Rebuilding From Nothing: Rabbi Amy Bernstein on Loss, Post-Traumatic Growth, and Holding Life a Little Lighter

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

And as careful as I was, the fire took it overnight. All of it. I really did learn how to walk a little lighter because I had no choice. There are people who go down the PTSD rabbit hole, and there are, surprisingly, a lot of people who go the other way and experience tremendous growth. Well, it turns out you can lose everything and you can choose to say so I'm going to hold things a lot lighter and a lot looser. That pain is normal and natural, and a deeply important part of our human experience is not honored nearly enough. I'm Cynthia marks, and I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation, established by my late husband, Doctor Bernard Bail.

Welcome to And Now Love. Today we're talking about how we carry trauma and how we can choose to rewrite our stories. Our guest is Rabbi Amy Bernstein, who has had an incredibly heavy couple of years. She recently lost her home in the Palisades Fire that also displaced many of her congregants. And right on top of that, she's currently going through chemo for cancer. As a rabbi, Amy is essentially a spiritual mother to her community. Doctor Bail talked about this idea of the mother's imprint, the notion that we all carry this deep, unconscious blueprint of trauma and defense mechanisms passed down to us before we even have words for it.

It molds how we react to the world. But then a massive crisis happens, like a fire or a diagnosis, and it completely shatters that old blueprint. Today, we're looking at what happens when you're forced to rebuild from scratch, when you're surprised. We're talking about post-traumatic growth, the messy, profound process of using love to stretch our capacity for empathy and connection even when everything is broken. Hi, Amy. Hi, Cynthia. That's a lot to contend with. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing some things that you and your congregants must deeply, deeply feel so much to contend with.

And so how are you doing right about now? Doing well, actually, which is a little crazy. It is. It's a little crazy. Because when we look at your story, I mean, I think, you know, how do you wake up every morning and process all that you have to contend with and all that you thought you had to contend with and what gets put on top of that? And yet you're finding your way. You're discovering what is really deeply meaningful to you, to you, Amy. And I'm amazed to that you're able to support all of these people who do look to you as the shepherd to the flock and and hold yourself together when you're really struggling with the same circumstances.

And certainly everyone takes that in differently from their own perspective, from their own trauma, from their own history. I mean, it's just kind of awesome that you're able to continue to learn lessons for you. And then obviously those lessons are going to be passed on to all the people that you support. So thank you so much for doing all of that. I joke that if I worked at a bank, I'd be fired. I would have been fired week two. I worked somewhere else because I think for me, the fact that I am my work is to address the trauma of what happened to so many of us. And even if people's homes weren't destroyed and all of their things gone, their precious memories and everything gone.

They were displaced, weren't displaced. Their community was. They couldn't come back to the synagogue. They couldn't do their usual routine with their kids for the preschool or bringing their kids to religious school, whatever it was that used to be their regular way of connecting with community. So the entire community of 900 families was disrupted because I in sitting at the center of that, it allowed me to constantly address what was happening. I think if I had had to try to put that aside and go to work and focus on something that didn't feel central to what was happening to so many of us, I just don't know that I could have done a good job.

That makes sense. Yeah, well, and this is all you do, even before the fire, you're present to help this community. You're present to give all of these individuals kind of a connection to each other, a connection to spirit. I mean, that didn't change. You're still doing that on top of this new found, tragic set of circumstances. And in an odd way, it made my work, I believe, more relevant to my people than ever. So in some ways, it actually worked to have me feel like my role in the community was more important and more relevant than it usually is. So it was not just that I had something to do that I usually do, but I was needed in a different way that that actually felt really good to be of use and to feel like I had some agency at a time when everything felt like it was out of my control.

Yes. So what was that like for you personally? Because here you are having to find moments where you contend with what you're going through, with what you're feeling. You and I were speaking earlier about the idea of building a life, of securing a future, of making sure that your children have what they need as grown ups, moving along the memories that you know to the next generation and all of that that you just expected to keep growing was taken away not just for you, but for many, many other families. But how were you able to sort through that? I'm still sorting through that a year and a half later, which is one of the surprising things that you learn in something like this, is how long it takes for every step of the process of emotional, psychological, spiritual state, you know, dealing with each stage, it takes a really long time.

And how do you give yourself the grace for that and not be impatient? It's really challenging for some of us who patients doesn't come so naturally to us. It's a that was a huge learning for me was, how do I give myself over to a process that I really won't be able to control? Some of my work as a rabbi already conditioned me for that, because I can't control what's happening for other people. They bring to me is what I'm addressing that week, that month. So I'm kind of used to that stuff coming to me, and I've become a professional responder. It's another thing to have it be your own life day, to say, I'm just going to respond to what is today, rather than try to make sure I'm doing everything possible to position myself and my young adult daughter for the best possible security and success, you know that that we could.

So that was number one, was learning to turn myself over to the process, because there's not another way to do this. No. No choice. And the more you fight it, the more frustrated, the more anxious, the more depressed, the more helpless. In my case, I felt. And so a lot of us who are doing okay, I think, really learned early we were going to have to accept that it was going to be a really long part of our life that we wish wasn't going to be dominated by this for so long. I went with a group called After the Fire, this wonderful organization to Maui last year, and the part of the point of them taking us from Los Angeles to Maui was to really sit with people and learn where they were in the process, a year and a half ahead of us.

