NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LINKS, A MAGAZINE GEARED TO TEENS WHOSE PARENT(S) HAS DIED
I’m back.
I have some more stuff to tell you. And you may not want to listen, and that’s okay. My kids often don’t listen to me, either. Except that they secretly are, when they think I don’t see. So maybe you can pretend not to listen; or, when you think I am not looking, you can read this article.
Because if you are reading this article, then you are like my kid, too. I care about you and hope that I can help you in some way.
So before I get all mushy and stuff, which is so not cool, I will get to the real reason I am writing this article. Because LINKS said I should. Just kidding. Just kidding.
This article is about the challenges many girls face when they come home from seminary. And sometimes, there’s a new guy in the house. Or a new woman. Or there’s nobody new there, but what’s new is the utter chaos that has descended on the house since the death of your parent. Or even that is not new, because your house has not been a very pleasant place to live in, but coming back from seminary, you kind of hoped a miracle occurred while you were away, and stepping back into the chaos after a year away now seems so much worse.
So this in an article about Coming Home.
It’s about Coping. It’s about Hoping. It’s about sometimes Moping.
Although this article is addressing girls coming home from seminary, I really talk to all girls who are transitioning from school to adulthood, and with that transition comes the expectations of life changes like a job, dating, marriage, and moving on independently.
So, here it is Purim time and you may be coming home for Pesach from seminary. Or not. But you are definitely starting to think the year is almost over and anticipating what it may mean to come home. And there may be dread, or excitement, or a mixture of both. Or a host of other emotions. You can think about them silently in your head and stick them into this empty space of the article. Emotions like ___________ or ______________. (Did I leave enough space for you? If not, too bad. Write your own article and send it in to Links!)
My marching orders were to write about the difficulties about coming back, not the fun stuff. Maybe another writer got to write about the fun stuff and they dumped me with the depressing things. It’s not fair, maybe, but lots of things in life are not fair. I like to look at the brighter side of things (not that I ever saw the bright side of anything when I was your age, but that’s for a different article!). Like, even if I need to write about tough stuff, I’m going to get some nice emails or texts telling me how much you appreciate reading my articles.
Let’s talk about the kind of things that thoughts of coming home make you feel anxious or sad.
Let’s say you left your house in September. So you don’t really know what to expect a year later. Either you parent recently died, or, your parent has died a while ago. There may have been a recent remarriage, or one quite a while ago.
You left being the oldest, the youngest, or the monkey in the middle. Whatever. Whatever your role in the family, when you come back after almost a year away, you know there have been changes. And you don’t know how they will affect you. How the family has altered in your absence.
There may be worries if your siblings are okay even though you abandoned them—that’s the way you perceive your decision to go to seminary abroad or in a different state—even if mentors, teachers, and rabbanim mandated that you go. You may worry that your stepmother has taken over the house and it’s not to your liking; that your stepfather is wielding too much influence over your mother and you are losing her to him.
It may be that you left a difficult situation at home. Your mother is overwhelmed with the demands of being the only parent and laundry piles up magically in the oddest of places; your father has lost control of your brother’s behavior that is causing havoc in and out of school.
So the uncertainty of what you are coming back to can be very unsettling, sometimes even scary.
(Now, if you are waiting for me to produce magical answers to this, just know that it is midnight, and I am waiting for my own fairy godmother to appear for the very same reason. These are tough situations and some magic would go a long way…but if that funny, fat lady with the pink cloud-like dress and delicate wings doesn’t show up soon, we are going to have to produce our own magic. And that can take some time…)
And there is one more thing, which although I am putting it last, may be the absolute biggest challenge you will face returning home. And that is transitioning to adulthood with the accompanying knowledge that you will date, get married, and move out of your parent’s home and into your own.
Yes, yes, darling. I know you want this. I know, I know.
And yet.
Why the dread?
Because for many of you, it involves many fears, acknowledged or not.
Here’s some:
I’m not ready.
I didn’t have a mother so how will I know how to be one? Or, I didn’t have a father, how will I know how to be married to a guy?
