5 Keys to Feeling your Best
This Week’s JewishMom.com Update
- This Week’s Mommy Peptalk: 5 Keys to Feeling your Best
- Looking for volunteers for Loss-Support Organization
- Cool new prayer-partner initiative
- An article by me “The Deepest Pleasure”
Shalom Jewish Moms!
1. This past week, I read an incredibly fascinating book called Women’s Moods about the hormonal rollercoaster that all of us are riding on. This Week’s Mommy Peptalk “5 Keys to Feeling Your Best” describes the 5 Keys recommended in Women’s Moods so that we all can stay happy, stable (and at least somewhat normal) as this scary rollercoaster races towards the clouds and then plummets earthward.
http://chanaweisberg.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=3518150
2. Rachel Tal, founder of HUG (an organization providing support for women following miscarriage, stillbirth, and loss of an infant), is looking for Israel-based volunteers for HUG. A huge mitzvah opportunity for an amazing organization and cause! Learn more at this link:
http://chanaweisberg.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=3516427&pid=33987501#post33987501
3. For years, I thought it would be great to set up women on this list as prayer partners. Two women who are about to give birth, for example, could pray for each other for an easy birth (since our Sages teach us that when you pray for your friend, you will be answered first). Turns out, someone beat me to it! Scroll down to read about “Kol Mitpalel”‘s fantastic prayer initiative, and contact them to get your prayer partner.
With blessings, Chana Jenny Weisberg, JewishMom.com
4. Everything Good is Hard by Chana Jenny Weisberg
This was another intense week. Last Sunday, I hung out with a mom struggling with the disappointment and frustration of a series of failed fertility treatments. On Monday, I met with a young mother who was still reeling from a stillbirth right before Passover. On Wednesday, I visited a mother whose teenage daughter hates her and has rejected everything this devoted and amazing mother holds sacred. And last night I spoke with an old friend who shared that the final months of her most recent pregnancy were an extended nightmare of frequent panic attacks and debilitating anxiety.
We tend to think of being a mom as something so natural, so cheerful, so rosy-cheeked…”As American as motherhood and Apple Pie.” But as I get older, and experience more experiences and meet and speak with more moms, I am struck more and more by the occupational hazards of motherhood. A professional choice as dangerous, as disaster-prone (at least on an emotional level) as coalmining or car-racing or sky-scraper window washing.
At the finale of this week spent ruminating upon the riskiness of my chosen lifepath, I was reading (for the umpteenth time) Rabbi Noach Weinberg zt”l brilliant “48 Ways to Wisdom” (available on Aish.com) and came across the following quotation:
“If you spend your life avoiding pain, you will also avoid its deepest pleasures.”
Which reminded me of a very emotional event I’d attended a few hours before. My dear friend, who has struggled for years and years and years with infertility, who has endured thousands of shots and hundreds of painful treatments and the ongoing kind of searing disappointment that only a woman who yearns to hold a child in her arms can fathom, watched as her newborn son was passed over to the prayer-shawled mohel at his brit.
After the brit, when I wished the father “Mazal Tov!” I looked into his flushed face and realized that until that moment I had never in my life been a witness to true happiness.
A life without the responsibilities and risks and struggles of motherhood is probably a much easier life. But a life devoid of pain is also a life chronically, tragically, profoundly devoid of true joy.
To view this article and post a comment online click here: http://chanaweisberg.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=3518160
Kol Mitpalel’s Prayer Initiative
PRAYING FOR SOMETHING?
Our Rabbis tell us (Bava Kamma 92A) that “He who prays on behalf of a fellow friend with similar needs, Hashem answers him first.” Kol Hamitpalel is an organization that matches people with similar needs for whom they can pray. The service is STRICTLY ANONYMOUS and FREE. Miraculous stories abound of those who prayed and were answered. Kol Hamitpalel was featured in Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation’s Chesed Magazine and numerous Gedolim have spoken about it.
Dear Friend,
We are trying to let 10,000 people know about Kol Hamitpalel’s free service via email. Do your part and pass it along to at least ten people. Thank you!
JOIN OTHERS WHO HAVE HAD THEIR PRAYERS ANSWERED. Contact Kol Hamitpalel via email connect@kolhamitpalel.com or by phone 646-294-4355.
Some of the Categories:
Shidduch- Marriage
Refuah Shelemaha- speedy recovery
Parnassah-income
Couples to have children
Expectant mothers-easy labor/healthy baby
Teshuvah/Chizuk- strengthening one’s self religiously
Success in raising children
Success in learning
Shalom Bayit- peace in the home
Court Cases
In the merit of spreading word of this wonderful and free service may Hashem answer all of your Tefilot and those of your family amongst those of Klal Yisrael for only good things and bring the Mashiach speedily and in our time. Amen. TIZKU LEMITZVOS