Take a Chill Pill! It's Shabbat!

I am a workaholic. I think I inherited this from my father, who is a workaholic, but also it stems from the fact that my mother was on welfare most of my childhood and I was deeply ashamed of it. Though in our area of Washington Heights, just about everyone was getting some kind of public assistance, I was frequently mercilessly teased by other kids about our situation and I remember my mother sending me to go pay for things with food stamps and the cashiers giving me, what I thought, were snide, judgmental looks.

So when I was 18 and finally got mys first job, I worked far and beyond what was asked of me. I continued to do this at every job, sometimes juggling up to three part-time jobs in college and after college, one full-time job and one part-time job until my body started screaming that it couldn't handle the abuse and finally shut down altogether.

I thought I'd throw in this goodie but oldie that I wrote for Chabad about how Shabbos saved me. I still have my workaholic tendencies. Old habits die hard but Shabbos reminds me weekly to relax and my husband, thank G-d, reminds me that walking around the neighborhood and visiting ALL my friends on Shabbos is NOT relaxing to someone with my condition. Yeah, so I haven't mastered relaxing or listening to my body when it needs a break but I'm a work-in-progress and I think so many people around me, even my non-Jewish friends and family, could use 25 hours of rest a week.

Do check out: Adventures in Shabbat: How a Workaholic Control Freak Learned to Relax"

The Purim Curse?

When they say it almost never, ever rains in Los Angeles, what they don't tell you is that when it does, it rains all at once like G-d is trying to pull that Noah's Ark business all over again. And that's the kind of rain that hit here this Purim.

Rain is my kryptonite (okay, how is that NOT in the Blogger dictionary?). I can be inside, indoors, not even know it's raining, not even see it or hear it but it creeps into my bones. It usually begins with me feeling like a computer powering down all of a sudden, randomly, for an annoying, ill-timed Windows Upgrade that I told the computer I didn't want to do until 4 hours or was it 10 minutes from now? Along with this weird sudden incredible fatigue and brain fog, what people with fibromyalgia call fibro fog, comes the excruciating joint pain eventually.

Pretty much every Purim since I converted has been cursed. Okay, maybe it was cursed before I converted, too. I remember bringing my sisters to shul to celebrate my first Purim with me (since they love/loved Halloween) and some creepy guys three times their age tried to pick them up. Other than that, my first Purim rocked. I was sick already but not as sick as I would become months and years later. Every Purim after that, I was sick and I had to balance trying to enjoy and follow along with the megillah reading with the pain of the noise of all the people claustrophobically squished in all around me pushing into my most painful parts, which only got more painful from the sensory overload.

This year, I was in such terrible pain, I decided to officially dub it "the Purim curse" because I didn't even make it out of the house from Thursday to Monday. Purim started Saturday night and into Sunday. (No, I don't count getting my Netflix or visiting our lovely downstairs neighbors--cousins--"making it out of the house." Making it out of the house has to at least count crossing a street or something, I think. My doctor and physical therapist would disagree since according to them stairs of any kind are on my DON'T list, whether I'm going up them or most especially, down them.)

Anyway, by the time I realized the Purim curse had struck again, I was crying in a little ball of pain on the floor. I never threw tantrums growing up. I get to throw them now, especially with my newest symptom: migraines. I wasn't depressed and in pain at first. Just angry and in pain. Angry that the first year I decided to dress up for Purim (Lois Lane, thereby forcing the rabbi husband to be Clark Kent/Superman), I was too sick to get my costume together, too sick to help put together the mishloach manot (can I please just call them Purim baskets? I mean, this is like a tongue twister for me even now, even though I know I can say it, I STILL feel like I'm doing it wrong!). I'd set the table in the middle of the night when I'd had a moment of coherent thought but even then forgotten napkins.

We weren't supposed to be Lois and Clark. Originally, I'd promised a little girl we'd do a Harry Potter theme but I checked my bank account and decided homemade press passes, clothes we already owned or borrowed and one Superman t-shirt later that Harry Potter anything was too expensive. Plus, I've had two Harry Potter themed birthday parties AFTER age 20 and dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween AFTER age 20. It is possible I should never do anything Harry Potter related after watching the last film for my 31st birthday in July.

