Still Here, Still Breathing
May 19, 2026
Birthdays are weird. And awesome.
Because you're supposed to feel things. But the truth is, it's just another day. Another modeh ani. Another 5:30am where I think I'll sneak out of bed and get my davening and learning done in peace, only to have my son Deeds find me at 5:45, ready to launch day 181 of Mommy school.
There's that unextinguished, naive hope from childhood, that birthdays are supposed to be special, that you can actually feel yourself becoming older, that this new year is going to be different in all the right ways.
And then it isn't. It's another day of waiting on hold to reinstate my canceled health insurance, scrambling to finish filing taxes (late), and getting the boys haircuts before the pre yom tov lines snake around the block.
And also, this is so much the life I prayed for.
A few years ago, I put the word adventure on my vision board. I thought that's what my life was missing. Something big. Something next.
Since then, I've had many adventures. And I've learned they're rarely what we think they'll be.
There's something so underrated about Tuesday morning coffee at 6am, before the world gets too loud. Something I didn't always know I was craving while I chased the next big thing.
It's taken me all of my 39 years to understand that the next biggest thing is the simple pleasure of a mundane life. One breath at a time.
I tried to give you some of that sense with the straw escapade I embarked on these last few weeks. And then so many of you wrote to tell me yours arrived shattered.
Mind boggling.
These bamboo straws were so ridiculously hard to cut and drill, and then many of them arriving to you in pieces. (I'm pretty sure someone at USPS has been taking a hammer to them. There's no other explanation lol.)
And also, I found myself shrugging it off in ways I’ve never been able to do before.
Some of you know that I’m a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser.
I write this from my kitchen table as my Deeds meows from beneath my chair. If you click right here, you'll hear the soundtrack to a life that has not gone at all in the way I have planned.
This is the year Hashem said I needed to learn about surrender. And about what really counts.
What counts is that in this year that my boys haven’t had a school, they’ve had me, and I've had them. And that time is invaluable (even as the meowing is getting to be a bit muchness.)
What counts is the humanness of who we are when things don’t go as planned.
Chazal famously say that who we are in times of stress tells us what kind of preparing we have been doing our whole lives for this moment. Because when we’re squeezed, what's really inside of us is revealed
In our case? Meows. And a lot of love and laughter. And tears on the bathroom floor when I've gotten overwhelmed.
There was a time when broken straws would have broken me.
But I'm different now.
CS sent me this text when she received her shattered straw, and it perfectly captured what I hoped to convey:
Some of you got three pieces of my heart instead of one.
And I'm cool with that. This year has taught me that there's nothing more whole than a broken heart. You've received an unexpectedly precious part of what I usually keep to myself. My brokenness.
There's nothing more vulnerable. Nothing more beautiful. Nothing more full of the promise of beginning again.
My mother has worn a ring for 40 years, a sliver of the plate broken at her engagement, set into a band she's worn my entire life. (My parents' 40th anniversary falls on my English birthday this year. How perfectly wonderful is that?!)
Without ever talking about it, my mother has taught me how to cherish the shards. How the broken isn't where it ends. It's where something begins.
If you choose.
We don't get to choose what happens to us. We only get to choose what we think, feel, and do about it.
This has been that year for me. The year of making Azamra the realest focal point of my being. Letting the breath I teach so much about breathe me, the times I was sure I couldn't take even one more on my own.
And I'm still here.
So are you.
One breath at a time. (Even if many of them were through a straw.)
I still want you to have the straw experience I meant to give you.
Here's what to do; go to the cabinet where you keep them. Measure one straw against your pinky finger and cut it roughly to that size. Like this:
Then use it like this:
Cut some for your kids and loved ones too. It might help them breathe instead of meow.
No seriously. Sarah G. sent me this awesome report last night:
This year has been a gift I never expected. The hardest year I've had the privilege of walking through.
Still here. Still breathing. In pieces. Complete.
As my birthday gift to you, here's a deep breath. Take it with or without the straw. But take it.
Inhale. Exhale. Still breathing. Still here.
In pieces. Complete.
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As you get ready to post your kids' first day/last day of school pictures soon, send a little prayer for the Mamas who heroically spent the year being Morahs while life moved on around them. We didn't get a first day or last day. We're not the only ones.
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This is your final opportunity to join Azamra for this cohort.
Every year, I step into Azamra around my birthday. There's something intentional about that, beginning a new year with breath, with community, with the practice of finding the good even when it's buried.
This year especially, Azamra hasn't been a concept. It's been a lifeline.
I won't be accepting new applications past Shavuos. The new year has begun, and I don't want you to miss the beginning of it.
If you've been waiting for the deadline, this is it. Reach out for your application today and let's start the new season together.
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Life happens in little bits. Learn to love the little bytes.
