BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

Writing has always been a personal passion. For years I didn't even dare really do it consistently in dread of bringing down the wrath of my ex who would pick apart and demean everything. When I was younger it was my mother - and I wouldn't write except when I had to because my diaries were opened and made fun of and journals became frustrating when I learned I had to edit myself to keep secrets. Teachers would read my words and evaluate them. But every day what we write & say is being evaluated by the hearts and minds of those who hear them, as well as the One who hears everything. I believe words have energy. In my Torah classes we often discuss how something was written, why it was used once or twice, how the sentence was constructed and its deeper meaning. No matter how many times we read passages, I still find something new in them. And Gematria breaks down the numerical value of words and names to their cosmic elements and energy. How we use language can...

This information was, in my opinion, so important for EVERYONE who has EVER been bullied -- whether as an adult or a child, online or off... verbally or emotionally abused, teased, put down, invalidated, smeared or slammed -- I am putting it here on my personal blog. I have, far too often, heard people I think should know better say -- "PTSD just PROVES [that person] is mentally ill." PTSD is NOT Mental Illness -- it is Psychological Injury. When we start to remove the stigma -- more people who need treatment & support will get it. If John McCain had become President? We'd have had a man in the White House who has PTSD. Think about it. Common features of Complex PTSD from bullying People suffering Complex PTSD as a result of bullying report consistent symptoms which further help to characterize psychiatric injury and differentiate it from mental illness. These include: Fatigue with symptoms of or similar to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (formerly ME...

I was alway trim until 11 years ago. Not thin. I had a figure. But when I finally conceived my kids I put on 120lbs over the pregnancy. I have lost some of that. Others tend to look at fat people and assume their eating is out of control. Mine wasn't however, my OB had to put me on a nutritional supplement and called me weekly to remind me to eat more. I had pregnancy cravings - broccoli and cottage cheese. Go figure. I grew up in a home with a Polish grandmother where food was love & comfort. Bread was often spread with schmaltze. But I still never ate that much. However, after I gave birth, all the years of fertility drugs were withdrawn and my body went into a state of shock. I bled out for 4 months after the birth... not a few weeks - months. I practically stopped eating altogether for a while but was yelled at because I was breastfeeding. But the weight was piling on. Something was very very wrong. My OB sent me to one specialist who handed me a Weight Watche...

What a complete moron! Why, oh, why did he do that? Talk about no class, no shame, no boundaries. Like that old male saw from the 1950s and 1960s maybe he was really one of those "find 'em, feel 'em, f**k 'em and forget 'em!" types and the girlfriend dumped his sorry self before he could drag her down even further. But he had to make it look like it was the other way around, and do it in a humilitating and downright sick way. No, Pauly-Bear couldn't just go to her like an adult and tell her it was over. He reached in his pocket and paid for a humilitating advertisement. The article itself ticked me off by using the dustiest cliche on the shelf - that she's "a woman scorned." Why is a woman who is rightfully upset, hurt and angry suddenly scorned? A term that purposely carries with it shades of a crazed "Fatal Attraction" character boiling bunnies in some guy's kitchen. I know people who have been accused by exes of posting...

REVEREND, YOUR ACCOUNTABILITY MOMENT IS HERE My late mother was one of those people who clung to the idea that homosexuality was a mental illness and could be CURED. Even though science disproved this in her lifetime, she clung to it. Discomfort or her dogged dislike of change; I don't know why. She set up a number of 'blind dates' for me when I was busy with my career - every single one with an obviously gay man. Then she would rage at me about my gay friends, though I think she wanted to marry me off to the first breathing, carbon based life form and gay men weren't it. I wonder if she thought I could convert them? Though I had no intention of doing so. My brother and I have a friend who we both met in high school who is openly gay. He's also our family lawyer and works on GLBT issues in our state. My mother had problems with him being in the house when he was just my friend. When my brother befriended him though, she mellowed out without changing her sta...