By the time, I felt kinda normal, I realized my husband had singlehandedly cooked the meal for our first ever Purim seudah. Persian rice. His own original spiced up salmon. Dominican beans, of course. Salad, I can no longer eat/digest unless it's at the end of the meal like now I'm part French, too. We'd never hosted a seudah. Every year, we'd been lucky enough to attend one hosted by one or both ladies in our old 'hood that claim the same name with different spellings but always managed to be the hostesses with the mostesses whatever the occassion. (I know when I write that kinda stuff, my former students reading my blog just loooooove it and want to pull out an angry red pen.) Oh, plus one Purim we attended an unforgettable seudah that made me question whether my friend should be a rabbi or a stand-up comedian. Can you do both?

Elsewhere, somehow, Super Rabbi Husband had also put together our 10 Purim baskets, using the Chinese food-style cartons from Target that did not have Easter decorations all over them. He'd even managed to incorporate OUR Dominican-ness into them by throwing in dried papaya and mango slices, which for some reason our kosher market sells...along with mango, papaya and even guava juice from...South Africa. Not South America, SOUTH AFRICA. I love you, Los Angeles.

Anyway, where were we? Yes, yes, my husband IS Superman. All I did to the baskets was label them so no one with food allergies would die and I put our address on them so people would know where we actually lived. We (by which we mean HE) tried to hand out baskets to people who had hosted us more times than we had ever hosted them, in some cases especially people we'd never hosted at all in many cases because their families are too large for our apartment or our food budget. I made a list of the 10 most important folks and then a list of "backups," in case, we couldn't find the top 10. Yeah, I was a personal assistant in a past life, okay?

When our two and only two guests arrived, I was still in my PJs and my pain medication hadn't kicked in so I was only sorta kinda standing, very wobbly and only cogent enough to be slightly embarrassed. By the time I had changed into sadly not my Lois Lane outfit, we'd acquired a third unexpected guest who I REALLY THINK IS Superman because he has that kinda frequent flyer miles from always being somewhere in the world trying to save it just before jetting to another part of the world that needs help. In fact, his stop at our seudah was an eat-and-run to go from one "saving the world" event to another "saving the world" event. I half expected him to reveal a Superman logo underneath his shirt and tie but well, I've been waiting for him to do that for years and it hasn't happened...YET.

And then there was a fourth guest! We'd gone from two guests to somehow three rabbis and a doorbell that never stopped ringing because someone was dropping off a Purim basket throughout the entire meal, even people I didn't think knew where we lived, like our rabbi's wife or all those people who've hosted us and we didn't get to make Purim baskets for this year and okay, let's repeat: the rabbi's wife. Did I mention I love LA? And they were doing all these deliveries while nearly drowning in that epic Los Angeles rain, some of them dashing from their cars without umbrellas and running up our uncovered slick steps.

I never made it to shul this Purim. I didn't get to go to the late night megillah reading that I hoped would be long past the bedtimes of the grogger-heavy crowd. Noise and chronic pain don't mix. I didn't get to go to the mid-morning megillah reading either that was going to be a women-only thing. I'd had it on my calendar ever since the shul had announced it. But I missed it. Purim curse, yes?

Instead, I had two rabbis I have known for most of my entire Jewish life read the megillah to me. No groggers, some giggling, moaning, groaning, barely there booing and funny noises whenever Haman's name was mentioned. And realizing that maybe my Purim, this Purim, hadn't been cursed after all. I certainly had a pile of more Purim baskets than I'd ever expected to receive my whole life. One even came with a poem. I'd also had not one but TWO rabbis doing my own personal megillah reading. One did most of the reading, the other, of course, corrected pronunciation errors. Rabbis take this stuff seriously.

No, it isn't just rabbis. It's, well, Jews. These Jews in LA who have made me a part of their community since I moved here in June. Okay, it helps that we interned here for two summers but sometimes, I can't think of any place I'd rather be even when I ache for my hometown of New York City...the only place I've ever lived ad the only place I'd ever thought I'd live. These Jews in LA take their holidays seriously. Rain or shine. Orthodox or not. This year, I got my taste of the pomp and circumstance (and noise!) by watching all the Purim videos that were circulating long before Purim had started.

