Exactly two years ago, at the close of 2014, I wrote a post about that year. It was a gut-wrenching year full of bad news and sad moods. Since that time, I find myself getting especially reflective this time of year, looking back on the year and deciding what I want to say about it.
In February of 2014, our son was diagnosed, and it took me a full year to be ready to talk about it publicly. But there was something else afoot that year, and here we are three years later and only now am I ready to acknowledge it publicly. In that post, 2014, I wrote about tears, grief, pain and loneliness, and now I am ready to acknowledge that only a fraction of those feelings was about HFA. Most of it was actually about something else entirely, something that felt so private and shameful, that I pretended it was all about the spectrum because that was kosher to talk about, it was safe.
Here it is.
Some of my children follow a different path than I do – religiously and in life values.
Some are observant (follow practices externally) but are not on board intellectually; some don’t follow practices and I don’t know what they really believe. I’m not going to dwell on them and their choices because that part is their story and they deserve their privacy. In this post I am only saying things that are readily obvious to anyone who knows me personally and the part that I am revealing here is my own emotional journey in that sphere.
When I go back and read what I just wrote, I can almost laugh with how benign it seems after the buildup I gave it. Religiosity? That’s what you’re in mourning about? Thank G-d they’re healthy and well! Thank G-d your marriage is good! No one has cancer or mental illness! And that’s part of the shamefulness. Who am I to complain about a construct that I created, trying to raise religious kids in a secular world?? What right do I have to any expectations?!
Well, it doesn’t work that way. For one thing, I look around at my kids’ classmates, and, what should I tell you, most seem to have stayed the course. I know I don’t know what’s actually cooking beneath the yarmulke, but part of emotional angst is differentiation and loneliness, and when you see that YOUR KID deviated from whatever is considered the normal path in your culture, it feels bad. If everyone in your social circle goes to college at 18 and your kid stays home to paint, you would experience some emotions around that. If in your culture most people start to settle down and get married around thirty and your kid can’t find anyone, you’d experience some emotions around that. If everyone in your social circle and family is secular, and your kid became religious, you’d experience some emotion around that. So the point right here is not WHAT is giving me grief, but rather that I feel different and lonely and misunderstood and like a failure a lot of the time.
For another, my life is my religion. I’ve been forced, over the past years, to tease out where one ends and the other begins, and it hasn’t been easy, but my belief in G-d and my identity as a Jew, where not shared by my kids, is a huge source of pain.
I have come a very long way in 3 years in terms of acceptance and unconditional love, and let me tell you, those are hard-won lessons. But the pain is like what my husband calls a “background headache” – it hurts, you push it aside and power through your day, but every once in a while the pain rages to the foreground and you can’t cope. A parent’s pain is a funny thing. You are not allowed to let it run your life because you have to give your kids what they need, and what they need is mentally stable parents whose happiness is not codependent with their kids. So tough luck, sort of. Put on your big girl pants and figure it out.
I used to cry at every single bar mitzvah and wedding. I’m better now, but only because I’m working on myself. I throw myself into my work because I need to remember that I am a human being, put on this planet for a reason, to connect to my soul, and I will be held accountable for that no matter what my kids do or don’t do. Achieving connection and accomplishing in my professional life is a reminder that I am a person independent of my kids and that my spiritual path is mine alone. My friendships and soul-connections keep me going.
My faith has taken a beating all these years as I obsess and re-examine the educational systems I put my children through, my parenting techniques of my early years, my reactions to things that were shocking to me. I clawed my way to the surface because I desperately need G-d in my life to feel whole and I couldn’t, wouldn’t take the loneliness. I can only talk to people who understand something that I only recognized a few months ago: G-d is sending me these challenges because, not in spite of, his great love for me. A rabbi told me, and I will never forget this, that these souls of my children needed to travel their own path, and when G-d searched for people who could give them the home and they love they deserved, He chose us. This gives me hope.
I struggle mightily with jealousy when I see other people who just don’t seem to have it so hard. In those moments I have to remind myself that I was given the life I need to reach my soul-perfections and that you never really know what other people are going through. I just feel so different, a little oddball, and most of the time that’s cool but sometimes it hurts so bad that everything makes me cry.
I love my children with the fierceness of a lioness and I will never stop no matter what. They know this. No matter what they choose, believe, practice, or say – I will defend them to the end. I will also experience anger toward them for making my heart hurt, regret and guilt for the inevitable mistakes all parents make, and sadness for what I thought could have been. All these emotions and more shall coexist in my big heart and each will jostle the other till they all find their space.
