walked a long road

i had life saving abdominal surgery last january...it's september and between dealing w/rhuematoid arthritis and healing, retaining a full time job in NYC that is ugly in its stressfulness...i'm toasted. i have 3 routine pain meds and 1 emergency pain med.

i came to blog because its erev rosh hashanah...i learned you dont reveal the good things you did because its not tznius...but i've been trying hard, davening daily, tzedakah. i've been trying to close the emotional gap from years of separation from my kids. offering to help them with college (not tuition, but monthly $$ toward bills etc) and sending packages of home baked things.

i'm writing this the weekend after the wall street crash and we're going to be socked with the worst financial catasrophe since the Great Depression. called one son to impress the seriousness of what's going on...he says no one's worried where they are...hasn't effected anyone much. i know both coasts feel things first, react stronger than midlands, but considering this mess has effected global markets, seems bizaare our own country remains oblivious...or maybe its my bunch with they're heads in the sand.

i sent a box for rosh hashanah to the kids...chocolate, dates, fresh fruits, expensive honey, wished them a sweet year. 3 of them took an apt together to avoid living with strangers. the box went out express thursday, no one called to say thanks or they got it. son calls sunday and after a few one word sentences i ask if they received the box...'you mean those 2 chocolate bars you sent? those are gone already...what else was in there..(silence as he tries to recall) oh year fruit, we made pancakes with apples sauteed in cinnamon this morning, we demolished the chocolate cookies as soon as we opened the box.'

i wanted to vomit from the ungratefulness and the tone of his voice...'those 2 chocolate bars you sent?' Yeah the 2 Lindt $2.50 bars and everything i carefully picked out, packed and rush shipped so you would have a sense of yontif.

looking online earlier today almost killed me, i've been crying most of the day. looking for options to attend rosh hashnah services and to hear shofar i was looking online, chabad seems to be the only option available. but chabad is not close enough, i would have to take the subway even within brooklyn to attend. there;s a small shtiebl not far, i hope to walk there and stand outside for shofar. i dont know any of the people...its like at the edge of boro park/fort hamilton. you cant just show up and be a part of a congregation.

so while i'm looking at various chabad websites, and there are alot, i find one that is preserving the video and audio tapes of the Rebbe z'tl. they created a dorp down menu of names so you can check your family name to see if pics have been posted and are being preserved. i found my oldest daughter, then 14 years old, standing and accepting a dollar from the Rebbe...who sits looking at her in the oddest way. i sent the pic to my children who haven't had the time or courtesy to respond to that either.

no matter where i've been, gone thru..hashgocha protis and protection from the Abishter is never a doubt. i have survived situations that could have only been with His help. Of ocurse i' m left with the emotional fallout, but physically He helped extricate me from alot of things. I must believe that my children's frei lifestyles are a direct result of my own shortcomings and averahs. Truly frum and devoted parents have children who follow the right path.

there are websites and stories online of young chassidum involved in heavy drug use and sales, orgies, deserting religion and worse, appearing to be chassidim and mocking the religion. The Rebbe told us we are the last generation, things are winding up and what must happen, is now happening to bring Moshiach. I pray it is the Rebbe who will take us all home. I expect thoough it will be some time before i'm allowed in.

to see my oldest daughter in front of the Rebbe, looking frightened and vulnerable, unsure of who he was, where she was but understanding the magnitude of being there, is both devastating and beautiful. She is the only one, aside from J and me bringing 3 of them for yechidus once, that was in front of him.
And she left...she's living in Israel and is also drifting, trying to find her way and almost 30 yrs old.

They dont want to be cared for as children and they haven't grown up to take care of themselves. I cannot imagine how 2 grandparents and one father could not provide a modicum of them feeling secure. Divorce is about as devastating for children as a parent dying...abandonement by someone you look to for protection (in this case me) has stifled everything of potential and growth.

i dont know how to do tshcuvah for crippling 5 children emotionally. we can say, they're adults now and can make choices. but these choices come out of their frame of reference, which was being abandoned, hurt, frightened by a step mother and neglectful uncaring father. years of not having contact with me.

mikveh...once again the issue is raised within me. i want to toivel a final time. not for niddah but for tschuvah. one site says go for it, call a mikveh and get a sharp tongued woman telling me not to reinvent jewish law for my own needs, its not appropiate for me to use mikveh unless i'm married...so toiveling before Yom Kippur is acceptable not required. i have one in walking distance in fort hamilton. yontif falls as the month ends and i have $23 dollars left.
Need subway fare, mikveh fee, groceries.

i became a kosher yid because since 4 years old, there was no other choice, i knew that was my path. why it has been so difficult to be a Jew, a member of chabad, a welcome person within chabad, only the Abishter knows. Can tests be for your entire lifetime? Usually when you are tested at some point there's an end time where you learn if you passed or failed. I'm not a stupid person, I feel I have faith and love Hashem so I can't answer my own questions.

but even without answers now, its doesnt matter because i am so broken from everything there is nothig left now but to repair and focus on doing whatever i can to return to being an observant Jew. Chabad, for me, is like an addiction...its the only form of observance I know, it was a 15 yr high and anything less feels unJewish. I want in again because I never stopped believing its the truth, but have no right to return after 22 years of being outside.

to see so many anash receiving rebbe dollars, people i knew and loved, loved and left, left and never said goodbye, left ashamed from the violence inside my home that no one would help with, left to excape a husband and had to leave an entire life behind.

happy new year to anyone passing by...