But the best part of this Purim was that I never had to leave the home to break the Purim curse because this year, the perfect Purim came and found me in my pajamas, no costumes or groggers necessary.

NOTE: As I reiterate numerous times whether I post about my health, please subvert any desire to respond to this post with a suggestion of "things I should try" for my health. I will ignore and delete any such comments whether they are posted here or emailed to me directly. If you are confused as to why, click on the "chronic pain/fibromyalgia" tag and read ALL of the previous posts.

My Fan Letter to Mocha Momma On Being Black (and more I added later)

This is in response to this fantastic post, "On Being Black" that makes me wish all good bloggers got paid! The photo below was taken from Mocha Momma's awesome blog.

Dear Mocha Momma: (Click there and read her cool bio!)


A friend just pointed me to your blog. I guess something about my latest post, told her that if I wasn't reading your blog I should be reading it. I just finished reading a letter from a friend telling me that as a mixed person, he has always felt out of place. Even more so as a mixed race person in the Jewish community, which we both are. We stand out like, well, what's the opposite of a bright light? A black light? A yellowy-orange-y light? It depends on how we got mixed and on who's looking at us that day.

Anyway, I tweeted, Facebooked on my private profile (sorry, not open to fans), wrote on my Facebook fan page about your post "On Being Black." I loved the photo of you and your Dad. For legal reasons, because I have the kind of parents who would sue me though I don't have a cent to my name, I don't post photos of my parents but I can tell you that whenever anyone sees a photo of my parents their mouths drop open and then they look at me and look at them and look back at me. 


Well, first thing's first, as any loyal reader knows, I come from a long line of hot Latino people. Some of them mixed, some of them not. But in any photo my parents star, their combined hotness rating (inherited from their hot parents) is often jaw-dropping. 

BUT THEN:

"Wow, you're Dad's really white. I mean, like he's REALLY WHITE." 


(We're Dominican, Hispanic, but people forget that Hispanic doesn't mean you are any particular skin color or race.) 


As I watch them survey my father (his side of the family swears I look like them as does my mother's), I add to their shock by pointing out that my paternal grandfather was so white, they just called him "Blanco." White. It wasn't just the color of his skin, it was the name everyone knew him by. I didn't learn his real name until about 20 years after his death. A beautiful Jewish name. But anyway, I guess, it's not just that I read Shakespeare for fun as a kid, before anyone ever thought to call me "white girl," they were calling my Abuelo "White [man]"...only they meant it in a nicer way.

Then they look at my mom. "Wow, she's MUCH darker than you." 


(Trust me, she noticed. She remembered having me cut out from her but no one looked at the two of us and thought mother and daughter OBVIOUSLY. Yeah, and even with my Dad's brother being an actual albino, I don't think she thought she'd give birth to such a light-skinned little girl with almond eyes to boot. I looked like anyone BUT her. I looked Asian. I looked white. I "didn't look Dominican." She'd expected more of a mix but I sunburned (pathetically, she felt) like my father. I looked like them...though people still tell me I look like her! I think myself a lot of things but nowhere near as hot as Mami or Papi.


And anyway, given my mother's own mixed feelings about being darker but still light-skinned, about being mixed race herself though she talked up the European part and pretended everything else away, I can't tell if she'd be happy I finally learned how to tan without passing out and even while wearing SPF 100 or if she still wishes people were still calling me Caspar, Snow White and "HEY, WHITE GIRL!!!" in that nasty way they did because they thought I didn't look right or talk right, because she didn't want me looking, acting or talking anything like those kids. 

When I was still healthy enough to teach, I loved being in the classroom and being able to say look at me, I look like you and better yet, look at everything I survived and still I am here standing before you today to tell you that you can survive, too. In fact, you can do better than survive. I was the first generation to get a college degree. The first to get a Master's degree. My brilliant father finished his BA in Business and is now a businessman but I never got any benefit from it because he basically skipped out emotionally if not completely physically when I was 4, when my mom hit him so hard she hospitalized him and so when he asks today why my math is so bad, I tell him it's because he was never there to help me with my homework. 