My soul knows these challenges are mine. They are shameful and also normal. They are crazy and also prototypical. I cry about them and also laugh about them.
Such is life. Such is 2016.
Happy Chanukah.
Ruchi you are a true hero and roll model to so many. You have helped so many through your openness and courage to share your innermost thoughts. So much if your message is the grace with which you carry yourself as you clarify what is in your control and what is not. Who is “you” -and who are “others” . Syd Banks has nothing on you.
i absolutely love this. you are real and honest. you are a mother who loves her children and that is what matters. and you are an inspiration in many ways to the people who surround you. thank you for being who you are.
You are not alone. We can navigate the turbulent waters of life and love and faith together. G-d knows that no one escapes these often extreme challenges. Shocking challenges. All we can do is put one foot in front of the other and love, love, love. Xoxo to you sister!
Thank you ladies. In the past hour since I published this I’ve gotten countless private messages from people thanking me for opening the conversation, for being real and honest. I celebrate a community that makes me feel safe in the scariness.
Beautiful post- as always. Thank you for your candor and eloquence. Props to your husband on the “background headache” analogy.
Ruchy, you bring me back to one of the most painful areas of my life. In two weeks will be my son moish’s 16th yurtzeit. He was a little short of 20years old when he died of a drug overdose. I loved him more than life itself and he knew that. Throughout the years following his death there haven’t been a day I don’t think of him- not in a debilitating way.. I am privileged to have numerous opportunities everyday to help people in need. Broken-hearted, or just needy to be connected to the right place or person for help. I know what it’s like to feel so alone in the darkness.just having someone care enough and be
Treated respectfully with dignity makes an incredible impact. I know that my sons life,however turbulent,has made a huge difference to so many… and that’s what keeps me going! You are doing great!!! Be kind to yourself so that you can continue. .
Esther. Thank you for taking the time to share your deep and thoughtful words. My heart hurts for your loss. May his neshama have an aliya from all those you are helping.
I am in awe of your soul-baring honesty and marvel at your ability to write about a visceral tangle of emotions so cogently. Shame can feel soul-crushing (as I’m sure we all know firsthand) and I think it’s the toughest to acknowledge. This spiritual growth business is REALLY HARD. Thank you for sharing and for being in the trenches with us.
Ruchi, thank you for sharing your authentic self.
You are an inspiration. As a mom I can relate to these feelings of realizing that my children have their own path. And a path that sometimes is markedly different from my own. I have learned so much from you and truly tonight I continue to learn more and am in awe. I feel so blessed to know you- xxoo
Ruchi, I don’t know who you are; this is the first post of yours I’ve read. But it’s the story of my life, and my tears fall for both of us. I do have a son with mental illness, and the other never embraced observance when I did (they were pre-teens). It hurts to have non-Jewish grandchildren and it definitely hurts to have a Jewish grandchild with whom I have no contact. Sometimes the pain is so overwhelming! Your words have really helped me. I know they each have their own journeys, but I constantly berate myself for all the things I did wrong. And yet I truly know – it’s all in Hashem’s hands and only He knows why things have to be this way. We need to never stop having faith!
The self-beration… so damaging and pointless… yet we all do it… sending a hug, Vickie. Thanks for writing.
Sometimes I can’t tell if I have “parented” at all and wonder if there is anything my girls have gotten from my misguided efforts. And sometimes it clicks and we all have fun and no one gets on anyone else’s last nerve. But that is rare. More common in tension that I can’t quantify, feelings I can’t qualify and heroic efforts that are unnoticed. So, like you and through your teachings, I work on me. Mostly a reasonable path. Thank you.
This is such an amazing post, so courageous and genuine. Thank you for writing it. It is so illuminating and it makes total sense to me–from a barely-religious perspective–as to why you feel “like a failure” [you’re a hero, actually] given some of your kids’ choices and your own profoundly-lived religiosity.
I’m so interested in the conversation that others are grateful you have opened here. There must be lots of Os in this boat, no? I’m guessing if people have lots of kids some proportion will choose less- or non-religious paths? Or were the private messages about the general problem of giving the kids what they need, including parents whose happiness isn’t reliant on the kids’ choices?
It’s for me like peeking in on a world that is similar to my own in some ways and yet also so different. I’m curious.
