The Song Tziona Achishena Wrote After Getting Her Get

The Song Tziona Achishena Wrote After Getting Her Get

Popular singer Tziona Achishena and I have some unusual things in common. We are both baalot teshuva from Maryland whose parents named her Jenny, and both of us were deeply impacted by time we spent pre-Teshuva in Indonesia. Both of us also love her music:)

When I heard Tziona performing this song over a year ago, I told her I really wanted it for JewishMOM.com! B”H, she just released the music video, so here goes…

And here’s the story behind the song…

THE SONG I WROTE AFTER GETTING MY GET by Tziona Achishena

The last few years haven’t been an easy time for me: raising three kids on my own, getting out of a marriage where I didn’t feel safe, waiting and fighting for years for a get [religious divorce] and really having to start over in so many ways.

When I wrote this song, I had finally gotten my get after 3 years. I was just starting to let myself feel how lonely I had been and still was, and opening up to the possibility of a new relationship.

In this unknown place, that felt very insecure based on my past experiences, this song came. At my lowest moment, when I really had to focus on what I had, and not just what was lacking. In other words, I had to start listing what works in my life.

So I took a look at myself, and decided that right then and there I would make up a song that would help me to focus on what I did have, right then and there, from the small to the huge blessings in my life.

I took out my ukulele, an instrument that always makes me feel happy, and started to sing this song.

When I got to the verses, I just started making it up as I went, looking around, and literally saying thank you to Hashem for every thing I saw. Everything I had in my life.

I felt the song picking me up, flipping my focus and my mood around, and placing me right into a place of gratitude.

Nothing changed but my eyes. Nothing changed but my heart.

I’ve been raising my 3 kids on my own for the past 6 years, far from my family, with so much responsibility falling solely on my shoulders. So many stresses, it can be easy to fall into focusing on everything that is lacking in my life.

“But every time I sing this song, and I’ve sung it hundreds of times, it changes. And it changes me too. Switching my focus from lack to focus on the positive. It’s a muscle, a spiritual muscle that I have to keep flexing.”

It’s a way of embracing my life, and holding the paradox between what is left to pray for, and the countless blessings that Hashem is giving me, right now.

Download this song from itunes or spotify

5 comments

  1. That was a beautiful preamble to that song, and I LOVE that song! I heard it in concert in Portland, Oregon and absolutely loved it. Exercising the gratitude muscle…nothing more powerful.

  2. Love it. “I have everything I need right now” – something for me to remember

  3. A great refrain to have running through our brains all day. I too am going through a challenge right now and I try to exercise my gratitude brain daily. Love this song and it’s repeating message.

  4. Yocheved Shull

    That song has gotten me through hard times. I played it constantly when I was recovering from surgery 2 years and even sang it with my friends at my birthday party. We improvised and added in all the things “we have right now”. It’s an amazing way to bring one to the present moment and the presents of the moment. Thank you Jenny for explaining the kavana behind it, the struggle and the growth. בזכות נשים צדקניות. May we be zoche to geula glasses! Thank you Tziona חזקי ואמצי!

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