My definitely more brilliant, if sometimes criminally insanely brilliant, mother dropped out to take care of us and regretted every day I lived with her. All seventeen years before I ran away, I heard about how dropping out, having kids too young, having kids at all, had ruined her life. I know now why she dropped out, why she became a stay-at-home Mom for life. At least, I think I know so I can never tell her that why she did it, to protect us from what the horrors she had suffered as a child, unfortunately, didn't keep us safe from all that she wishes it would and should have. It didn't protect us from the person who hurt us most...HER. It didn't protected us from all the other people who hurt us, too. The ones who hurt us right under her nose when we were too afraid to tell her and the ones who hurt us long after we'd run away from her, thinking nothing worst could happen to us.

But yeah, no way did my students expect some chick who looked like she was barely out of high school (I was 24 but looked somewhere around 17) with a Spanish last name to be teaching them English Lit. Was I lost? Was I sure I wasn't the Spanish teacher? I actually did have plenty of people stop me every other day and ask if I was the Spanish teacher. I guess to them, I looked plenty Spanish enough. 


We had three Spanish teachers in our school: one was a white man with no Hispanic background but a penchant for bullfighting, another was an even lighter-than-me Puerto Rican girl from a family where everyone went Ivy League and the third was, well, what "a real Dominican looks like" I was told time and time again when I reminded everyone, including my students that I "really, really, really was 100% Dominican." Well, as 100% Dominican as anyone can be. My favorite day was the day I was substitute teaching and all the students decided to rebel against "just another white teacher who hates us" (usually, I get "you look mixed" not "you look white") until I read them the riot act and then had them hanging on my every word.

A substitute teacher once asked me to "GET AWAY FROM THE TEACHER'S DESK!" in front of a room full of my students who tried not to laugh as I explained THAT teacher's desk was mine. I was luckier than you, lucky enough to get my own classroom right from the start and use my art school skills to plaster the room in such bright hues that when my 11th graders first say it, they said: "Is this the Special Ed room?" I didn't expect to use it as a makeshift counseling center where my students came in to talk about being sexually abused by their brothers, being illegal immigrants, having abortions, abusive parents or having mothers or fathers who had died of AIDS. But I guess since I gave them the totally uncensored version of my childhood, I could only expect they'd feel comfortable sharing theirs. I never felt less out of place than I did in that classroom. 


I only survived two years of teaching before I became disabled and I doubt that was long enough to teach every single one of my students how to write a proper sentence, how to write the perfect five paragraph essay or even to really convince them that they could do what I had already done before them: survived what seemed impossible and do even better than my fore-bearers. 

I hope, like you, that I convinced my students that someone who looked like them and who came from where they came from could stand in front of a classroom someday to teach a language none of her grandparents spoke or stand in front of whatever room they wanted to lead or sit behind whatever desk they wanted sit behind or do whatever they REALLY wanted to do but were afraid would never happen because no matter what they'd been told for 11 or so years, I believed they were good enough and strong enough, even if I knew they had to work 100 times harder and do it on an empty stomach often with every G-dforsaken obstacle in the way. 


I told them what I still only half-believed barely making ends meet on my teacher's salary...that hard work, luck, hope, ambition, sheer will, even on that perpetually empty belly, could propel them farther than they had ever imagined going. There are places as a child I thought I'd only ever see in books that I have gotten to see, touch, breathe in and I wanted that for each and every one of my students. I wanted them to go to all the places they thought they could never, would never, go.

And by the way, dear former students, if you are reading this, this is nowhere near a perfect five paragraph essay and you probably didn't even notice that or all those conjunctions, run-on sentences and so on because even though everyone thought you were a lost cause when they handed you all to me, when I got sick, I knew that my hopes had not been misplaced. You weren't straight A students but you were some of the best people I will ever meet on G-d's great Earth. I will never forget how you held me up from my last December to my last June of my teaching career. I know you're just glad I can type again, tie my shoelaces myself again and still tell those crazy stories you knew were so crazy they HAD to be true...even if well, my whole body still hurts now more than ever. 


