Three months ago, I was lying down when I got the call from my doctor. Every last piece of paperwork, injection, anesthesia, procedure, waiting-room marathon that I’d endured to get to this moment evaporated with four simple words: “Don’t come in today.”

My bag was packed. I had visualized this pregnancy, preparing my body for weeks. I had packed the bags of my life for one destination only: motherhood.

I sat up. Thank you, G‑d, for freeing me, I forced myself to say. I thought this was something I needed to do for You, G‑d. For years, I was convinced this was the mission that You gave me. Thank you for freeing me!

I danced around the room, jumping up and down on the bed with my hands stroking the ceiling. This bed ... If the procedure had happened today, I would have been on bedrest for days, weeks, months? My body, which felt so fragile moments ago, jumped down onto the hard wooden floors.


I was 18 when my oncologist looked at me and said that I would never carry my own pregnancy. The radiation to kill the cancer would destroy that opportunity. That is when the promise was born within me. I will prove him wrong. I will show him what G‑d can do.

Every one of the next five doctors who confirmed his prognosis only made this new fire burn stronger.

As soon as we married, I was determined to show everyone just what G‑d can do. What this body is capable of. Lying on the radiation table each day I would visualize walking into my doctor’s office with my crew of children. I would prove him wrong.

Staring at the ceiling as the phone went dead, I realized I’ve been living in the shadow of that promise. It finally hit me: I care more about that promise than myself, or G‑d.

Who said this is what G‑d wants from me? To re-traumatize myself in the medical world? To hurt this body with procedures and injections?

This promise has become an idol in my holy temple, and G‑d kindly let it come crashing down. It shattered into a million pieces. My ego died that day. I felt broken for weeks.

Who am I without this desperate identity?

Who am I when not pathetically yearning for something that I don’t have?

Who am I if I’m not feeling bad for myself, hating everyone for being so arrogantly blessed with what I should have?!

My ego had set up shop in my inner sanctuary and had been calling the shots for so long, it didn’t appreciate the wake-up call.

Now broken and open, I began to ask: What do You, G‑d, actually want from me? When You put this soul into this body, in this exact generation, what was Your vision? G‑d help me live Your wildest dreams for me.

My eyes shut tightly on the couch as the pain of the disappointment filled my chest. G‑d, do you love me?

An image of a piece of chocolate melting in a metal pan flashed through my mind. I breathed a little deeper. Just as it is a simple law of nature that when heated chocolate melts, the most simple and abundant truth is that G‑d loves me. This entire world including a piece of chocolate melting on the stove is an expression of his love for me. My entire existence is G‑d writing me a love letter.

What do you think the entire cosmos and life I have given you is meant to show you? Yes, My dear child, I love you. I want you to feel the sunshine on your back as My love for you. To see ducklings hatching as My love for you. Your iPhone ringing with someone who loves you from across the globe as My love for you. This life is My expression of love for you. Please start enjoying it.

I have lived the identity of a warrior, a fighter, a champion of defiance against statistics and doctors. Now I needed to ask myself, who am I without that identity?

I realize that I don’t know what it means to just feel good in my body. The Rebbe taught that one’s personal galut (“exile”) is living in stress, and geulah (“personal redemption”) is living tranquility.

I know what fear and disappointment and anguish feel like; I have experienced the feeling of my twisting stomach. But what does living geulah feel like in my body?

I lay on the couch and feel the space around me. G‑d, You fill the world, You are filling this space. I felt held and protected. The couch was G‑d holding me through this material world.

Our forefather Abraham said, Kel Olam, “G‑d and world” in one breath. Not Kel HaOlam, “G‑d of the world;” rather, G‑d-world, meaning the world exists within G‑d. I felt like a baby in the womb. I let this love fill my head, chest, stomach and pinky toes, and wash away the pain that had ravaged it for weeks.

I want to learn what it means to feel good in my body. To be OK with being OK. To make G‑d the one I worship through my body, my mini-holy temple.


Ariel and I went for a lovely sunset picnic, a checkered red-and-white blanket, a wicker basket filled with rosé and pasta. We saw a long-lost friend pushing her stroller and walked over to admire her adorable baby. She sighed and with a look of pity said, “Please G‑d, you should be blessed.” She repeated it over and over. I put my hand on her shoulder. “I am good,” I said.

What do you mean, her eyes screamed? How are you OK with your miserable existence? Her brown eyes asked.

I didn’t have an answer, but I understood her question.

For so long, I’ve fought reality and begged G‑d for a baby. I went into a realm of medical hell to bring down the blessings. I’d done everything physically possible to bring down that blessing and G‑d said, no.

And now, I must begin my healing journey. Healing from worshipping a promise that hurt me. Healing from this belief that I must be miserable. That it is a sin to be OK; that it is holy to be stressed out.

It’s work to feel G‑d in my body. It’s work to focus on living in an inner world of menucha, tranquility, but it feels like holy work.

My focus now is feeling G‑d in my inner sanctuary, letting Him in. Slowly making more space, as I let go of my ego’s 10-year plan and open myself up to G‑d flowing through me in this perfect moment.