I’m so closed up, how can I ever talk to anybody and form a real friendship?
I have so many secrets, that if he would know, he would never want to be married to me and my problems.
My family is nuts. Who wants a nutty family? (I don’t know. Maybe somebody who likes cashews?)
How can I expect a guy to get along with my family if I can’t? Why would he even want to?
These questions are all tough. But there’s some even tougher.
How can I leave my mother? She will never manage without me.
How can I leave my father? He is really dependent on me.
How can I leave my siblings? Their life will get so much more chaotic if I get married. Bad enough I left them while I was in seminary. I feel guilty enough as it is.
How can I move on to the rest of my life when my mother/father is not married yet? When my mother/father is married to this lousy person? My mother/father did so much for me, is this how I repay him/her? By abandoning him/her?
I need to make a huge confession.
Despite a tremendous amount of wishing, of deep concentration with my eyes screwed shut and a combination of magical words that always seem to work in books, not a single godmother, fairy, or even witch has appeared to grant me some wishes—or some answers.
I’m on my own here.
I need to figure out what to tell you. As you need to figure out what to do, how to work these things out. Because truly, you are not on your own. There are no fairy godmothers, but there are people out there who can help you along your path. A grandparent. A teacher. A menahel from seminary. A rav. An older sister who may have traveled this path before.
Even your parent. Your parent can help you alleviate the burden of your guilt and say, “Darling child, what I want most for you is that you move on with your life!”
Your parent may also be having a hard time with the changes, but she/he is your parent. This is what they truly want for and from you—to move on successfully in a job, in a marriage, into new adult roles.
And while it may be true that your presence at homes stabilizes things, gets laundry done, gets supper on the table, calms your tense father, lightens up your sad mother, improves your siblings’ marks in school, listen kid, I need to tell you that when you are gone, the family will readjust itself to your absence. And sometimes things may get slightly worse, and sometimes they become better without you there.
Yep. Better. Because what you think is so wonderful about you is actually impeding the family’s functioning. Because if you let go, you mother or father can take over. If you remove yourself, your stepparent can finally breathe and develop relationships with your sibling.
But you can’t believe me, or can’t accept this.
But you also really, really, really don’t want to spend the next few years stuck, feeling guilty, watching your friends marry and have children, and you are trapped in your own guilt and anger.
Reach out. Reach out. Reach out.
Reach out for help. For direction. For guidance.
You are only one person. You cannot do it all or by yourself.
Sometimes, your parent doesn’t even know that you are struggling with all this. Sometimes, your parent is a secret collaborator in this, holding you back emotionally from moving on. Speak up.
You cannot live the paradox of being the child of your parent and the parent of your parent. Oftentimes, if your parent would know you feel like that, they would be devastated, horrified, reassure you that they will be okay without you, that your siblings will be okay. You don’t need to worry so much about them. That maybe it is only your own standards or views of things that make things seem worse than they really are. That nobody else except for you really cares if you eat take-out or home made food; or eat home for Shabbosim or out by your grandparents or neighbors.
And overcoming my fear of sounding like a scratched CD that keeps getting stuck on the same line in a song, looping back over and over, I am going to take a deep breath and say it anyway.
Go to therapy.
It’s easier to work these things through now then waiting until you are single at thirty, and you have sacrificed your life for others, wondering if you had made a mistake in doing that (the answer is yes, it was a mistake, as any rav or rebbetzin will tell you).
So I am going to sprinkle some fairy dust on this page, and when you get to this article, yes, it may look a little strange to your family that after you are done with the magazine, you will turn it on top of your head and shake it all over yourself, but do it anyway. Because it’s not as though your family is all that normal themselves anyway, and you do need some fairy dust. And you do need to believe.
You are not Peter Pan who can stay a child forever.
You need to grow up.
And move on.
And your actions can model to your siblings and even parents and your own future teenage daughter, how it is possible to do that even under the most difficult conditions.
Welcome back from seminary.
My book, Therapy, Shmerapy, can be found in bookstores or online