I can still hear your prayers and I still have some of them saved, saved your letters wishing me good health, wishing me everything I wished for you and more. I've gotta (do not use this in a proper essay) believe that your prayers will get heard in the right place and make a difference.

Anyway, Mocha Momma, that was just a long-winded, long-winding way of saying "You rock!" (Remember, dear student, this is exactly how I told you NOT to write on the NY State English Regents exam.) 

Aliza Hausman
Writer, Blogger, Speaker, Rebbetzin-in-training-wheels
Website: http://www.alizahausman.net
Bio: http://sites.google.com/site/alizahausmansbio/
Portfolio: http://sites.google.com/site/alizahausmansportfolio/
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/jewminicana
Twitter: http://http://www.twitter.com/jewminicana
For blog or press kit inquiries: alizahausmanblog@gmail.com
Watch me on the Jewish Channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suWNpeRSuKU
Orthodox Conversion Support group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orthodoxconversionsupportgroup/join

"What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" (Nietzsche)...or at least makes a good story." (Aliza)

Random Thought to a New Friend

I have ALWAYS felt out of place. Like there was no place I would, could, should fit. I think this is what helped me find Judaism and when I gave speeches about my life story that was the biggest theme. That I fit in everywhere and nowhere. I am black, white, Native American, Spanish, Jewish...everything...but to some people, I am too many things so I am nothing. But I have lived long enough to know that some people have no idea what they are talking about, you know?

Itamar Massacre

I never thought Glenn Beck and I would agree on anything. That is, until I saw this.



Beck says: "God will judge us for what we do and what we won't do. If not God, it will be historians."

Celebrate International Women's Day

Special thanks to the fan who donated to this blog in honor of International Women's Day. Please watch this video starring Daniel Craig (aka James Bond) in drag narrated by Dame Judy Dench.

March Health Update: It's Always Sunn(ier) in California

February was hard especially after a January that was a bit easier even if I couldn't pick up the phone and wish everyone I'd hoped a "Happy New Year." One relative (no Jewish guilt there) said she thought I was dead after it took me two months to return her New Year's message. Okay, not dead, just REALLY worried.

I had to explain to this relative about how the joint pain and inflammation, particularly after April 2010's wisdom tooth extraction surgery, has been affecting my face and as too frequently happens, I found myself apologizing for giving too much information because I could feel her tearing up on the other end of the phone. My older friends and family are too well-aware of the aches and pains that come with aging naturally and I know seeing this kinda illness in someone so young is heartbreaking for them. They've said as much. Older folk rarely manifest the discomfort, fear, even disgust, I see too often in younger folk who ask flippantly after my health and don't realize if they ask, I'll actually tell them. In detail.

I am definitely following my sisters' orders to be more honest about my health and for the most part I have been surprised. People who made jokes or called me a hypochondriac got kicked to the curb. When I was generous, I gave them three strikes and then they were out. People who went above and beyond to be there for me, well, had to deal with me sobbing in their arms from gratitude for treating me like a human being, not a disease or a mental patient.

A local rabbi who became aware of my situation told me that if sitting through services was too hard, I should try coming to the shorter services or just at the end of services so people could see me and I could see people. Bring your pillows, stretch, hold a siddur (if you can hold one that day), daven (if you can murmur the prayers that day) but more than anything just come and remember you are part of this community. That's not verbatim, of course but really, seriously, dude, where have you been all my life?!

I find that when you are sick, not just invisibly since my illnesses have been more visible this year, you can be in a room full of people and still feel isolated because people can't imagine you have anything interesting to say. Everyone goes around the Shabbos table asking "What do you do?" I explain I am too disabled to work, trying to squeeze in that I used to teach, used to write, you know, used to be healthy enough to work. But even before I manage all that in one breath, the room gets quiet, awkward and I get ignored. UNLESS someone at the table admits they were a fan of my writing and my blog and suddenly all eyes turned to me and I'm a "person of interest." It shouldn't be this way but I've seen this happen so many times with other disabled people and elderly folks. They are invited to the Shabbos table but then excluded from the conversation as if they are invisible with few realizing they are missing out on the rich stories these folks bring to the table.