Anash

B H
I dont know that you'll ever pass this way again, but I wanted to respond to some of your comments.

When I 'date' my life in the general life journey we all accumulate, it begins in 1977 attending my first shabbaton in Crown heights and being sent to Minnesota. I didnt really get 'the short end' of anything. The Rebbe shlita supported my family, the Pinsons, Abishter bless them and her parents, did everything to cloth and feed my children. Where would any stranger find such compassion and generosity?

The short comings were mine, albeit my upbringing was a major factor. Without family to be a support and guidance in selecting a spouse, showing a woman how to care for children, how to deal with marital difficulties, I was left to learn by jumping in the deep end of a committment I didnt fully understand and slowly drowned over 9 years.

My coming to crown heights was a bit different from many of the BT's I met there. I wanted to rectify my mother's unkosher conversion, correct my own status as a jew, have my father's ashes buried and finally live as a jew in a family with traditional jewish values. What I didnt understand and have a reference point on, is that you can love and be a part of the Rebbe's world and still use your brain and have an opionion and maybe even make some of your own decisions. My need for security overrode any logical thinking...so the first shidduch had to be right, there may not be another one...whatever the REbbe said had to be followed even if not understood.

I'm not making excuses for the double standard in terms of class distinction of 'lifers vs BT' because the fallout from that has effected not only my generation that came to CH, but many of our children, as well as the children of lifers who have drifted away.

For myself as well as trying to rekindle my children's hearts toward Judaism, I've begun davening and bentching light again. I dont know there is anything I can do to turn them into being shomer shabbos, their treatment in Lubavitcher yeshivahs, both in NY and outside has embittered them more than anything else.

YOu're right about porn...I've known and talked to enough people to agree its something so open and available, its a given that men are drawn to it. Its also a given that it degrades women, no matter what the participants say in how women 'control' what they do and how much money they make; it destroys the spritiual relationship between spouses when a man can look at the nakedness and perversity on a screen and then desire his wife from that perspective, rather than from a point of godliness. And I dont mean godliness exclusive of sexuality or tenderness, but a relationship that is relatively pure not based in haram and filth.

To end...in hindsight, the lifers that I once thought distant, rude and cold, were probably only concerned with protecting their own families from whatever 'filth' outsiders like BT's were bringing in with their emotional baggage. They were expected to invite us into their homes, feed us, talk with us and all the while hope that the investment, emotional and financial, would make us decent yidden.

b'simcha is not exactly my nature:-)
Like so many others, I feel like part of my body/self is missing with the Rebbe shlita gone from CH.

thanks for writing.

dream

Strange dream early this morning
Was with a communal group of Jews as a large succah was being built in an open marketplace. We wwere getting messages from other parts of the country that Suuccos had already begun but the top of our succah was only covered in plastic, no one had placed evergreen boughs on it. Women were complaining and fruit mongers began throwing apples and jeering...I could see all other succahs further down the hill had already been built. then there was a fire and someone opened up a black body bag to show me how a baby had died because no one placed evergreens on the succah.

Cat

Cat, that I loved more than anything or anyone in this world, passed away on December 11. A tumor that showed up a few months ago under her chin grew quickly. Vet said at 19 years of age she wouldnt survive anaethesia. For the last 3 months, she's been on antibiotics, making her even sicker, unable to hold food most of time, other times eating as if starved. Different antibiotic tried and vet showed me how to give her IV fluid at home.
She began isolating herself last month, sleeping under the kitchen table, physically melting whenever I picked her up to administer fluid or meds, clean her nose that was constantly stuffed and crusting from a cold or just trying to comfort her.

Last Monday, exhausted, unable to eat, restless, her eyes were dilated, she clearly was enduring something she couldnt tolerate much more. She came on the bed, something she hadn't been doing much, sat close and licked my arm. When she was younger, healthier she did this daily, as if grooming me. Her tumor was bleeding, she had scatched it hard with her back paw, I found her paw bloody with tissue stuck to it.
I cleaned her tumor, feet and she just buried her head against me. I wrapped her with gauze to protect it and cut the finger off a stretchy glove to make her a booty so if she tried to scratch she wouldnt further mutilate herself.

Tuesday morning I packed her up in my sweater into her case and took her to vet as they opened. Vet saw her right away. The options were to attempt surgery because she would die from blood poisoning with the tumor condition, followed by a collar, IV as long as she continued to live...if she survived the operation. I chose to put her to sleep because she was frightened, in pain and so very tired. Vet let me hold her as he injected inside her thigh with phenobarb and she quietly went died within seconds.