Thank you. For all the kind words. Lots of Os in my boat. Most families have at least one. But shhhh. No one talks about it. I mean, there are organizations to reach out to disenfranchised kids – this we’re really good at. We have private support groups. Articles in our insider publications, always anonymous. Sometimes to protect the kids, mostly because we’re not sure what the repercussions will be. We are afraid for our other kids, to remain accepted. But the shame is misplaced, and there’s solace in company, so I’m like… why not open the door? So many are suffering in silence and someone needs to be the one to say, this is OK. Normal. Can we just face this? Would that be OK? I think it would be. I think we can. I’ll be the little engine that could. I think we can. I think we can. I think we can.
You did a brave thing…and I wish more people would do it. There are people I know who don’t talk about their own children’s divergence from how they expected their family to turn out, and it’s refreshing to hear people be honest about it.
Don’t beat yourself up. If might have nothing to do with you.
If it were up to me, anyone who served in a foreign army should lose his citizenship and be kicked out with only the clothes on his back. The same goes for #20;dual&88221; citizens. If you’re not in all the way for the USA, get the f out.
I have so much love and respect for you and for your honesty.
Thank you Nana! That means the world to me.
Dear Ruchi, I don’t know you but I wish I did. It is quite evident that the hard emotional work you have done has paid handsome dividends. Unfortunately, I can emphasize with your situation and the issues with which you struggle. Our situation is, at the end of the day, very humbling, a potent antidote to even the slightest judgmental tendencies, and a very, very small window into what G-d must feel (as it were) as the overwhelming majority of His children stray. Hopefully, we can summon the strength of character to be a Tzelem Elokim and respond to our families with the same love and patience He does. It is a perspective changer, to be sure, but it also must be put in perspective as you so poignantly describe. The worst parts, in my experience, are the sense of loss at failing to create another link in the great chain of our Mesorah, the pain contemplating the possibility that those whom you love so much are in jeopardy of missing out on the unimaginable joy, in this world and the next, that is and will be a byproduct of our devotion to Hashem, the inevitable fissures in the family dynamic and the reflexive sense of loss by comparison when hearing the Yiddishe nachas of others. May your words comfort and be a source of strength to all similarly situated people. May Hashem provide us with the strength of character to respond to our children in a manner that touches their hearts and leads them to return to the teachings and faith of their fathers. Thank you for inspiring words and may you and your family be blessed.
Thank you Marty. Amen.
WOW! Your words are really powerful. Your unconditional love is amazing.
I would like to share a story of Rabbi Chaim Tirar (1760-1817), best known as Rabbi of Chernovitz (Chernivtsi , Ukraine) and author of Be’er Mayim Chaim, whose 199th yartziet is today, 27 Kislev.
Rabbi Chaim had a son by the name of Kloinimus who was a son-in-law of Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Apt (Opatow, Poland). Kloinimus befriended the town’s mischief makers and rebels and eventually became totally irreligious. He divorced his devoutly religious wife and hung out in the bars spending his time gambling, drinking, as well as other illicit activities.
Rabbi Chaim, maintained his closeness with his son and even personally tended to him when he needed to be washed down from heavy perspiration after stuffing himself with non kosher food and drink while gambling and becoming totally intoxicated.
The townspeople of Chernovitz formed a committee to confront Rabbi Chaim regarding his son’s activities and to request that he sever all ties with him and even expel him from the city.
Rabbi Chaim had a study adjacent to the synagogue and used to spend the majority of his time there. When the committee approached the door of the synagogue they found Rabbi Chaim standing in front the holy ark with its doors open and was saying “Master of the Universe do not heed to those who speak ill of your children. I too have a child who does not conduct himself as he should and nonetheless I am angered by those who gossip about him.”
The committee quickly turned around and left before being noticed.
In 1807 Rabbi Chaim decided to emigrate to Eretz Yisroel. He told his son Kloinimus to join him and repent. After a three year stay in Botshan (Botoșani, Romania) they reached Safed in 1813. Kloinimus fully repented and was considered one of the righteous men of Safed.
The merit of Rabbi Chaim should bring divine inspiration for all parents and especially for those whose children do not follow the values they were taught and brought up with. The merit of Kloinimus should bring divine inspiration and help guide all children who face challenges with following the direction of their parents.
I find that story deeply moving and powerful. I really appreciate your sharing it.
So well written– from your heart to mine.
Our perfect love for our children has to live with our imperfect parenting. Our full hearts must bare the weight of our broken hearts. The incredible, unique neshamas (souls) G-d has entrusted us with look to us to love them, even when it is painful, confusing and, yes, sometimes embarrassing. Then we move beyond it to know that it is not the schools, the peers or society– these are G-d’s gifts to us, open them, and we will find the rocky path to our personal potential. You, go, girl!