So, well, after waaaaaay too many--three, in fact, ER visits in less than 2 weeks in February--I am slowly recovering again thanks to my wonderful doctors, including the one who visited me in the hospital on Shabbos when he heard I had to be transported there via ambulance Shabbos morning. He even brought me snacks. SNACKS! Did I blog about this already because I feel like I'll be blogging about this for the rest of my life?! A doctor brought me and my husband snacks to the hospital so we wouldn't go hungry on Shabbos. Yes, there are really people like that in real life.

I still can't believe how quick doctors here are to balance medication with alternative therapies for managing chronic pain. Way before Time Magazine decided to devote their March 7, 2011 issue to "Understanding Pain," it seems that plenty of doctors here in "la-la land" realized that there is no magic pill to cure chronic pain. D-U-H. Duh. This is unfortunate in many ways, though, because it would be so, so, so much easier to pop a pill and be cured. Right now, recovering from the last year and getting to an even better place than I was before that is the hardest full-time 24/7 job I've ever had. And remember, I was a NYC public school teacher before all this! But my body is a much tougher boss than my former principal or even my former students.

I AM lucky to have a supportive husband, sisters and friends. People always ask them how I'm doing but few have ever asked THEM how they are doing. A family member or close friend's chronic illness creates ripple effects in the world of those around them. It shifts their perspective and priorities. Not always in a bad way. It makes you appreciate a lot that you took for granted. On the day when the walking, the sun, the wind, holding hands doesn't hurt, it feels like a miracle. Being sick, having a sick family member also helps you uncover some of the kindest, sweetest souls you didn't know had that kind of heart to them. It pushes you to fight and stand up in a way you probably never thought you'd have to do (or in my case, ever thought you'd have to do AGAIN).

People were, as they often are when you don't ask them, pretty vocal about the fact that between my writing career, my VERY public persona (giving way too much credit to how large my readership is/was), my health, my race, my "controversial views" on certain issues, my colorful past, my conversion! and large afro, my husband's job prospects could be affected. That's because they've never seen my husband who swears he can't multi-task, cook a delicious Shabbos meal, write and practice a sermon, prepare for a Talmud class, teach a Bible class, drive me to doctors' appointments, help me run errands and more in one day.

Some people think my husband should be "sainted" but he is the one who reminds me that unfortunately, fewer people get to see the stuff I do behind the scenes when no one is looking. People assume someone else, usually my husband, does everything (I wish! Especially the painful stuff!) for me but as my sisters and husband note often they've never seen my never-ending to do list or realize that being sick just means I operate at a lower capacity than I did before and since  I was "operating at the speed of light" before...I'm still getting way too much done for someone who really should crawl into bed or pass out on a couch more often.

But the worse of it after I make my endless to-do list, after the list of the things I physically and mentally need to do for my health (and to manage our household) is the stuff I need to deal with to get the current bureaucratic healthcare system. Its sole purpose seems to make it impossible in every way for disabled and elderly folk--especially those with "invisible disabilities"-- the services they deserve without making them run through figurative hoops even when they LITERALLY have trouble walking. I've been told several times as my health expenses pile up, as the debt piles up, as the likelihood of me returning to part-time or full-time work gets pushed further and further into an unknown future, that I would probably never qualify for disability benefits. Not even the social security ones I earned. The system, both doctors and nurses have told me, is just that sick and that broken. I'm 30, I'm sick but "I don't look sick" and that translates to "not sick enough."

I remember one nurse telling me to look sicker because otherwise ER doctors don't take you seriously, not even the doctors who know, who are trained to know that plenty can be raging on inside that doesn't show on the outside. Once I was barely coherent and trying to explain how I felt and the doctor said, "Well, you seem to be doing okay now." I remember my exasperated husband responding: "You don't know what my wife is like when she's 'okay'. She isn't okay." Sometimes, it's easier with people who never knew me when I was healthy. It is the friends and family who knew me when I was well who realize how really sick I am when they see how isolating and limited my life has become. They can still remember when I'd sigh about forgetting my shopping cart and then donkey-like carry 10 heavy grocery bags home by myself and never complain about being a little sore later because I had such awesome biceps.

