Belated Welcome, Shavtay2007
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Belated Welcome, Shavtay2007
| Tue, 03-20-2007 - 10:32am |
Hi Tziporah,
I am so sorry that this is such a belated welcome to you. I've been absent from the board for nearly a month - so many things have been happening in my life that it was difficult to also come here. The good news is that life has somewhat calmed down (but I'm still crossing my fingers and my toes), which means that I'm back on iVillage.
I am so very happy to see you here, participating and sharing in our conversations! I hope that we'll get to know each other better in the coming weeks.
Welcome again!
(PS: I love the sound of your name!)

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I'm keeping you in my thoughts and I hope that both you and your husband are doing okay.
I'm going to reply to the points in this message, and then I'll write another message with other personal newsworthy events. Otherwise, I think it might just get too complicated.
I'ts been awhile since I wrote, so I have to look through the thread.
Right now, I want to respond to two points that jumped out at me when I first read this message, and still jump out at me.
The first, about my parents. It is true they are coming and my anxiety is rising. You will see why, in my next post, the reason for even more anxiety than usual.
I once read in a very good book: Peace With Your Parents, by Harold Bloomfield, his comments on the phrase: "I love you, but...". He suggests using this alternative: "I love you, AND".
The reason is simple: "but" means a negative is coming. It's an iether/or. I love you, but I have to have my own life, so it's either you--Mom and Dad-or me.
The alternative phrase, "I love you and", means, I love you Mom And Dad--that's a given--and I also need my own life.
In therapy, my t. and I have talked at great length about the fact that I am a grown woman, have my own life to lead, that it is not a questions of disobedience but rather an issue of setting boundaries. Word for word, it's exactly what he says.
He keeps telling me: "you can be anxious about them---the day before they arrive. Till then, they're not here, so don't engage in it."
Every therapist I've every had says this.
In case I forgot to mention something, I'll put it in my next message, but I think that's about it for the response to this one.
PS. I have also heard about Steven Hawkins. Who hasn't? People like him, and the late Christopher Reeves, really challenge the rest of us in positive ways to go for the max.
Tziporah
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Hi Tziporah,
I'm glad you came back and posted.
I actually did write a second message after my previous post, as I said I would, but it somehow got deleted and I was too tired to do it again.
My mother is also like yours--when she's with my father, she'll comment on his driving and it drives him crazy. Usually, at some point he'll get exasperated and tell her to stop interfering.
Now for what's been going on here. A very big week last week, momentous and stressful.
First the good news. On Thursday, July 1, we got the license. As I told you, we weren't supposed to get it till July 4. In the meantime, the committee had requested a guarantee from the bank. When my husband took the document to their office, he went with this guy who's been helping him move things along. This guy is just the person we've needed. If we had him from the start, things would have progressed much more quickly. He works with government committees and also knows quite a lot about engineering and related building issues. So, when my husband got there and gave the clerk the document, the clerk said they now needed more info from the engineer we had been using. This guy volunteered to step in, saying he was qualified. Fortunately, this clerk has been very flexible from the start and allowed him to finish the work that still had to be done. Then, all the people that had to be put their signatures on the final document, the people who were supposed to be converging only on Sunday, all happened to show up and the clerk was able to get all of them to sign. Amazing. A real miracle. Plus, we got a loan from the bank.
That's the good part.
Meanwhile, while Shabtai was ttaking care of this, I was in the midst of my own hassle. My accountant called me last Tuesday night with a very bad financial report. Till now, he's respected my confidentiallity, which, of course he is required to do, but he wants to get my parents involved. I'm getting to a dangerously low level--not there yet, but very close.
After a lot of discussion between all the people involved, we decided to have a strategy session about when and how to approach my parents with this sensitive issue.
Meanwhile, after that, I had another session with my therapist. He's very concerned about my telling them--not that I shouldn't tell them, (that may be necessary), but the question is when. He thinks that before I do that, I should try very hard to get any kind of job tht will bring in income. Not an easy task at any time, and certainly not now, and certainly not at my age--mid-fifties--and with my blindness to boot.
The truth is, and this is something I have to acknowledge, I've wasted a lot of time just sitting around doing nothing, when I could have been working more aggressively on my business things. That was/is because of the anxieties. That time can't be reclaimed. I know that, but it is painful anyway.