Thank you dear Lori…xo
I’m sorry that you have this pain. I think anyone who cares deeply about ideas and values can empathize — we want our children to carry on our ideals. When they don’t — or even when they do so only to please us — we feel that we have failed. People who have strong values also tend to want their children to share those values. If you were the kind of person who was more laid back, less intense, less interested in living purposefully — you would not be able to do the work you do.
Human beings are truly unique. We are each unique in our values and in the ways that our values play out in our lives and it’s rare that one human being adopts the same exact value system as another. Sure, people can appear to have the same values. The whole family can show up in shul looking perfect. But you cannot judge your insides by other people’s outsides.
I think one of the implicit promises of a religious life is that things will be simple. Or at least, more simple. And when children are young, it’s easy to believe that it is definitely going to work. Because young children are wholehearted in their faith — whether that is faith in G-d, faith in the system, faith in their parents, or faith in imaginary creatures. The problem is that kids grow up. And as they grow up, they discover that life is less simple. The answers that satisfied them as children rarely satisfy them as adults. The answers that satisfy us may not satisfy them.
When you figure out all the answers, let us know! Until then, the people whose lives seem simple have probably not gotten to the hard part yet.
Truth.
I’d like to address a comment I found on Facebook when a friend reposted this (I feel like a lurker when I read those). “As a child who is now an atheist after being devoutly fundamentalist, I say, “I haven’t died. I do not have a horrible disease. Why do you grieve as if I have or do?” And here it is, and it’s the same answer Id give to what I saw some people write after my 2014 post about Asperger’s. It’s NOT a life sentence, but it does feel like one at the beginning. If my kids are kind, good, moral, upright; if they’re emotionally healthy and we can have a good relationship, I will be happy 99% of the time. Can I pretend it won’t matter to me if they choose not to have God in their lives? Nope, but our relationship can handle it. It FEELS like a disaster right now. Because I am human.
Tears are welling up in my eyes as I read your story and comments, Ruchi. As a mother of a passionate Baal Teshuvah daughter, I relate to your heartache and profound struggles though from the opposite perspective. During the first most challenging year when she suddenly moved to Israel, I cried buckets of tears and grieved the loss of our shared dreams as her new path took hold. It truly felt as if I had lost the daughter I had always known and loved so dearly. I mourned the loss as I watched her pack up all of her jeans to donate, give away almost all of her secular books, and leave her house down the street from us. She left behind her former life and the life we had shared. It was shocking and so very hard to accept. The pain has at times been overwhelming. The past five years have been the most challenging of my life as a parent though we have managed to remain close despite many awkward and tense moments. Every visit brings new surprises and challenges. I have not met another mother in my situation. Some amazing and unexpected gifts have also come from this challenge. Oy, crying too much to write more now. I rarely share about this as I am just beginning to find words for this most intimate and confusing journey.
“G-d is sending me these challenges because, not in spite of, his great love for me.” How much zechut you must have to recognize this! Kavay el Hashem, chazak v’yaametz libecha v’kavay el Hashem. Thank you for sharing, Ruchi. Your strength is an inspiration.
Dear Ruchi, I don’t know you but I wish I did. It is quite evident that the hard emotional work you have done has paid handsome dividends. Unfortunately, I can empathize with your situation and the issues with which you struggle. Our situation is, at the end of the day, very humbling, a potent antidote to even the slightest judgmental tendencies, and a very, very small window into what G-d must feel (as it were) as the overwhelming majority of His children stray. Hopefully, we can summon the strength of character to be a Tzelem Elokim and respond to our families with the same love and patience He does. It is a perspective changer, to be sure, but it also must be put in perspective as you so poignantly describe. The worst parts, in my experience, are the sense of loss at failing to create another link in the great chain of our Mesorah, the pain contemplating the possibility that those whom you love so much are in jeopardy of missing out on the unimaginable joy, in this world and the next, that is and will be a byproduct of our devotion to Hashem, the inevitable fissures in the family dynamic and the reflexive sense of loss by comparison when hearing the Yiddishe nachas of others. May your words comfort and be a source of strength to all similarly situated people. May Hashem provide us with the strength of character to respond to our children in a manner that touches their hearts and leads them to return to the teachings and faith of their fathers. Thank you for inspiring words and may you and your family be blessed. (Sorry, had to post again to correct spelling–Darn autocorrect!)
