Dodi Lamm

07/21/2022

From the blog of Judy Krasna at The Times of Israel

03/10/2021

05/19/2020

It's hard to believe positive things can come from this nightmare but we, being resilient, can grow and even surprise ourselves. I have kids and grandkids isolating with me and I have found that I am not a curmudgeon. My space isn't as sacred to me as I thought it was.

Some of us were feeling stuck before coronavirus, and then coronavirus came and turned things on their head. In some ways we are busier than ever and in other ways we have lots of time.

Are there things that you've found out about yourself that you want to build on when this Covid19 is over? Are there dreams you want to explore? are there changes you want to make?

04/29/2020

04/12/2020

P.S. to this blog, I have been gifted a huge bag full of books, Book Bliss has returned. Thank you S.L.!

It’s the eve of a new week. Another week of drudgery with no end in sight. I hear the anxiety, loneliness, frustration; and fear in my patients’ voices and they often ask me, “How are you? What are you doing?” Patients never ask me these things, it’s an unwritten but assumed law that thera...

03/29/2020

This is a helpful meditation , one that I do regularly. Let me know how you like it

Here is a 13-minute practice to steady your heart in the time of coronavirus.

03/27/2020

A poignant poem I came across by the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa.

Beyond the Bend in the Road

There may be a well, and there may be a castle.
And there may be just more road.
I don't know and don't ask.
As long as I'm on the road that's before the bend
I look only at the road before the bend.
Because the road before the bend is all I can see.
It would do me no good to look anywhere else
Or at what I can't see. Let's pay attention only to where
we are.
There's only enough beauty in being here and not somewhere else.
If there are people beyond the bend in the road,
Let them worry about what's beyond the bend in the
road.
That, for them, is the road.
If we're to arrive there, when we arrive there we'll know.
For now we know only that we're not there.
Here there's just the road before the bend, and before
the bend
There's the road without any bend.

03/18/2020

This looks cool!!

03/17/2020

“I feel like I am being punished”

A thought echoed out of despair from my patients.
Our world is getting ever so much smaller. Stores are closing, museums, libraries, all of the places you could depend on being open when everything else was closed, are now closed as well. Schools are shut down, gatherings are reduced, weddings are cancelled. Our world gets tinier and tinier and it feels like we are being sent to our room. But we didn’t do anything wrong, you might say to your parents.

We didn’t. I didn’t.

I live in a world of reframing, and I invite you into my world.
I share this strategy with my patients and I hope it will help bring comfort to you as well. In my world I feel hugged, a huge all-encompassing bear hug. My home is my hug. It makes me feel like a chick taking refuge in a nest that was built by its mother, only I am the mother and the chick. I am in a home that was established with love. It was created with thought and care and some haphazard additions. The decor and the nicknacks represent all sorts of adventures and memories. It holds my history. My house has witnessed and survived through all sorts of weather. It has more or less protected me (I still retain some resentment from Hurricane Sandy) yet, it endures.

In my world, my home is my protection and so are my neighbors, friends, and community. I choose to feel loved when people stay at a safe distance, their retreat is my security. And so, I can look at myself as a social pariah during this time of social distancing, or I can look at how generous and careful my people are. I admire the emails going out from large department stores to the local synagogue. I know they have my back.

I look at all the precautions being taken and feel, “Yes! I am seen, Someone sees us!” .
I applaud the tightness and the limitations of my current surroundings and look forward to the spring as an omen to the eventual coming out, to a re-emergence. At that time I will say, “Yes! The flowers are blooming, the kids are outside laughing, and I can leave my cocoon and show up like a caterpillar breaking free of the chrysalis and spreading its beautiful wings as a butterfly.”