What Have I Become

In hope I am fearless

Om durgaya namah

Releasing Fear and Anxiety With Hopefulness

7:32am = Meditation + Light + Hydration + Movement.

Day 4. Oprah & Deepak's 21 Day Meditation Experience.

My morning movement was Down Dog's, Full Practice, Beginner 1 for 15 minutes. I forgot to put on my Garmin. Gulp. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, does it? I won't tell my body if you don't. I just entered it into Garmin Connect manually.

I ran for 22 min, 37 sec. Short and strong. Continuing to listen to "Becoming." Michelle Obama's father just passed away, and she is contemplating working for the mayor. Her fiance is studying for the Illinois bar exam at University of Chicago.

@Garmin

@DownDogg

@MichelleObama

@BelovedBrooklyn123

@Oprah

@DeepakChopra

When I go to shul I wear a kippah on my head. Shul is the Hebrew word for "synagogue," "kippah" for yarmulke or skullcap. Now traditionally, what I saw growing up was that married women, and only married women, would wear a small lace covering on their heads. They all symbolize the fact that there is indeed Someone or Something above, which is greater than all of us, which I find beautiful. As an adult, I made the decision to wear a kippah in shul because I do believe in Something above. And whatever IT is has never found me a husband.

Now even though I live in New York, if I attend a service in a new place, people assume that I'm gay. Imagine me compounding the issues by saying "I'm a young widow, who has never been married." I have often been asked "what was your wife' name?"

People have been making those assumptions about me since I was in sixth grade, when I learned to smack a baseball across a field. And truthfully, I think this has gotten me a lot of dudes over the years. So feel free to think whatever you wish about me.

Yesterday I attended a funeral on Facebook, a friend of my mom's from our shul in Massapequa, Beth El. Now the woman who passed, she behaved questionably in my mom's house the day of her funeral. She was also the same person who picked mom and I up from the doctor that day, and to whom she first uttered the words "I have cancer." Ultimately, what she did or said in the house really doesn't matter right now, because like my mom, she is gone. And because of that, I'm letting it go, sending it out into the Universe.

We all waited on a group call for the funeral to start. There was nothing. Finally a Beth Elder chimed in, "well . . . ," to which I responded with one word, "patience."

Someone else typed, "It's not like we have any place to be."

I reminded them that we were gathered to pay our respects to a dead woman, and that we were on her time.

In actuality, the rabbi and two adult sons were having trouble locating the grave site, hence the delay. The service turned out to be amazing, something truly awesome to be a part of. And as I stood and watched my iPad screen, I wept a little, listening to the rabbi who I have known for decades. On my head I wore a kippah that my mom made for my bat mitzvah guests 39 years ago. I left it on my head the entire day. I enjoyed the reminders of Something greater above me.

Later in the evening I remotely participated in a group meditation with a hipster synagogue in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. As I fumbled with technology, I looked at everyone's tiny little Zoom faces. And I had realized that I had become a shul elder.

A younger woman, who lead our discussion, spoke of seasonal traditions, which are relative to us:

We have everything we need

Chesed

An opening

What we are receiving

Expanding

Hug

Openness

Unlimited kindness.