stunt? Because Purim is known as a "Reversal of fortune" holiday when we recall the hidden hand of GOD in our daily lives. I bet on it to save my arm & quality of life. That bet paid off, BTW. I'm one of few people worldwide who lost the CRPS/RSD curse within a few months of its unpredictable onset. AND I'm one of few people who made a 100% recovery from the specialized surgery that had orignally saved my arm from a far different fate.

ON TO TODAY. Many grief-stricken Jews around the world are still wiping tears over the Fogel family massacre as we focus on the fact that nothing happens by accident. It's all part of BIGGER Plan by the Ultimate Planner.

One of the foods we eat on Purim are Hamantashen (Oznai Haman in Hebrew). They symbolize the ears, tri-cornered hat and/or pockets of Haman, an arch-enemy of Judaism and its Jews. Haman threatened Jewish genocide and was soundly defeated by a woman, Queen Esther of Persia. Read about that when you click on Purim Kipur.

Here's a quick education on the raucous, joyous holiday that reminds us never to lose hope in the future: Crash Course on Purim.

I'll post a photo of me in this year's costume as soon as I can. I'm saving the revelation as a surprise for friends who enjoy guessing what I'll wear from year to year. Meanwhile, here's a photo I took of Purim celebrants some time ago.






It's kosher to be happy after terrible sorrow. Read Nurture Your Inner Giggle.


Go, on get it today and feel better FAST! E-book EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge.

Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity.
Face Your Future with Optimism.