Its taken 4 days even to write this. Cat was with me after the children went to live with their father, with me in disappointments in relationships, through getting my degrees when no family cared or paid attention, moved with me, waited for me, loved me. It feels like the last witness of my life, not just a beloved friend is gone. She is irreplacable.

outside

Maybe its age...but as i watch the world that seems to be losing any boundaries of what is permissable, acceptable, ethical, a world where everything and anything is fine...if it satifies whatever you need...at the moment...this is where i see my kids confused and floundering. and i dont think its just my own children, i think maybe this is an underlying cause for alot of the violent acting out.
Its not simply mental illness...
I dont want to bring religion into this...but religion has always been a force in my life. In 2 that I've studied it says that a child is born pure, not in terms of physical sin, but in terms of knowing G-d and right and wrong. It is the contact of child to parent, child to world that begins to break down and tear apart the protective innocense, the ability children have to recognize the truth.

And the most frightening thing, I would imagine for the young and young adults is watching the lies and being told the lies, are the truth. There are more young soldiers returning with mental health problems than ever before. Suicidal ideation, depression are epidemic in young adults.
My father had an expression...'dont do as I do, do as I tell you' which always meant in our house, what you see isnt actually happening, what I tell you is happening, that's what you have to believe (is true).
THere must be a psychological term for this...its not the child is delusional, its the entire reality distorted as delusion, reality turned upside down, inside out, so that you doubt your own eyes, ears and senses. And then you stop trying to interpret, you wait to be told what it is you are supposed to see, you wait, for instructions and the correct version for you to bring to the outside world.
I dont know if anyone understand the minutiae of this kind of intense manipulation and distortion of children's sense of self and connection to the world. I know it only because I lived it, I survived by watching in silence mostly and writing, very early, taking notes because if you spoke or asked questions about what you saw, you could be in danger.

FOr me, the outside was supposed to be the safe side, nothing could be more dangerous than the inside of my family apartment. When it became clear that the outside was more abusive and equally chaotic as my own home, I became convinced one party in this was insane. And until now, I'm not sure which it is, me or world. I must say since I'm writing this much personal stuff, I walk on the street and simply cannot understand what I see. I feel like I've been dropped from another place and when I see people, what goes on, my skin crawls. I;m not talking about a specific incident of something bizaare, its eevertying; everything feels like a shadow of something real,just behind it and what I see in front of me, the people and all of life is an illusion...only I am solid...everything else feels unreal.

I've never written this before and to slowly type it all down I understand this is my own mental distortions or dissociations which I do every waking moment, as a survival tactic.

I've become convinced that something happened...I dont believe in 'lost memories' like recalling buried abuse, but I wonder if some traumas are so profound they actually alter a person's perceptions of one's relationship to reality...I'm sure I've either put anyone reading this to sleep...but this is quite amazing for me. Seomtimes I wish we had a resident doctor or someone who could put a name to some of these things we discuss and tell us what to read. So much of what many of us write, is the same grief over and over trying to heal and understand.

And tho I write in the first person, these words only echo what I hear from my son...the worlde remains incomprehensible.

P is home...but

I brought P home Thursday. Vet gave me IV solution, needles, antibiotic, 2 cans special diet. Once home, she checked everywhere to be sure it was home; drank water, ate some of the canned food and after yelling alot, fell asleep.

She's had 3 IV sessions and is unable to eat or drink anything. This morning she was too weak to get up into her chair where she sleeps. When I realized she was hanging out on the rug because she just couldnt make it up, I put her on her chair where she fell asleep in 2 minutes.

She seems to want food and water, but for some unknown reason smells it, goes to it and turns away.

I'm going to try her old food, maybe that's what she's looking for. I think she's just had enough...19 is a fairly long life for a cat. She's totally disengaged for everything now.

Really trying to wait this out, but I think come erev shabbos, if she's the same or worse, the right decision is to end her suffering. I couldnt do it before, because of my attachment to her, but its clear selfishness on my part to prolong a terminal situation.

Conversion facts

I heard in the name of Rabbi Y. Komietzki z"l from a very reliable source that if the father was a Jew and the mother a non Jew we should try to convert the child for the reason of zera kodesh - holy seed.


When I wrote to the Rebbe z'tl asking if my mother (goy) who converted after marrying my father (Jewish) the answer was 'She has to toivel again.'

Her initial conversion consisted of an orthodox rabbi in Long Island, NY telling her take a dip in the Atlantic Ocean and her witnesses were 3 female friends.
When I asked her if I could help her by arranging for her to go through a kosher conversion and mikvah, she said no thanks, religion is in your heart.

It was only after finding the above quote about 'zera kodesh' do I understand why the Rebbe instructed MN to convert me ASAP.
So I'm wondering if a man has gone thru 'karet' and his child converts, does that help his neshoma at all?