Extreme Soul Makeover
Summer of 2003 saw myself and my children finally moving into a house and out of the personal and ultimately, spiritual entrapment I found us in. I moved away from a marriage that wasn't working and was, in fact, harming me no matter how hard I tried to repair it. I finally dealt with the facts that I had been working on the relationship alone far too long.
I moved back towards a solitary sort of existence, with only my children to break my emotional numbness. I was half-alive and half-dead and making bad choices. Things were too broken. My ability to feel was cross-circuited, my trust was shattered, my peace of mind gone, my self-esteem had been shredded; all too far gone by the damage of a psychopath for me to simply repair. I couldn't start over but I had to salvage what I could and go forward. Not forgetting but rebuilding.
The purchase was a brick row house built in 1933 that needed a lot of TLC. When the money allowed I embarked on making it over. And in the process, making myself over as well. The ground floor where I sleep had to be totally gutted and rebuilt.
In Summer of 2005 my children and their father went on vacation for 2 weeks so my contractor and I stripped their rooms down to the brick and rebuilt everything. My reward was their faces when they came home to see the transformation of their rooms into spaces that were more conducive and reflective of them.
While redoing the basement, a major leak in a main pipe to the city sewers was found. The floor had to be dug up from the front to the back of the building. The piping had gotten old and broken apart years before causing drainage into the ground under the house. This was replaced and rerouted. No small feat. The wall of what is now my bedroom had to be broken out and rebuilt.
My small backyard had to be leveled. Years of growth and neglect led me to just cut down and level to the dirt everything. The front porch was in bad shape and it was destroyed and reconstructed.
I love doing this work as much as I love my home & garden. Extreme Home Makeover is one of my favorite shows and my children know to tape it for me if I am busy. I have always been good with interior design, dragging my friends off to Raymour & Flanigan or Roche Bobois if they so much as mention they need a better chair.
Most warm days find me pulling weeds with my hands in the dirt. The pleasure I take in seeing things grow is immense. In winter my birdfeeders fill my yard with birds. I have gotten protective of a cardinal couple this year and 2 woodpeckers who found their way to my yard. The cardinals return to this day... a signal my Nana and I worked out years ago... so I know she's around watching.
In Torah portions soon, God starts the construction of his Home. A Home which would eventually be destroyed and is still being rebuilt in the hearts & souls of his children every day.
Hashem is still working on me. I may be torn down many times again. And rebuilt - as the House of God that lives in each of us is being rebuilt all the time.
Rabbi Rachel Berenblatt writes:
Personally, I have already gone through a number of self-actualization moments over the years. What I realized was that Hashem wasn't done with me. He started tearing me down again with disability in 1995 and by 2004 placed so much change, pain and trauma in my path that I had no choice but to ask for help with my "extreme soul makeover."
A personal breakdown from which I recovered but can't be expected to forget and occassional set backs. Its caused me to start 'rewriting' my story, yet again. (If only life came with a built-in error checker) I am now helping others find their way forward with information, validation and truth.
Sometimes my growth is easy to see but most times it is three steps forward & two steps back. The nature of my soul was stripped to the brick, and new insulation and support beams called Torah were taking the place of that which no longer worked.
The house is still under construction, and so am I.
ADDITIONAL: JEWISH WOMEN & THE PATH TO REDEMPTION
I moved back towards a solitary sort of existence, with only my children to break my emotional numbness. I was half-alive and half-dead and making bad choices. Things were too broken. My ability to feel was cross-circuited, my trust was shattered, my peace of mind gone, my self-esteem had been shredded; all too far gone by the damage of a psychopath for me to simply repair. I couldn't start over but I had to salvage what I could and go forward. Not forgetting but rebuilding.
The purchase was a brick row house built in 1933 that needed a lot of TLC. When the money allowed I embarked on making it over. And in the process, making myself over as well. The ground floor where I sleep had to be totally gutted and rebuilt.
In Summer of 2005 my children and their father went on vacation for 2 weeks so my contractor and I stripped their rooms down to the brick and rebuilt everything. My reward was their faces when they came home to see the transformation of their rooms into spaces that were more conducive and reflective of them.
While redoing the basement, a major leak in a main pipe to the city sewers was found. The floor had to be dug up from the front to the back of the building. The piping had gotten old and broken apart years before causing drainage into the ground under the house. This was replaced and rerouted. No small feat. The wall of what is now my bedroom had to be broken out and rebuilt.
My small backyard had to be leveled. Years of growth and neglect led me to just cut down and level to the dirt everything. The front porch was in bad shape and it was destroyed and reconstructed.
