Hug Time!

B'SD

Adar 4, 5773

Today's Valentine's Day around the world, though it's not celebrated by Torah-minded Jews. No matter your religion, that doesn't stop some people from feeling wistful about wanting to love someone else, to  be loved or to love yourself on a deep, spiritual level.

The whole concept of love is multifaceted. Wanna take some of the mystery out of it?

Rabbi Noah Weinberg z'l defines love as "The pleasure we experience when we identify someone with their virtues, while accepting them with their faults." (OK, singles and everyone else, heed the life-lesson and end some self-inflicted misery).

Worried that you're at odds with 

someone you're trying to love 

despite hardships between you?

Laugh. The experience can promote a sense of joy that turns the sense of terror and concern in our hearts and minds into harmless stuff. Your fears can melt away with the sense of restored happiness. You can even learn to laugh at them.

Go out and find something to enjoy. Listen to silly comic routines (try The 2000-year Old Man for starters), rejoice over someone's victories (babies have them each time they reach milestones), and coax yourself to be willing to loosen up a bit.

Competent therapists can help you if necessary.

OH - if you need to de-clutter, here are some handy hints to help you: 12 Myths about Cleaning a Mess.

Need to help someone (maybe yourself) to make peace and love with an illness or disability of some sort?  Click on the words EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge and buy it today.  THAT's a thoughtful gift any time of year!  

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

Learn how to love challenges in life. They make YOU a more valuable person for facing them with increasing courage, humor and good sense. Feel the self-respect grow! It's a emotional hug to reassure you.

 

Here's a Health Book that's EASY to Understand Even if English isn't Your Mother Tongue!

B'SD


10 Adar 5772


From time to time people contact me to ask if Hebrew-speakers would be able to understand

My answer is an enthusiastic "YES!" I wrote the book to meet the needs of a wide variety of people. It sells all over Europe, where people do not necessarily speak English as their mother tongue.

EMPOWER Yourself is meant to be shared with your loved ones, friends and/or doctors and therapists. It puts you in increasing control of your medical, disability and mental health situation. That's why so many medical and mental health professionals endorse the book or recommend it to patients.

Find out how to:

1. Remember the names and 

contact information

of doctors with names 

you can't pronounce

2. Sort out confusing details 

with your medical 

appointments schedule

3. Communicate important ideas 

if you find it difficult 

to speak with people

There's so much more between the covers to help English and non-English speakers in EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. It breaks language barriers.

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

How YOUR Heart Affects Your Health

B'SD

21 Shvat 5772

I've been having unpredictable successes and misses with YouTube today. I want to share a video with you. Please click on Mysteries of the Heart.


Fascinating, huh? Want to learn more about teaching your heart to work with and for you, not against you?

Read a book that 

medical and mental health professionals endorse, 

along with clergy of various faiths.

Buy an E-book or print edition today for a brighter, easier, healthier and more loving future. Click on the words EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. 


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

A Guaranteed Health Initiative!

B'SD

14 Shvat 5772

An ill, recovering or disabled person tends to have goals. Too often, other people fail to realize that. They over-focus on visible problems, not on the person’s inner self, their soul and spirit. The result: the infantilization of ill, recovering or disabled YOU (i.e., people treat you like a foolish baby or child, or worse – as an incompetent adult).

Here’s a thought that you can share with your unintentionally clueless loved ones and caregivers: We want to gain while helping the other person – YOU - to gain, too. Work WITH me, not AGAINST me, so I can achieve increased emotional, physical and/or spiritual health. That will make me happy - probably healthier - and it'll make you a better care provider!

It’s a safe, loving message, guaranteed to give other people a graceful way to improve their behavior (it’s their choice to make, not yours). 


Print the words out on attractive paper. Decorate it somehow. Display the finished product. Invite the world at large to honor your productive goals.