On my latest ER visit, I met a doctor and nurse who obviously love their jobs. I find there aren't too many of those. But these two made me feel like I was staying in a 5-star hotel (the Venetian in Vegas except the marble tub was a bed pan, yuck!) when it felt like the whole world was spinning (vertigo, apparently), when the pain felt like it was literally frying my brain irreparably (inflammation). I thanked them profusely explaining that most doctors I've dealt, especially in the ER, since 2005 haven't been as wonderful and kind as they were that awful day. Many don't even make direct eye contact or listen to anything I say before scrawling something on their prescription pad and sending me away. In their head, I can imagine them thinking "NEXT!" before they even walk in the room.

In some ways, the unfortunate circumstances that brought us to California came with the blessing...some of the best doctors I've ever worked with since I first became ill. I just wish I could afford them. Any of them. Most of them. All of them. When I was a teacher, I had the kind of healthcare I think everyone in this country deserves, one of those so-called "cadillac plans" where even dental is covered!You don't have to be Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber (who says "Shema" before every concert?!) to note that healthcare in this country is a mess, especially when illness is still one of the major reasons many sick Americans and their healthy caretakers are forced to file for bankruptcy.

And by the way, for all this love I'm showing for my California doctors, I want to say I'm not knocking my doctors in NY. If you need an incredible rheumatologist "in the city," check out Dr. Robert Fafalak. If you need an allergist, check out Dr. David Resnick. Gasteroenterologist? Dr. Robert Weiss. Gynecologist? Dr. Joshua Waldman. Okay, that was TMI. Really, I wouldn't have survived my most dreary years in NY without them.

Unfortunately, the bit of progress I felt I made in December and January has been set back quite a bit but I hope that slowly I can get back to doing all I need to do to maintain my chronic health problems. I have to keep reminding people that there is no cure. I'm just happy that physical therapy for my face means I don't have to smash up my bananas to eat one. Sorry, just because I look "less sick" that day doesn't mean I "feel less sick." Sometimes, I'm "covering" and other times, I'm making the tough choice between isolating myself at home with the pain or risking my health some more for some much needed human contact. Sometimes, the whole time someone is talking I'm thinking, "Why didn't I just bring my cane? Are my knees going to cave in during this conversation?"

But hey, thank G-d, I am already 2 pounds away from where I was before Dental/Stomach crisis 2010 and hey, with your prayers, maybe I can get back to healthier than I'd been before I got sick in 2005. And not to much to ask, 20 less pounds? My knees are a little happier already and my joints would do even better with 20 less pounds of pressure. My stomach, too, is better. Caffeine is never going to happen but the little bits in cocoa don't give me excruciating pains now. My relatives in DR (Dominican Republic!) would be elated to hear about all the alternative therapies I've been using for my health these days, especially my stomach, because they would have told me about them already if I'd asked. Okay, but I'm still not rubbing rosemary on my receding hairline. :)

Now, remember how I feel about unasked for health advice. I get plenty from friends and family and I definitely don't accept it from strangers. Sorry. That's my boundary and as you know, this blog seems to suggest I could always use more of those. If I need advice, I will ask for it. I'll be posting some on my fan page soon enough.

Please don't get too excited about the sporadic post, Tweet and Facebook post. The computer is still not my friend. (YES, I HAVE ALREADY TRIED SPEAKING SOFTWARE. SIGH!) I have to use it carefully and avoid it as much as possible these days. But the isolation of my illness has made me realized that I missed writing, I missed my readers, I missed the people who reminded me that no matter how sick I am there is still plenty that I have to offer the world. Though, my agnostic relative thinks the big lesson in all of this is that I've got to stop being Superwoman, gotta stop taking care of everyone else and learn, just a little, to be dependent on others, to stop shouldering the burden alone. 

