I Need Your Help!
Let Me Know What You’d Like Me To Include In My Book!
I’m two-thirds through the first draft of my upcoming book,
88 Wise Sayings and Daily Practices to Manage in an Age of Anxiety. If you have ideas or thoughts to suggest, PLEASE DO! Feel free to email me. The wise sayings are quotes, so I’m interested in your favorite quotes as well as your favorite practices and rituals that help you to ground and settle. I’m also interested in problems or situations you’d like addressed that are challenging for you.
To give you an idea of what the entries are like, here’s an example:
#47:
“There are days when the carefully practiced tools just don’t work…(there are) scenarios that are beyond our tool box and we’re just not very resilient.”
- Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers, Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh,
site of a 2018 mass shooting killing 11 and wounding seven
There’s a sentiment in the wellness community that if we get a good therapist, do the right breathing, meditation and movement practices and lean into our self-care, we will always be resilient. From his personal experience as the rabbi of the Tree of Life Congregation, which suffered the deadliest attack on a Jewish community in our country, Hazzan Jeffrey Myers says this simply isn’t true. Regardless of how many tools we have in our self-help, self-improvement tool box, some days are just going to be horrible. We will have days where we feel as if we’re moving through thick mud that threatens to suffocate and overwhelm us. It can feel like marching into Mordor, the seat of evil in the
Lord of the Rings. On these days, Rabbi Myers says it’s as if we are a rubber band that’s been put in the freezer. If we try to stretch the rubber band, it will snap. We’re not feeling our resilience. It’s as if it’s been hidden from us, buried somewhere under our pain and confusion.
Rabbi Myers says that that’s ok because guess what? We’re human – gloriously and tragically human. Some days we’re laying in the underbelly of sorrow and all the escape routes seem to have mysteriously disappeared, like in a dream where there’s no way out. This apparent failure for any of our tools to work isn’t failure but just our own woundedness. Life, being the fun house that it is, can conjure up from our own personal underworld a scent, image or memory that sets us off into our loop of remembrance.
I’ve had some of these days recently. Today I encountered an older gentleman who looked a lot like my dad who passed 30 years ago. He had the same slick top to his bald head, the same perfectly creased pants, button down shirt and dress brown shoes. When I first saw him, my heart went up into my throat. I was overcome with the urge to hug him. Instead, I held the door for him. With a glint in his eye, he thanked me for my “random act of kindness.” In that moment, my gloom vanished. His gentle humor had cut through my sadness with such clarity that I was drawn dramatically into the present moment. I could tell he was grateful for me. And I was profoundly grateful for him.
Practice: Visualizing Resilience
Rabbi Myers advises getting an actual large rubber band (he recommends you visit Staples). Hold the rubber band and stretch it and then let it retract. He says to say to yourself when the rubber band is stretching “this is trauma” and then when the rubber band comes back (slowly!) to its original size say “this is my resilience.” He says to practice this and remember that on days when you feel like your rubber band has been in the freezer, be kind with yourself until the rubber band gets back to room temperature (as mine did after my encounter with the older gentleman). Rabbi Myers also advises being patient, as it may take time for the rubber band to thaw out.