The night that should have ended my marriage, but didn’t, was a mid-winter night about six months after my wedding, during my senior year in college. I don’t remember why my husband and I started arguing, or when the fight escalated. I do remember getting thrown against the wall repeatedly, punched in the arms and…
Shabbat Is Better with Friends
Every Friday night, a group of SAJD Supported Living Program clients and staff gather in a client’s home to celebrate Shabbat. The host and location change every week, but the traditions remain the same. Friends come together to light candles and say blessings over grape juice and challah. Holding these dinners in a home creates…
Holiday Traditions Have a Lasting Impact
Whether it’s Thanksgiving, Chanukah or Christmas, much-loved traditions help children thrive. Research shows that family time creates strong bonds and helps children build healthy relationships, develop emotional strength and thrive. Beyond this, communities that value and connect with children increase children’s developmental assets -– the qualities that build children’s resilience and help them thrive. Here…
Saying Goodbye When the Relationship Is Troubled
My mom is in hospice care. We have not always gotten along, and I feel badly about things that I have said and done. She has never been willing to talk about our problems, and now she gets angry if I try to broach the subject. Many of us struggle because of a troubled relationship…
Are You an Emotion Coaching Parent?
Emotion Coaching is not just a parenting style. It is also a tool developed by John Gottman to help and teach our children to handle challenges and also a means of developing a relationship with our children based on trust and mutual respect. Emotion coaching helps parents guide their children through life’s ups and downs…
Experiencing Alzheimer’s
Esther Altshul Helfgott kept a diary as her husband’s Alzheimer’s advanced, both to process her emotions and to help keep her husband’s memory alive. In her works Dear Alzheimer’s: A Caregiver’s Diary & Poems and Listening to Mozart: Poems of Alzheimer’s, she chronicles her experiences as caregiver and grieving spouse. I, who have experienced the…
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