I love doing this work as much as I love my home & garden. Extreme Home Makeover is one of my favorite shows and my children know to tape it for me if I am busy. I have always been good with interior design, dragging my friends off to Raymour & Flanigan or Roche Bobois if they so much as mention they need a better chair.
Most warm days find me pulling weeds with my hands in the dirt. The pleasure I take in seeing things grow is immense. In winter my birdfeeders fill my yard with birds. I have gotten protective of a cardinal couple this year and 2 woodpeckers who found their way to my yard. The cardinals return to this day... a signal my Nana and I worked out years ago... so I know she's around watching.
In Torah portions soon, God starts the construction of his Home. A Home which would eventually be destroyed and is still being rebuilt in the hearts & souls of his children every day.
Hashem is still working on me. I may be torn down many times again. And rebuilt - as the House of God that lives in each of us is being rebuilt all the time.
Rabbi Rachel Berenblatt writes:
And everyone who excelled in ability and everyone whose spirit moved him came, bringing to the Lord his offering for the work of the Tent of Meeting and for all its service and for the sacral vestments. Men and women, all whose hearts moved them, all who would make an elevation offering of gold to the Lord, came bringing brooches, earrings, rings, and pendants — gold objects of all kinds. And everyone who had in his possession blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair, tanned ram skins, and dolphin skins, brought them; everyone who would make gifts of silver or copper brought them as gifts for the Lord; and everyone who had in his possession acacia wood for any work of the service brought that. And all the skilled women spun with their own hands, and brought what they had spun, in blue, purple, and crimson yarns, and in fine linen…
"What I love about this passage, this rich and detailed description of a construction project I can hardly imagine, is how grassroots it sounds. This isn’t some decreed-from-above, top-down, serfs-laboring kind of process; this is everyone with a talent bringing that talent to bear on the work at hand. This is everyone in the community donating what they’ve got, whether it’s gold or fine linen or soft leather. This is a veritable barn-raising. Except that in a traditional barn-raising, the community comes together to build a structure for one of its members; here in our story, the community comes together to build a structure which will be inhabited not by any individual or family, but by the presence of God."READ MORE AT RADICAL TORAH
Personally, I have already gone through a number of self-actualization moments over the years. What I realized was that Hashem wasn't done with me. He started tearing me down again with disability in 1995 and by 2004 placed so much change, pain and trauma in my path that I had no choice but to ask for help with my "extreme soul makeover."
A personal breakdown from which I recovered but can't be expected to forget and occassional set backs. Its caused me to start 'rewriting' my story, yet again. (If only life came with a built-in error checker) I am now helping others find their way forward with information, validation and truth.
Sometimes my growth is easy to see but most times it is three steps forward & two steps back. The nature of my soul was stripped to the brick, and new insulation and support beams called Torah were taking the place of that which no longer worked.
The house is still under construction, and so am I.
On the soul:ORIGINAL ARTICLE
In addition to his material self, however, man possesses a soul which is unique among all of God's creations. In describing the creation of Adam, the Torah says, "God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils a soul-breath of life (Nishmat Chaim). Man [thus] became a living creature (Nefesh Chaya)" (Genesis 2:7).
The Torah is teaching us that the human soul came directly from God's innermost Essence in the same way that a breath issues forth from a person's lungs and chest cavity. The rest of creation, on the other hand, was created with speech, which is a lower level, for just as sound waves are generated by a person but do not contain any air from the lungs, so the rest of creation emanates from God's Power but not from His Essence.
Three Parts
The soul consists of three parts which are called by the Hebrew names, nefesh, ruach and neshama. The word neshama is a cognate of nesheema, which means literally "breath." Ruach means "wind." Nefesh comes from the root nafash, meaning "rest," as in the verse, "On the seventh day, [God] ceased work and rested (nafash)." (Exodus 31:17).
God's exhaling a soul can be compared to a glassblower forming a vessel. The breath (neshama) first leaves his lips, travels as a wind (ruach) and finally comes to rest (nefesh) in the vessel. Of these three levels of the soul, neshama is therefore the highest and closes to God, while nefesh is that aspect of the soul residing in the body. Ruach stands between the two, binding man to his spiritual Source. It is for this reason that Divine Inspiration is called Ruach HaKodesh in Hebrew.
The neshama is affected only by thought, the ruach by speech, and the nefesh by action.
ADDITIONAL: JEWISH WOMEN & THE PATH TO REDEMPTION
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