Let me know how the above suggestion works out for you. I’m off to prepare for Tu B’Shvat festival of trees, now. The 15^th day of the Jewish month of Shvat is quite an important, and fun, occasion. 

 טו בשבט שמח

  Happy Tu Beshvat

(it begins this evening)

Buy the E-book or print edition today to further educate yourself, your loved ones and your medical team for a brighter personal future: YOURS! Click on the words EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge.

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

How to Love and How to Protect Yourself from Someone Who Can't

B'SD

10 Tevet 5772

Today is a sad anniversary on the Jewish calendar: On the 10th of Tevet, the prophet Ezekiel was instructed to record in the Book of Vision this very day as a remembrance for the weak and disgraced Jewish people. This is the day when Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem began. It resulted in the destruction of the holy Temple (where all nationalities prayed) and the Babylonian exile.


How can history be so filled with stories of hatred and suffering? The answer is more than this blog's purposes can handle. However, love is natural. Babies enter the world ready to love. They learn whom not to love later in life. Some folks never do, and they pay a heavy price for their long learning curve.


Here's what I suggest: Have special regard for people who refuse to love. That usually indicates emotional trauma in their histories. They need help to recover from it. I recommend EFT, EMDR, talk therapy and/or friends. If those methods don't work, step back. You're involved with someone too troubled to cope.


A medical or emotional crisis - you'd cry too, if it happened to you. Use your tissues and handkerchiefs with my blessings borne of experience. GOD gives you Permission to Weep; EMPOWER Yourself explains how and why on page 5. You can share the information with any critics after explaining that "It's MY Crisis! And I'll Cry if I Need To."




Buy the E-book or print edition today for a brighter day and life: Click on the words EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical (or Emotional) Challenge. 


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

Quality Spouse Time: Giver Her a Delicous TREAT for Valentine's Day!

B'SD

9 Adar 5771


Ladies, you'll love this blogpost. It's delicious!

Get your husband to read this with you (or be subtle as a brick: leave this on his monitor so he can read it alone):

Mahalabeya is a light, delightful dessert served in a cup or bowl (halab is the Arabic word for milk). Here's how to prepare it:

1 Cup milk
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1 Tablespoon sugar

Dissolve sugar and cornstarch in the milk, with a wooden spoon. Heat the well-blended ingredients in an enamelware, Pyrex-type or porcelain saucepan almost to a boil. Turn off the heat. The mixture will thicken on its own.



Take the saucepan off the fire as soon as it boils. Let it cool gently on the countertop/a trivot while you gently, gently stir the foamy concoction with the wooden spoon. Add a dash of organic rosewater, a bit of shaved coconut flakes, vanilla and/or some raisins.

Play with the recipe over time.

Eat the luscious results warm or after refrigeration, served in a cup or bowl (pre-warmed if you wish).

Sprinkle a bit of cinnamon on top. Decorate the surface with a light rain of freshly ground nuts (cashews are wonderful for this recipe!). Place a dainty teasoon on the saucer.

Serve the still-warm drink to the woman you love.

This recipe is sure to turn almost any day into a cuddle-fest. Here's to your emotional health!

Need more ideas for a healthier, happier life? Read E-book EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. Buy it BEFORE Valentine's Day at http://www.booklocker.com/books/4244.html

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

A Loving Thought

July 17, 2 Av 5767

One of the "Coping with illness" tools in my book is subtly presented in every chapter. Very subtly. Then I present that tool to my readers with a bit of flourish at the end, so that it can be pondered, savored and valued for its richness.

Love.

It can be maddening to think that love has anything to do with being so sick, perhaps fatally so. Then again, consider the thought I share here as well as in my forthcoming book:

Ponder the gift of a powerful new reality in your life as you read the words “Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction." –Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For people who've invested effort in trying to define love, or even happiness, for people who ask "WHY?" in the midst of suffering, Saint-Exupery presents a key to the lock that can free you from misery. I'll be writing more about love in the coming weeks and future posts.

All the best, Yocheved