That's fabulous. It was really fabulous because what it did was we were talking with people who, two and a half years out, the first stake had not gone in the ground on their family land to start building. Two and a half years into their fire, they were still sleeping at someone else's home and the wife was sleeping somewhere else. The adult daughter. The young adult daughter was with the wife. The son was with the father two and a half years and they hadn't even started building. These people were so amazingly patient, gracious, connected, present, compassionate. For those of us who were just going through the earlier stages of this.

So what accounts for that, do you think? First of all, I think it was there. Their connection to the land. The land didn't go anywhere. The structures on the land went somewhere, and the things that they had that were in those structures went away. But the land was there. And we don't have the same kind of connection in our industrialized, you know, Western, individualist, consumerist, materialist culture. We don't have that same attachment to the land. We have an attachment to what's on the land because that's our financial asset. That was my home was my largest asset, particularly in Southern California, because housing prices are so expensive and it's so exclusive in terms of who can own a home, that it is your major asset, because it's only going to go up in value because there so little inventory that people can afford.

So I think that was number one was going okay. So the the space of the Palisades is still here. And in our case, the synagogue is still here. I'm not going to live in the same structure, and I'm going to have to come to terms with the fact that my financial asset is not now worth what? It would have been worse had I sold it two days before the fire. Yes. So I've lost materially, you know, I've lost money, wealth in that. But being in Lahaina really helped refocus my attention on the community bonds and connections wherever they landed, temporarily or permanently. Those those relationships are what give us the energy and give us the sense of familiarity and home and belonging to be able to take the next step, whatever it is.

And we don't always know what that is. And in this industrialized culture, what you were building, what many of us are building, we just assume is there forever, right? Like, I could have sold it. Yeah. And it wouldn't be there forever, but that would have been my choice, right? To have it all disappear overnight. That is not the way I understood the world to work. I know intellectually, obviously it happens in places, but I don't think of West LA as one of those places. Was something you see on the news. It's not something that happens in your neighborhood. I had this narrative, I had this story that if you study hard and work hard and apply yourself and do something meaningful so that you say somebody who's growing and interested and curious and energized, then you save and you're frugal and you're careful and all of those things, and then you're secure with what you have spent years and decades building and putting together.

And as careful as I was, the fire took it overnight, all. Of it. So then, since that you found a new sense of security or a new place to rest, those thought processes and those feelings, it can't be what it was, because that's never coming back the way it was. So did you develop this new finding all on your own, or in combination with the stories of your congregants? And you mention your amazing trip to Lahaina. And by the way, was that trip for people dealing with fire or other tragedies as well? Was it just for spiritual leaders? It was for community leaders. And they bring together people from different fires.

The Santa Rosa fire, like so lots of different fires, so that people way further down the road can share with the newbies. They call us the newbies, you know, wisdom and counsel and advice, but also we get to listen in on presentations that they give to people who are further down the road also, so that we can begin thinking about some of the things like, like they talk about resilience in the neighborhood. So this is not talking about personality. This is talking about how do you build in a way that if one structure catches fire, it's less likely the one next to it will. And this is what the conversation is now as fires are getting more common with climate change, and they're getting worse and more intense, and so are the weather conditions around fires and mega fires.

So we we need to be thinking about how do we build back in a way that makes the community less likely because we're in a fire zone, obviously less likely to be devastated the same way should another fire break out. So so that's that's part of it, is that, that that cross generational conversation across where people are in the spectrum. So that was very helpful. I think a lot of the spiritual teaching that I have been exposed to in lots of different spiritual traditions, I practice mindfulness. So the whole idea of holding everything loosely and not grasping has been one that I've been working with for 25 years.

Can you give us an example of what that means to you? So we we tend as human beings to want to clutch what we want to hang on to really tightly. And as soon as we do that, everything tightens. And there's so much that we can't control anyway that we walk around tight. And it's not like it helps. I knew that I've practiced it, I've taught it, I've tried to be with it. There's times where I would get all bound up and go, Amy, you have a choice. You don't have to be this caught up in whatever my story is of the how I was slighted or I was disappointed or I don't have to go there, I can make a choice about pulling back from that.

This was on a whole nother scale that I learned truly what it means to walk more gently and without grasping at stuff because it was all gone. Although I love my things, I'm one of those people who who get feels grounded and oriented and and home and safe looking at my things. Well, you had a lot of things that were heirloom. That were heirloom, that were, you know, not precious to me, but they were from my grandparents, from my parents. For me, it meant now I couldn't rely on that anymore to feel safe in the world, to feel at home in the world. But if someone else's house. I was 60 years old, in a room, in a bedroom with the dog, in someone else's home.

That must have been, I mean, such a unique experience. All the things, all the new feelings that must have come from that, you know, the new ways that you would have to navigate. It's sort of interesting, at 60 years old, to be in this new boat. Yes, yes. And not by choice. Yeah. Was not an adventure. It was not like, okay, I'm going to be brave and risk something totally new and different. It was ripped away. So I really did learn how to walk a little lighter because I had no choice. I didn't have anything. So you start to locate home and belonging and safety somewhere else. Where else is that?