Thank you to those of you who send me emails reminding me I am in your prayers even if I can't respond to all your letters.

Related: 

"Healing the Hurt" & "The End of Ouch" (Time Magazine)

NOTE: As I reiterate numerous times whether I post about my health, please subvert any desire to respond to this post with a suggestion of "things I should try" for my health. I will ignore and delete any such comments whether they are posted here or emailed to me directly. If you are confused as to why, click on the "chronic pain/fibromyalgia" tag and read ALL of the previous posts.

Non-Jewish Latinas Rocking Head Scarves!

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"Urban Outfitters Finds Frum Inspiration?" talks about how head scarves have suddenly gone hip, even hipster...and not just on the heads of Orthodox women.

Now, this head scarf innovation isn't new. I should note that I've seen many non-Jewish women, particularly black women, wrap their locks up in elaborate head scarves. Just walk around Harlem and count the head scarves. I even know a young woman who is in the conversion process who was wearing head scarves long before she decided to convert and for some reason, always seems to find the coolest ones to don over her afro. (Not to self: Some of us are born with fashion sense...and less recalcitrant afros. Also, if I can offer some advice, if you have dark or olive skin, RUN, DO NOT WALK from the head scarf colors you see on your pale friend's head.)

This week, one of my favorite magazines (don't judge, I've been reading it since I was 10 years old when I decided I was going to become a movie reviewer/entertainment writer/screenwriter/TV writer), Entertainment Weekly recently DISSED Jennifer Lopez recently for donning a headscarf on a recent American Idol episode. What the...I was enraged! Okay, not enraged really. I mean, I was reading it on Shabbos and I try to stay cool on Shabbos even if I'm saddled in bed all day with pain. In fact, I think I was reading it while icing my joints and I even fell asleep with it on my chest. Don't know if this says more about my magazine subscription or my fatigue this past week.

ANYWAY (can we get anymore stream of consciousness here?), let me explain. I was pretty upset because of all the kinds of head coverings, my all-time favorites are tichels (aka head scarves)--after Parkhurst and Rastafarian berets--was being called a fashion faux pas! Oh no, they didn't!

I didn't really discover tichels until I was in Israel the summer before I converted. Before that, I'd been in Modern Orthodox synagogues where women wore sheitels (wigs), headbands, doilies or nothing at all. But in Israel, I proudly wrapped my afro up in tichels daily to keep the Jerusalem heat at bay. Even when people joked that I kinda looked like that alien from the Alien movies the way my hair stuck straight out, I wore my scarf. Even when an elderly Conservative Jewish lady accosted me after a class and told me I was being oppressed and setting back feminism for all-time.

Sadly, those days are long gone now that the doctors have finally figured out why head covering finally became so unbearable--it wasn't just the fibromyalgia--that even once I had discovered head scarves and berets that fit my head (duh, extra large!), many are now in a pile collecting dust in my closet or passed on to very excited newly married friends and cute little girls who like to cover their hair as they play Shabbos Ima (Mom). I like to think someday I'll be pain-free enough to steal my aforementioned  in-the-process friend's scarves. In the meantime, I live vicariously, especially through those wearing those 1920's hats that would only fit me if I shaved my head bald. (I actually am pretty close to bald now, from afro to less than pixie, which is easier on my hands and for my facial/head/neck therapist.)

Fans following my newly restarted fan page and Twitter account note that I completely disagreed with Entertainment Weekly's assessment of Lopez's look. In fact, seeing J. Lo (can we still call her that?) in a headscarf made me think that she looked, well, pretty Jewrican (a Puerto Rican Jew!). My Jewish (thanks great-great-grandma) and Puerto Rican (thanks great-grandpa) would be so pleased at my mixed cultural pride.

And as if all of the pieces of my identity hadn't collided enough already in this post inspired by insomnia, I love this Latina magazine post: "Fashion 101: J. Lo's Love of Head Scarves". Unlike Entertainment Weekly, they LOVE the headscarf look! And as "Is that J-Lo Style?" My Journey to Haircovering" on Chabad.org, covering your hair apparently isn't just cool now, it's "kosher cool.