Shabtai is dipping deepl into his savings for this elevator project, so that cushion is also gone, something I'm not happy about. But I told him I can't give him any more than I already have.
I never dreamed I'd get to this point. It's like a nightmare.
Just thinking about it, just thinking how I'm going to earn enough, earn anything, is enough to put my stomach into knots. The demands of the course are also getting harder to impliment and I have to keep on doing those assignments.
I'm really in a bind.
It's also a question of faith, trusting G-d, that somehow things will turn out okay.
I know that He has helped in every other test I've gone through, and I've been through some hard ones--especially with Shabtai--but this seems like the hardest one I've every had to go through.
No need to mention, but I will, that my cuticle biting is on the rise. Depressed, anxious, Stressed out. Mixed up. trying to be positive.
Just imagine my parents coming in the middle of all this!
Tziporah
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Hi Tziporah,
I have been out of work since December of 2008.
Hello, Karen,
Your message was most helpful. I guess you could teach me a thing or two--like how to grow veggies inside in pots. I guess when it comes down to it, you can do anything. People can knit their own sweaters, sew their own dresses, grow their own food.
I don't know what your situation was like growing up. I suspect it was quite different from mine.
My parents grew up during the Depression, but from what I know, their own parents--my grandparents--did okay. My grandparents started from scratch and were well-off by the end of their lives. They were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and started out working on the Lower East Side of New York, the hubub of Jews at the turn of the 1900s. Eastern Europe was poverty-stricken, so they were used to doing anything to get by.
My parents certainly recall the Depression. Occasionally they have talked about it, like people dancing for days in these marathons till they would drop.
But, from what I can gather, by the time they were born, my grandparents were doing okay.
I never knew what poverty was like while growing up. We had everything we needed. If there were financial struggles, we never heard about it.
Just like disagreements between husband and wife. My father told me, as an adult, that there certainly were times he and my mother disagreed. But these things were always done behind closed doors. This was good, because it gave us a sense of love--and their marriage is indeed a loving one. They just celebrated their 60th anniversary in June.
So, as you can see, I was sheltered in many ways. Of course, I heard about, read about, poverty and divorce and other things, but they happened out there, over there, not in our neighborhood or to our friends and acquaintances. Probably the closest thing to poverty was our black maid, who lived in the ghetto.
Occasionally, teachers in school would talk about it. Occasionally, there would be TV documentaries on hunger in America. You'd read about a child abuse case that was making headlines. But it allhappened to them.
When I went to college, I got a little more educated, but the college I attended, Sarah Lawrence, was a "sister college", the female equivalent to the Ivy League. It was certainly a liberal college in many ways, and if there were poor people there, you didn't know it.
It was only when i married that I really got world-smart. Shabtai's existence was quite different from mine. Growing up in Beirut, his whole family lived in one large room and shared an apartment with others. Each family had their own room and used a communal kitchen. They had the ld-fashioned whole-in-the-ground and night bedpan for relieving themselves. The only time I ever had seen an outhouse was in sleep away camp when we went camping in the woods and had to use one. They had a primus for warming food and would fill a large tub with boiling water to wash themselves. Shabtai said the first time he saw a real toilet was when he went to the boarding school for the blind and when his aunt got a modern toilet it was a big occasion. When Shabtai would tell me these stories, I couldn't imagine using that kind of bathroom on a regular basis.
Of course, there was no such thing as a home phone, no air conditioning, no TV, etc. They didn't go to sleep-away camp in the summers. Instead, they went to a mountain retreat.
I didn't come face to face with poverty until I got married. Where I live, there are people who have enough to eat, and there are those who do not. When we have guests for the Sabbath, I always give away left-over food.
When I was growing up, people never came to the door asking for charity.
Here it is very common. Not a week goes by without at least one, often more, people coming to solicit alms for the poor, brides, orphans, people needing medical help, etc., etc., etc.
When Shabtai needed his second transplant we went to the U.S. to have it. We lived very simply in one-room flats, five apartments in one year. When my mother saw the first one, which was a real hole-in-the-wall, she was horrified. Not that she helped us get out of it, and, of course, I would never ask her to.
So, poverty has been a relative stranger to me. I experienced it briefly when we were abroad, but for the most part, I have had more than enough.
This is just one part of the story. The other part, the part you know about, is the fact that my parents always said I would need financial support because I am blind--an attitude that was not uncommon. Provisions were made. That is the crux of it.