So you find it in people that you find it in people who are willing to be vulnerable and be present, because some people just tough it out and that's fine. However, people need to cope is how they need to cope, but people who are just toughing it out, there's not a lot of access then to sharing. No. And but do you feel like that is what we think is the stereotypical method, at least in this culture that we exist in, you know? Come on. It's very American. It's very pioneer mentality, very pull yourself up by the bootstraps kind of culture and kind of psychology. And that's what is that's considered merit.

Like if you can tough it out, that's merit here. And what I've learned through this is it takes a huge amount of courage to be vulnerable and to express that vulnerability with other people. It takes an enormous amount of strength to do that. You have to be a rock for so many people. And some of what those people, these people that you love share with you is devastating and traumatic, too. So you're you're feeling about that, you're feeling about your own existence and all the things that you're going through. And do you have to try to hold strong to be that rock still, or are you saying that there's some way to lead with vulnerability, too?

Yes. I always say I have the best job in the world because I get to do what therapists do, but I'm not a therapist, so a I don't have to make anything better. No one has to leave my office better than they came in. So there's no pressure on. Right? We're going to address this in a way that somebody, you know. You're going to make some progress. I'm going to make progress. So that's number one. Number two, I don't have to have that kind of distance from my people and their pain. I don't have to set aside my pain and show up as a rock for somebody else who's really suffering. I'm able to say, I know, isn't it terrible to wake up in the middle of the night with the adrenaline slamming, when you realize it's all gone, to wake up to a fire nightmare, that the house is on fire, you can't get out.

I'm able to relate. So I'm actually able to be vulnerable with my people and say, I know it's so terrifying, or it's so hard or it's so tragic and it's so lonely and it's, you know, all of those things. And for me, being able to share that with people made it a lot less lonely. And you feel like less of an existential freak because everyone's going through it on some. Level, even on a day to day, even before the fire, when members of your community come to you and they're dealing with something tragic and is the idea that they are able to share this with you if that's what they want to do. And as you were just saying, to be able to just kind of get off your chest the the tragic things that you're feeling with someone who's really listening, really listening like you do, is provides a great deal of relief.

Yes. I think most people, when they're dealing with stuff that nobody can fix illness, loss, death, betrayal, you know, if it's something that can't be fixed, which is mostly what I deal with. People just don't want to be alone. They want their pain to be witnessed. They want somebody to feel badly, that they hurt. And when they come to someone like me, that's what they're coming for. They're coming for somebody to sit with them. I can love my people. And if you love someone when they hurt you, hurt for them? Yes. And that's what most of us want, is somebody who really understands that we're hurting and hurts for us.

And with all this tragedy and chaos and dislocation and disorientation, people don't stop getting sick. I'm a perfect example. People don't stop getting sick. People don't stop dying. Terrible things don't stop happening after the fire. Okay? Wow, that was so horrible that you don't have to deal with anything else for the next three years, right? Check it off the list. You check it off. You've dealt with the bad. Now you know. We'll manage that and keep doing other things you have to do to have a life. No terrible things. Car accidents happen after that. I totaled my car, partly because we're so anxious and distracted and whatever that, you know, you jump, you turn the wheel too hard, and you hit a hard car.

Yeah, that's none of that stops because you've had a horrible, horrible experience. So I think a lot of people were aware that they were already vulnerable. And then to have somebody be sick or die, life is going on. And and there's really hard things that happen and there are really wonderful things that happen. But I think people just want accompaniment through that. And you mentioned, too, that you have discovered because of your own experiences and the tough things that you're dealing with, so many loving people coming really, really just to support you and hear you and say, yeah, this is this is awful.

What what do you need? Do you just need a but next to yours on this sofa, can I go do errands? Can I just listen to you? And that's been really valuable. It's been incredible. It's been really amazing. The difference between the cancer diagnosis and the fire is that everyone was dealing with the fire. So people didn't just put everything down and call me because I'd lost everything, right? They had lost everything, or they were displaced. And they're fighting with insurance every single day, or, you know, the county or the city, like everybody was dealing with this. And so we were all in the same boat.

And that was comforting in a lot of ways. In another sense, though, it's like nobody wanted to burden anybody else who was in that situation with what's happening for them. With the cancer diagnosis now, it's a year and a half since the fire. They knew this was another level and this was personal. They weren't diagnosed with cancer and it was incredibly moving to me. How many people really took the time to say, we understand, you know, I get it that you have been through, how can we be present, including you? Thank you. Checking in by text. Just saying. We I'm here. And really, there wasn't much beyond.

Okay. You can bring ice cream beyond that, there really isn't much anyone could do. Just getting those texts was huge. What a wonderful thing, though, to know, even in those moments where. And I'm glad you're doing this for yourself, where you are saying to yourself, it's okay for me to get into bed at 830 and read a book, whatever book I want to read, it's okay. It's always been okay, but we typically don't tell ourselves that. But then to say, on the other hand, you know what, I just need to have a conversation with Betsy and and to know that Betsy has already said, I'm here for you and to to really believe it and know that she's going to listen.

