For most of my life, I didn’t know I qualified for all the letters I now put behind my name…
I lived life. Well, life really lived me. Thank Gd, I hold the badge of extra shemirah- Hashem protects his garim- because if not, I’m not sure I would have survived all those decades.
It’s not that I was living on the edge, but I was living unaware. Unaware of all that makes me me, all that I need to do to protect me from me.
I didn’t know I was highly emotional and sensitive. I didn’t know I was ADHD. I therefore didn’t have habits to nourish those delicate dimensions of myself—the fragile places inside.
And I didn’t know food was filling those places that I was ignoring.
Years before Soulfood was a thing, my life experiences were laying the foundation for it…
I found myself newly married and in a foreign country. (To me, Israel was foreign at the time).
I gained a ton of weight with my first pregnancy. (My oldest is now 21). My body took a hit.
I became extremely deficient in the emotional dimension of the self. I lived in a new country with no friends, except one halfway across the country, so we only had a phone connection. And no healthy habits to sustain me. Then bam, out of nowhere, my dad died at the tender age of 53. Talk about the heart taking a hit.
My mind went blank. Fresh out of Machon Chana, I stopped chasing rabbis down the street, ingraining halacha in my mind. It all just stopped.
And of course, since I was new at this thing called living like a Jew (I was only a fresh convert of 2 and ½ years), the spiritual habits that I had picked up went dry.
I lost my passionate connection with Gd because I didn’t know how to hold on it.
It took decades to understand what had happened—and then to slowly build the habits and systems that protect and nourish me and allow me to realign my connection to Hashem.
Boundaries protect. Boundaries nourish.
Looking back, I don’t think my biggest problem was food. Or ADHD. Or grief. My biggest problem was that I didn’t know myself, and, therefore, what I needed. I didn’t know how to guard the vessel that carried my soul.
וְנִשְׁמַרְתֶּ֥ם מְאֹ֖ד לְנַפְשֹֽׁתֵיכֶ֑ם כִּ֣י לֹ֤א רְאִיתֶם֙ כָּל־תְּמוּנָ֔ה בְּי֗וֹם דִּבֶּ֨ר הי אֲלֵיכֶ֛ם בְּחֹרֵ֖ב מִתּ֥וֹךְ הָאֵֽשׁ
You must guard yourselves carefully, for you did not see any image on the day that Gd spoke to you at Chorev from the midst of the fire (4:15).
The chassidic commentators elaborate on this posuk to include guarding one’s health. As the Rambam maintains, “Ensuring the body remains healthy and strong is an integral part of Avodas Hashem as ‘someone who is unhealthy cannot understand or have any knowledge of the Creator’.
When you are stuck with the food or whatever else you turn to when life is too much…
When you are blinded by your tears, tears you don’t know you have, tears that hide deep within…
When you can’t see straight because of the fog in your head, the weights on your eyelids, and the doubt permeating within…
And when you can’t see Hashem anymore because of the disconnect…
The time is long overdue to focus on your health…
That’s why I am so passionate about the avoda of becoming a kli. For some of us, it isn’t just a nice mitzvah. It is the path to avodas Hashem. Because when the mind and body are no longer centered, access to the soul becomes blocked.
