Cu·rate

/ˈkyo͝oˌrāt/

verb

• 1. select, organize, and look after the items in (a collection or exhibition):

I never really know what I’m going to be writing in these emails until I actually sit down and face my screen. Usually with Paw Patrol patter going on behind me. (We have mercifully graduated from Cocomelon!)

It’s usually something real about my life. Something I’m dealing with, contemplating, learning and growing with. But often, I only get a handle on it, gain clarity on what I'm trying to say, when I start typing it out. 

I’m not a curated person. 

I don’t have social media. 

An Instagram or Facebook feed that needs constant watering and attention. 

Just a blinking cursor on a white screen and a faceless audience that likely directs most of these emails to spam before reading more than the subject line. 

I’m allergic to the word curate. 

It sounds a lot like the words “cure rate,” but is actually antithetical to everything it stands for. 

Cure·Rate

/ˈkyo͝orˌrāt/

noun

• 1. the percentage of people who truly recover

If you’re in my world for a while, you’ll know how much I resent the words “healing journey.” The idea that everyone is out here looking for some sort of cure. 

Cure from what? 

I’m not sure. 

Possibly from the curated lives we’ve all chosen to live. 

We’ve traded cure rate for curate.
Wholeness for gloss.
Depth for a shallow substitute of safety.

And now we scroll, aching for connection, wrapped in layer after layer of everyone’s best angle.

Because grief doesn’t filter well.

And loss doesn’t trend.

And realness, true, messy, soul stopping realness, is often met not with tenderness, but with judgment, solutions, or silence.

Last week a friend and mentor reached out to me with some juicy rechilus (- a Hebrew term that comes from Jewish law, and it refers to gossip that fuels conflict, specifically, telling someone what another person said about them in a way that’s likely to cause harm, anger, or division).

She said that one of my students had reached out to her with personal information about me, and told her to “stop me”. 

Stop me from what?

Living my real life? 

Making decisions that I needed to make in order to raise my family, do better in my world, breathe better in my every day?

Stop me why?

Because she had a selfish and personal vision for who she thought I should be 

A curated view of what she could never possibly comprehend? 

My real life?

We’ve all learned to curate.

Because when you tell people your truth, you tend to get responses like:

“Have you tried this rabbi?”
“You need to read this book.”
“Don’t you know you’re making Hashem sad?”

And I get it. That kind of reaction often comes from care. But it also reveals something else:

That we’re afraid of pain.
Afraid of someone being too real.
Afraid that if someone falls apart in front of us, we might have to feel our own grief too.

But you know what’s even more dangerous than being seen in you real?

Never being seen at all.

In a world where everyone knows your highlight reel, but no one really knows you, do you still know you?

Because that’s where the real healing starts. Not in the curated version of your life, but deep underneath it.

Before the performance.

Before micro-managing.

Before you learned to smile while you drowned.

That’s what underscores the work I hope to do in this world. 

It’s not about anyone’s healing journey. 

It’s about coming home to who we may never have had permission to be. 

Our Selves. 

What if you lived a life you didn’t have to explain.
A life you don’t have to make pretty.
A life where all you get to do is breathe.

I hope that’s what you feel when you step into my world. 

You get to come as you are.
And leave with more of you intact.

Stay real, 

-----

Want to know what’s next on my event calendar?

Once a year, I run an advanced one day breathwork workshop designed for those of you who are ready to stop scrolling and start living. 

It happens Underwater.

*no swim experience necessary

Where we have the opportunity to slip beneath the surface and find ourselves again.

We connect, we share, we breathe, and are reborn.
Where we remember how to come home to ourselves, body, breath, and being.

This is an eight hour, full day, immersive breathwork and workshop experience, with very limited spots. 

Taking place in Toms River, NJ

I run this only once a year, for women aged 25+

It’s happening in one month, Tuesday, July 13

And it’s not for show.
It’s not for Instagram.
It’s not for anyone but you.

Registration will open in one week from today and tickets are set to sell quickly. Mark it on your calendars and look out for next week’s email.