Right. That's that's a nice thing to know more than nice. And people texted more than once, meaning thinking about you. I know you're starting chemo. You know, thinking about you, thinking about you. Because that signals I really do want to be here to listen when you're ready to talk. Yeah. Or if you need me, because they keep checking in. I'm here. And that gives people permission to call, right? Which is really what those people want when you need it. I'm here. I'm. Here, and I mean you. Obviously, you have this huge congregation with so many people who respect and love you. So, I mean, that is a fabulous two way street that you've got going on there, and you have an amazing group of friends outside of that.

But you were talking about something with me the other day, and I've been thinking about this a lot without having sort of the words to put to it, but this is something that you've experienced and you're learning more about. So post-traumatic growth. So tell us what that is to you and how it's helping you to think in these terms. When I was with After the Fire, they had a presentation on something called PTG Post-traumatic Growth, which I'd never heard of. I've only heard of PTSD in terms of post-traumatic, and that is, of course, a stress disorder. And we all know a lot of us know the symptoms.

And, you know, we're pretty familiar with PTSD. But the science now of PTG is an incredibly exciting field. And it's through the Boulder Institute in Colorado that a lot of this work is being done. And the science of it says when you when you have trauma, when you experience trauma, there are people who go down the PTSD rabbit hole. And there are, surprisingly, a lot of people who go the other way and experience tremendous growth on the other side of trauma. So the scientists who founded this field looked at veterans coming back from war and looked at the veterans who experienced PTSD. Their trauma manifested after that as the post part as a stress disorder.

And the people who experienced incredible growth, they changed in ways that they were grateful for. And they started trying to they they corrected for age, economic factors, family fact, they corrected for everything. And what they found is that for people who experienced their service in the military, they went through something that they would define as trauma, meaning something that challenged their core beliefs, their core story about the world and how it works and their place in the world that was defined as trauma. What seemed to determine whether they went the PTSD direction or the PTG direction was intentional framing of how to hold not just the trauma, but what the goal on the other side of that trauma can be.

And in two, it's about saying, okay, I need to look at the fundamental aspects of my life story, what I was told and believed, how the world works. Like I said earlier, if you work hard, if you keep your shoulder to the grindstone, if you it's it's going to be you're going to be secure. Right. And it was Amy. Amy's understanding of how the world works, barring getting hit by a bus. Obviously, barring a cancer diagnosis, you know, barring something terrible, if you just went through your life, you would wind up secure on the other side of that if you were careful and frugal and all those things.

Well, that's not true. Now, how do I understand the world? I certainly don't want to see myself as a victim. So if I don't want that. And now to think, okay, well, now there's no security in this world. There's nothing that's sure. Which of course, essentially it's true that you can't live like that. No, but everything that you believe to be true. Everything was broken down. So PTG talks about purposefully reframing then our story. If that's not how the world works, how does the world work? Well, it turns out you can lose everything and be with a bunch of other people who did too. And you can choose to say, all right, so I'm going to hold things a lot lighter and a lot looser.

It's a couch. I ordered a couch and I ordered a rug, and the couch came and it doesn't really match the rug. And I was super bummed for about seven minutes because all of, like, it kicks in all of a sudden, because I've been doing the work of PTG, it kicks in that so the sofa doesn't match the rug. Okay, as an interior designer, that's really important to me. That's where you're so helpful. But but it's like, okay, so you get some throw pillows that bring your attention away from, you know, the blues not matching. And I couldn't have done that before. The person before would have said, but I've worked so hard to have the money for this rug, a real wool rug, and for this couch that I ordered, it's a nice couch.

It's going to last. And I'm willing to spend the money because it's a quality. I would have been really disappointed, and it would have felt like so much of my effort to earn the money to buy that stuff would have been wasted. Well, I don't feel that way anymore because it's like it's a couch and it's a rug. I like them both. Do I like them so much together? Not always. And I know it sounds trivial, it sounds trite, it sounds cliche. It's very difficult to explain until you live it, that it's real. That I really have changed in relationship to how tightly I hang on to stuff. And do you think that is that largely because of the community experience where you've all lost something because of this fire, or is it more because of your personal experience with the cancer?

I mean, the cancer makes you think about your mortality in a way I can't even imagine, right? Because it makes it immediate, like, we all know we're going to die, but we're designed in a way that our brains protect us from. Really thinking about that. It's too much. It's too overwhelming for us to really try to imagine not existing. For you, though, I think it is a lot more present you. I imagine that you're in touch with it more than most of us, because you're helping so many people come to terms with it when that when they're faced with it in their own families. Yes. So the rabbi before me, the rabbi emeritus at Our Seneca, said, every day he goes home and feels like he walked through a minefield and didn't blow up.

That that's a lot of what our work feels like. That's a lot for you to carry. Well, like, I did not get diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. Yeah. This week. Right? I didn't have a fatal car accident on PCH, nor did my young person. I'm dealing with a young person who has lost three people, two to suicide and one to a fatal car accident. He's 24. That didn't happen in my child's world this week. Yeah. This week. So yes, I'm closer to it. But until you get a diagnosis that says you really might be fighting to be here another six months, you can't really get how precious having a couch and a roof over your head, and a 22 year old who loves you and a devoted German Shepherd rescue, you can't understand how precious that is, really, until you understand that it's this close to being taken away.