Hi Ruchi, in response to your post, I just wanted to share some of my story. I am in my early twenties and can now speak from the opposite side of the tracks. During my beginning high school years, I struggled inwardly with my religious identity, feeling that I didn’t have a choice in the matter of being frum and the pressure that I had be the daughter my parents were pinning their hopes and dreams of. According to them, I was privileged to have been born frum and had been sheltered from the evil world of corruption and immorality. However, my family was not the typical family and I grew up feeling alone and isolated within the bais yaakov school system. I doubted God’s love for me and questioned why He was giving me my package deal of challenges. He definitely didn’t feel like the loving Father that my teachers were lecturing about. During my 12th grade year, I didn’t have the strength anymore to outwardly present as a nice frum girl while feeling such intense feelings of anger, fear, lonliness and abandonment. I threw away shabbos, tzniyut and shomer negiah and began living the life I thought I wanted. However, being intellectual, I had some nagging thoughts and wanted to give Judaism one last chance and went to Israel for a gap year. That year, and then the following year, utterly changed my life trajectory. I did a lot of hard emotional work and started to build a foundation that I could depend on for the rest of my life. During the entire process, I knew that I was causing my parents intense emotional pain, as I was and still continue to make different life choices than they wish I did. We have worked on developing open lines of communication that make room for unconditional love and respectful disagreement of choices and decisions. Its been a rocky road and my faith in God has definitely been challenged. I just wanted to thank you for writing your story as articulately as you have and giving me some insight into what my parents might have been feeling and couldn’t communicate themselves. The topics you have broached are ones that aren’t openly discussed in the frum community and it takes courage and internal strength to speak so openly about your life. Thank you for being so real and relatable. Your faith and perseverance stand as a role model for me to continue through my struggles. Thank you!
Likewise, your story give ME an insight into what my children, and others, may be feeling and thinking. Parents and children can get so enmeshed, and inhabit such complex relationships, that real conversation about their feelings can be so hard. Thank you for writing in and giving me insights. It means a lot to me. May Hashem give you strength and courage to live your realest you.
Dear Ruchi,
All I could think of as I read your post was “she’s writing my story!”
I have, and still am, going through a similar process to yours. Three out of my four children are not religiously observant ( whatever that means) and the fourth is very out of the box, hippy frum.
My children have taken me on an extraordinary journey- sometimes agonizingly painful, sometimes liberating. Each one of them is a beautiful human being, clever, talented and with exceptional middos. My 16 year old bare-headed son wants to give blankets to the homeless sleeping on the streets. My 24 year old will go out of his way for anyone to do chesed. My 23 year old daughter is a sweet, refined young woman, a dancer, a writer, who writes about the deepest of things, including her relationship with Hashem!
But to the outside, my children are “nothings”, my husband and I, “failures.” Such is the external world in which we live. Yet my Rabbi says that we are the ones to be admired, to learn from. Our children have led us down deep, internal pathways where we’ve been forced to examine ourselves, to look at the rich, inner world instead of the external. I am so grateful for that!
That’s not to say it isn’t painful. When I lose myself and start comparing my family to the other seemingly “perfect” ones out there, when I forget that Hashem is the Only One who judges or measures anything in my life, then I stumble and find myself drowning in self- pity and feelings of failure. From that place, the only way back is emunah. Reminding myself that every thing in my life has been specially designed for me and is exactly the way it should be.
I’ve learned to take care of myself.
I hardly go to weddings anymore.
I surround myself with people like me who are suffering and trying to work on ourselves.
And I do what I can to find my fulfillment, to define myself alone, independent of anyone.
Ruchi, I thank you for taking the lid off the box. There are so many of us out there. Suffering. Silently. Alone. It doesn’t have to be like this.
If anyone is interested in forming a support group ( for encouragement purposes, not to complain) I would be happy to organize something.
Yasher koach, Ruchi and may Hashem give you everything you need to fulfill your purpose!
Batya, you are an inspiration. I have a support group – are you on WhatsApp?
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I hurt to see the raw guilt in your words. You feel guilty for what you have done and what you have not done, and then you feel guilty for what you feel. You do know there is no Olympics of pain, right? Your grief over the loss of the future you dreamed of is absolutely valid. Your sense of wistful longing, your difficulty adjusting to this, that is all valid. You must have a support group telling you exactly this – as you write, there are many families facing this exact pain. In fact, maybe most families face a variation on this theme. It just looks different when you thought your kid would be a doctor, but he is an artist. Or you thought your kid would have kids but … no. Or in your case, you thought your kids would all be able to find happiness in the amazingly diverse and inclusive big tent you’ve built, but… no. I hope you’re taking good care of yourself during this difficult time.