If they get involved, I'll have to give a full accounting to them. That humiliation.
And, if as you say, like so many others, I am intelligent--even my therapists said it--how come I can't get things moving?
And the fear of living without anything left. Just thinking of the financial pressure I am under now puts my stomach in knots. And the stress just depletes my energy, instead of letting me do what I need to do.
There are other parts to this, but some things are just left better in private. Hint: the relationship between my parents and me, between them and Shabtai. So this is a very complicated thing.
I had another session with my therapist last night. He's trying to de-stress me. Says I have to think more securely and realize that for most of my life the "wall" has been of my own making. According to him, I have great ideas, but the self-doubt keeps me from implementing them. After the session, I just went back to sleep, something I had done most of the day.
Today, Tuesday, for better or worse--probably better, I have a lot to do. So I can't just crawl into bed.
Still biting my cuticles/fingers, but doing it less than before. Most fingers have sores on them, but the sores are relatively small in most cases.
Tziporah
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Hi Tziporah,
You asked "how come I can't get things moving?"
You're right of course about breaking down, or breaking through, the walls. But it's soooooooo hard!
I found your story about going to Canada inspiring. I couldn't figure out what Lax stands for. What place is that?
For the first time I'm really watching the utility bill. That is why I got an ADSL U.S. line. My Israeli phone bill was over 2000 Shekalim a month--about $500. Now that I have that U.S. line, my Israel bill averages $400. My U.S. bill averages about $10 per week, but that's because I make a lot of long-distance calls that are at least an hour long. That's because of the teleclasses.
I've also started watching the electric bill. I don't put on the air conditioner if Shabtai isn't here. When he comes in we turn it on because he is extremely heat sensitive.
Also, I've started using the sun tank to heat our water in the hot summer. We have a sun tank on the roof. Turned off the gas and electric heaters that usuallyheat the water. I imagine that over the summer months, when it's very sunny, I can cut back considerably on electricity costs this way.
When I was growing up, we always let the shower run while we were soaping ourselves. Water is at a premium in this country, so for years I've turned off the water while soaping upin the shower or when washing dishes.
I'm always looking for more ways to cut back.
I've started buying veggies every two weeks instead of every week.
Tziporah
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Hi Tziporah,
LAX is the name of the airport in Los Angeles.
The last week has been quite stressful--experiencing everything from depression, to anxiety, topanic attacks, to cuticle-biting, the works.
But I have to bite the bullet and that is what I did.
I made some hard decissions--like sticking to an enforced monthly allowance, so I won't deplete my account completely.
Letting the people who know how to deal with my parents tell them about what is going on and asking for their input/help.
Reducing psychotherapy from twice a week to once. A very difficult decission this one, but I just can't afford twice a week. Maybe it is a blessing in disguise. It will mean I will have to do a lot more mental work myself.
I still have a lot of doubts.
People say 95 per cent of online businesses fail, and I don't need another failure.
The shame of having to go to my parents and admit I'm having a hard time. Very humiliating. It brings up all the feelings about how they always felt they would need to take care of me because I am blind. And now, alas, it seems that this is the case. I try to remind myself that among blind people, the unemployment rate is a staggering and whopping 70 per cent! So I am certainly not alone. Small comfort--oin the club.
I have been learning more religious writings, particularly the story in Exodus when the Manna fell. There are a lot of insights about livelihood--that all of it comes from G-d. This is giving me spiritual strength. I have also started to say special prayers written by various sages on this topic and that helps. I have increased saying Psalms. These spiritual disciplines are not always easy, but I think they help.
I am finally beginning to grasp what is meant in the Twleve Step program: that we have no power, that we must turn to a higher power, whatever we conceive that to be. For me it is G-d.
I also want to start reading more about strengthening my self-esteem, because it has really been shattered by recent events. The old nightmare dreams about me being a student in college who is failing have come back.
I don't think my t. is happy with all the decissions I have made. But he realizes the seriousness of it and says this is in fact the major goal of therapy: trying to accept myself, trying to work out the dependency on myparents, trying to be assertive, the self-esteem, the shame. All of it has somehow become concentrated in this latest test.
My fingers are so-so. But, then, what else can I do?
There is much more I could write, but it's late.
Tziporah
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
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