Do you feel like most people, in circumstances similar to yours, where you're now starting to think about your own mortality, come to the same change in priorities, let's say, because you deal with people again, who people must come to you who are diagnosed with something they're not sure they're going to survive from. Do most people settle in and say, okay, what's what's really important? I don't know if I'm going to be here tomorrow. I mean, that changes the whole way. You live a life. It changes things. I think for people who have support, they are able to make that shift pretty quickly to appreciating everything they have and really treasuring every moment with the people they love.

Some people who are lonely, disconnected tend to get angry, and I've heard enough people say, I wish I had, I wish I hadn't, I've heard it enough that it snapped everything right into place. I want to spend time with my daughter outside of nature, with my dog. You know, looking at the ocean, it I again, it sounds so cliche. And yet anyone who's been there knows that it changes you and your priorities. Do you think that what you experienced as this change and others in similar situations, is really who we were supposed to be in the beginning? Yes. And post-traumatic growth is about how do I embrace the ways that this has changed me to be a better adjusted person?

I'm no longer on Facebook. I don't look at any of it because all it is is a platform. A platform is a stage, and all it does is make us feel bad about our own regular, everyday lives, rather than glory in the fact that we live by the ocean. Yes, or the fact that, you know, a canine chooses to trust me with her tail when I decide it's time to play with her tail. Yeah, that's a that's a miracle. The fact that she can think and I can think and we can have a relationship that you and I met. And someone decided we might make good friends and introduced us, that we'd be sitting here having this conversation.

How all the things that had to happen for us to be sitting in this room, that is something we take for granted and don't pay attention to all the time. We pay attention to somebody else's in Belize or Madrid. How come I'm not right? And we're we're taught all the time to focus on what we don't have so that we'll buy something and we want the newer one the best one, the better one, because now there's a better one, because planned obsolescence is part of our economic foundation in a consumerist society. So with all of those influences, you know, taking us away from awareness of how incredibly lucky we are to exist, think of all the things that had to happen for you to exist, Cynthia.

It's it is it's beyond mind boggling. Think about most sperm and most eggs in the world. There's a lot of sperm and a lot of eggs in the world. Countless. Most people will not exist, so most possibilities of sperm and egg coming together will never exist. They'll never live. We won the lottery. We did. I mean, right there that just grateful. To be conscious. We're we're the first time the universe is conscious of itself. I think dolphins and dogs are probably conscious. But think for what we know. We're the first time the universe is conscious of itself, right? That humanity. And when you look at the span of, you know, billions of years that the universe has existed, we are a flash and we get to be here.

We don't get in touch with that very often when we're always being pulled to the trivial, to the material, to status, what car I drive, what I can afford. Right. Ranks me in the hierarchy, the social hierarchy. And so does my platform on Facebook and how many followers I have and how many likes I have. It's so damaging to our sense of wonder and our connection to mystery that really feed us and feed a deep sense of joy at being here at all. And I'm not going to let things rob me of that anymore. I let it happen for six decades, and I don't want that anymore. And the other thing that I've learned from PTG is one of the main things that comes out of it, that helps us feel growth from this, is talking to other people about it.

So from now on, it's going to be about cancer. It's been about hip replacement. I've had two hip replacements like I talked to. Everybody gets a 30 minute lecture from me who's going to have a replacement? I feel like that's that's an incredible thing that comes out of it also is I want to share that perspective, not to correct what anybody else is doing, but for other people who suffer loss, other people who are anxious because a loved one has been diagnosed to say, yeah, doesn't a shift things. And that is such a great thing to remember that our experience is what we've suffered through and learned from how we've changed our perspectives.

That's a cool thing to pass on to other people and. To model. Yeah. To model that we're not only allowed, but we should be changing. We so resist change. It's scary. It's really scary because it's not what's familiar. And no, even if familiar is uncomfortable, even if familiar is not well rounded, it's it's your world. And to change that, what falls into that place where that thing was that you no longer want to contend with? Maybe it's worse, and I think it's part of your job or your calling to help people understand that, you know, the more moves you make as part of humanity, the more you understand what feelings are, the better you'll be in terms of helping your community, which just then means helping yourself and helping to propel each other forward, which is a giant gift.

To understand that is part of the reason we're here is to do what you're suggesting. You know, I had a hip replacement. In fact, I do. And let me tell you about that experience. For someone who has no clue, I mean, we don't have clues about the things that we haven't gone through, right? And we've lost in our culture, the natural community of education and tutelage and mentoring and support and sharing that allows someone to feel like, I can do this because she did it and she did it, and he did it, and they told me how they got through it. But I can do this. We've lost that. We were so private.

We're so cut off from talking about our everyday challenges and, and and our deep experiences of fear and loss and anxiety. We focus on the really, you know, surface things that we complain about. And so I think a lot of people feel like they might not get through something. They're afraid they can't. They're afraid they don't have what it takes, and they are afraid to talk about it because it's not encouraged in our culture to say, I'm frightened. No, to say I don't know how to do this, to say I need help reframing things. If I'm going to live a life of that's fulfilling and meaningful on the other side of this thing that I didn't ask for and that I don't want, we have got to find a way back to each other and and back to having those conversations that allow people.

This is part of what it means to be fragile human beings with bodies that have problems that need fixing. So we were talking about sort of this material world that's become very, very important. And as you say, you might look at something on Facebook that you see this person who seems gloriously happy with all of the products and purchases and the fabulous trip, and it strikes a chord. And we think that's what we need, because what we see is this joy or this happiness, which, you know, just in my opinion, is is not a truth. What's being presented is not a truth. Because when we try to get to that, when we try to find those happy feelings, it's not from the purchase of the right vehicle.

It's not from owning the biggest home on the street. And yet we keep at it. And do you think that's because the idea of grappling with our feelings is just out of sight or too scary to think about, or we already think we're doing it? I think that when you say that's not true, it is truth in part. So when these people post that they're in Fiji and having a beautiful vacation and having a great time and they're, you know, cheers and they're, they're happy, they might be really, really happy. They don't post when they're not. That for me is the real problem. It's not that people shouldn't post when they're happy.

That's great. But that's all we see of other people's lives. So we judge our insides by other people's outsides. So we judge how we're doing today on the couch that doesn't match the carpet. We judge that by somebodies Fiji experience. That is not an accurate comparison. But if all you're seeing or these folks at their happy moments, loving, happy moments, you start to feel less than because you don't feel that all the time. They're not posting. It's not like you're looking at posts and you see, you know, 10% of their posts are them feeling really satisfied with their life today. Because that's the maximum I've ever experienced.

Is 10% rate of feeling like, okay, everything's going well, it's all good. And those moments, I tend not to even think it in the moment because I'm so lost in how in something wonderful. Yes. Like talking to my daughter or, you know. So it's only later I'm like, wow, that was one of the most amazing, you know, days of my life. If we saw the rate, the proper ratio of how often people feel happiness and joy and satisfaction with their lives versus not, we wouldn't feel badly looking at Facebook. But it's skewed. That's what's not true, is it? They're all it looks like they're always happy, they're always posting, which means they're always having these amazing meals, having these amazing evenings, having these amazing sunsets or walks on the beach in the morning.

That is not real life. That's what's not true. So then we start to say, well, then what's wrong with me? And what's wrong with my life? That I'm not feeling that I can't post that today because that's not how I am experiencing the. World, right? I mean, I. Never post that. That's what's not true. And but but it poses as reality and it poses as the truth. So people feel less than and they feel like there's something wrong with their lives. But the reality is life is not about being happy and life is not about joy. Life is about meaning. And like you talk about a lot, like life is about how do we find how how to love each other through this incredibly challenging thing called life.

So as much as I said earlier, it's a glorious thing that we're even here. It is. And it's an assault some days on our nervous system and on our hearts. And sometimes I feel like those of us who are tender and open and vulnerable and care, we're the canaries in the coal mine. We're the first to drop from the invisible poison that's everywhere of cynicism, boredom, materialism on. We were too cool to care or learned helplessness or, you know, all of the things we're told we can't change and can't fix. It's too big. It's beyond us. I, I think it's hard sometimes being human. And so really it's about how do I find meaning in this adventure and how do I deepen my awareness of what's important and what I want to spend my time and attention and life energy on?

How do you and how do you make life worthwhile, meaningful, and understand that that means that that does not equal 100% happiness. That's right. That those are different, that meaning and happy are different. Yeah. You know, they did this research on people who retire maybe 20 years ago and they worked their whole lives really hard and saved a lot so that they could retire at the age of whatever, 60, 65, whatever it was. And they did a study on these people that retired and found that they were not happy. And when they really dug into what was going on, they found that people confused, retirement life, they confused recreation with happiness.

And what they found is that recreation does not make people happy. Meaningful lives in retirement made people say they were happy with their life. That's different from being happy, right? Like it's but they were happy with their lives because they had a sense of meaning. Yeah, they were about something that gave their days shape and made them glad to be here. And it turns out for about six months golf does that, but it doesn't. After that, you have to be finding some amount of satisfaction and having something to do with your community in a positive way. Or it could be alone. You know, if you're an artist and you're just painting all day, that feels meaningful because you're creating great, it can be a solitary thing that monks sit in solitude and meditate all day.

Whatever it is, it brings your life meaning because you feel like you're contributing. Because it turns out that's that's the recreation and meaning. Recreation does not lead to meaning, and therefore I'm happy with my life. What does it seems for us? We are meaning making creatures. So having some way that we feel we're contributing something meaningful leads to us saying, I'm happy with my life. I like that we are meaning making creatures. We are meaning making creatures. And many of us, because of our circumstances, our trauma, have lost sight of. That on purpose. Our culture pulls us off of that because if we were satisfied mentoring an at risk youth, we're not shopping, we're not consuming.

Our ads are not on a face. Our eyes are not on a Facebook ad. People are paying for our attention. They want our attention. Forget who said it, that you know where there was Homo erectus, Homo habilis. You know all of these different stages of of the human being evolving into Homo sapiens sapiens. And somebody argued that we are we are in a new phase. We are past Homo sapiens sapiens. We are now homo distract us that we now live in a way that completely distracts us from thinking, from reflecting, which is what Homo sapiens is, right? The thinking creature. Right. The meaning making creature. Yes, we're now homo distract us.

We are a species who is completely distracted on purpose. We've had this conversation before. As long as our attention is being spent in all these other ways. Ultimately and eventually, that's what makes a life is what you pay attention to. If we're not paying attention to how I can be contributing to today being a better day for somebody, even myself, if I if I'm not paying attention to, how can I contribute to the world being better than what I got here? Is that is that a life that I want, that the collection of moments that what I've paid attention to becomes ads and brands. Things that you can purchase, things that someone tells you need to have to make your life whole.

Which I guess is what I was referring to with the Instagram post. And maybe it's my own cynicism, but when I see the the perfect vacation in an Instagram post and the sunset, I feel like that is fabricated for me to go out and search for something that I don't have and that that thing that's being presented to me is not a it's not a reality. Somebody's chosen to craft that and taken these things that we typically think of as beautiful experiences, but is using them to either gain followers or sell me something or and it's on me if I feel bad about myself because of that. So I think that one of the things that's happening with some of these posts is, is just really a distraction in terms of, of feeling who we really are and can be, because whereas it used to be.

I don't know, the cover of a magazine you'd look at at Thanksgiving with a perfect family and the most gorgeous turkey. There's always brown on the inside. I could never do that. And and it's like, that's real love and real family. And this Thanksgiving, I'm going to have it. No. So is something different than that. Is there something about my own experience that is just not ever going to be acceptable? And and how do I stop doing that to myself? So a couple of things. The Norman Rockwell picture of Thanksgiving has always been there as the ideal, and we've always compared our private, messy family Thanksgivings to the ideal.

Norman Rockwell, whatever. You must hear this all the time. All the time. And so, so that's happening. That's always happened, right? That we're always comparing ourselves to, you know what? What someone what is the perfect experience of this or what should it look like? What should my family look like. So there's there's always that. And that's just to be incorporated, right, is to be raised by a culture that says this is what it's supposed to look like, okay? It just is what it is. And the work I believe the the work of spiritual traditions is to come counter the bad parts of that. There are good parts to that.

I do want a peaceful family meal at a holiday. I do want that. I do want to be able to afford a turkey. And I do hope to have someone in my life who can cook one that looks like that and that invites me to the table, not me, because it is not me. So it's not all bad. To have an ideal that one works towards is not bad. What happens though, is that we get caught in and if I don't have that, I am less than. That's where we get caught. And that's what every decent wisdom tradition, every spiritual tradition worth its salt is about addressing that if you don't have the ideal that you even want for yourself, you're not less than because life is messy and it's worse than what you just painted.

I think the people who post on Facebook, those moments of that, look perfectly happy. It's worse. Yeah, then I'm doing this knowingly to earn more income. Yeah. Right. To to move up the Instagram chart so that I'll get more paid ads on my site. That's at least making a choice. I think people are posting those moments because they see everybody else's and they want to go. Me too, me too. I had that moment. I've had that. I had that this week. Look, here it is. I have it too. I've never thought about. It like that. And that's really sad to me. That is. Yeah. So is there anything else you want to say about post-traumatic growth that we can all learn from?

In terms of your experience? I think the most important thing is to learn that when you find places that can help you struggle, they their motto is struggle. Well, that trauma is struggle. Coming out of trauma is struggle. And it continues to be a struggle. Struggle. Well, because you can struggle poorly, which is addiction. And like all the kinds of things to numb us out because we we can't handle the struggle all we can struggle well. So that means to. Find community of people who are facing it, find people who have been through it, who can help coach you through it, people you trust and then mentor, then share that with other people who are going through some kind of trauma, because that that continues to help us heal.

And there are lots of different practices and lots of different ways we can get at struggling well. But you can go online and look at just reframing it for me was so helpful that lots of people experience growth on the other side of trauma, and I'm finding that I'm experiencing enormous growth on the other side of both the fire trauma and my own personal diagnosis trauma. I'm finding amazing growth that I did not expect at 61. Give us 1 or 2 examples. I'm wearing loafers. Which are super cool. I have never worn loafers in my life. When the fire happened, all of us who ran with you know, what was on our back and then like some yoga pants and tennis shoes in a bag over our shoulder, we had nothing.

And so many generous people stepped up and donated lots of stuff, including companies donating brand new stuff. And we got to go in and pick shoes, clothes, all of those things at these emergency centers. And I wasn't going to the synagogue because the synagogue was closed. I was going to some office tower where we were all reeling from this and scrambling to change our business model overnight, to reach our people overnight in a way that we hadn't had to since Covid. What a challenge. I was dressing differently because to go to work, but I couldn't wear tennis shoes because I'm still going to work, but I'm not wearing heels because I'm not going to the synagogue.

And so my daughter was like, mom, those are really cute. Try those on. They were a pair of loafers. So I tried them on and I was like, this is not me. This is not what I wear. And she's like, mom, they're adorable. Oh my gosh. Like, fine, they were free. Like, I'll take them. Whatever. They were really nice. Whatever. So all that week when I wore them, oh my gosh, Rabbi, you look so cool. You look so hip. Oh my gosh, you look so young. You look so with it. I mean, first of all, what do I look like before? Exactly? Like what? I thought I looked pretty good in my heels and my, you know, Franco Sato, TJ Max.

You know, I hadn't leather shoes. Like, maybe I can dress a little younger at 60 and not look ridiculous. And you. Don't look at you. I can actually look like I got it going on a little bit. If I wear something that I never would have put on. Just even that. It sounds silly, it sounds small, it sounds trivial and surface it's not. It's a deep realigning of who I am and how I present to the world. And I didn't know that was possible. At my age. Everything went away. You have an opportunity to just rejigger. Everything and okay, I don't have to wear this anymore. I can decide. I don't want so many pots and pans.

It's funny because I have complimented you several times on what you've learned since you lost all your clothes and then free time. I thought she must. What did she think? I think she looked like before. If you were always beautiful. But what a wonderful thing to realize. Oh, I can be a little different. I can grow, I can change, I can, I can enjoy this new look or this new whatever. This new approach, this new attitude, this new not needing to hang on. I'm not 35. I'm not someone who's going to build it all back. That is not the mindset for those of us who've lost everything at our age now. I got pushed into downsizing, like being in that phase of my life way before I wanted to.

And there is some freedom on the other side of all the stuff. There's some real freedom. Which is that I'm exploring. Which is the whole idea. Post-traumatic growth is real freedom because I live in Los Angeles, I have many, many friends who are in positions similar to yours, and everyone's dealing with it differently. Of course, based on their own life experiences. I was speaking with a friend the other day who has small children, two small children, and they were living in the Palisades and they lost everything. And the big thing that she told me the other day, which just really warmed my heart, was the lessons I teach my children now are very different than the lessons I was teaching them before.

And she didn't say that, you know, frowning upon herself or saying she was doing something wrong. But wow, just what kind of world I need to show them now is different than the world that I showed them before. Yes. If you think about people who grew up with parents who grew up in the depression, I mean, we're old enough to know, yes, to recognize people whose parents grew up in the depression. We knew that. We learned how to pick up on that right away. Why? Those people didn't complain if the steak wasn't cooked exactly right. For the most part. I know it's a gross generalization, but they were raised by people who had nothing, and they appreciated everything they have and everything they earn, everything they got.

And my daughter, I don't have young children, but my daughter has a very different outlook than a lot of her peers in West Los Angeles, in Los Angeles, you know, in socioeconomic level, and so has a different understanding of what's important and what she's looking to replace and what she's not. And she and I have different kinds of conversations now about what's important. And she understands what I was saying before in a much different way, because I grew up without a lot. When she would say, I need a new iPad and I'd be like, you need my love, attention, affection, education, vaccines, a roof over your head and food on the table.

That's what you need. Everything else is I want. And she would look at me like I had three heads. Like I came from another planet. I just told you, I need the iPad. I need the in her world, she needed a new iPad. She looked at me like I was speaking a different language when I said, you want a new iPad, you have everything you need. Now she understands it. That's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. And that woman who's talking to her kids differently, right? It's because the priority is. And what we focus on changes through experience. And much like I see with your daughter, who is obviously much more mature than these small children, her support of you and her ability to be present in the process is, again, it's heartwarming to me to to see her hold you, and I feel I even see that in this young family, in that these children, not that I think they've developed such a lovely system amongst them.

And I'm not saying that the children are taking care of the parents, but they're sharing in an experience, and it feels like even these little youngsters are the support that they can receive in order to create a safe space for the family, not a space where I just want to reiterate, because this is not what I see here. It's not that the children are wearing the pain of their parents in this specific situation. In my mind's eye, they're helping a family dynamic. I think the difference that you're pointing to is parental fied. Children are put in an inappropriate place. Yes, to care for a parent who cannot care for themselves or does not have other adults to help them address that.

That is abuse. Yes. Not intentional necessarily, but it's abuse. Parented children that's abusive and children suffer and it happens a lot. So children suffer for that. What I hear you describing is a shift in family dynamics due to a catastrophe like, and the displacement and the disorientation of the fire. It's a shift in the parent that acknowledges I don't control everything. And they are if they're healthy and open and honest, they are able to demonstrate their pain and their grief, sometimes their confusion and their anger to their children while saying, But I've got this, and I'm not going to hide the fact that I really miss my favorite painting that used to hang right over there of your grandmother.

And I do have feelings. And I have feelings about it. And I didn't pick this. And that happens in life. And we're going to get through this because what's important is that we're doing this together and they live it. And that is a way to teach children. There's they don't have to be afraid of something getting taken away. They don't have to be afraid out there. Whatever. They can sit with all of that and know that it's okay. They're going to be okay. Their parents are going to be okay, because what's important is that they have each other. And when you teach by living it like that, you actually give children agency to be able to be of comfort in an appropriate way.

You want your children to be compassionate. You want them to experience empathy so that when their friend falls down and is hurt, they immediately recognize it and say, I'm here. I have this extra lollipop from lunch, right? Would you like it? Like it? That's empathy. We want that in our children, and too often we're so busy controlling their lives. You know, you've heard of helicopter? Yes. Parents. Well, there's a new term called bulldozer. Parents. Oh, geez. That now parents not just want don't just want to see everything that's happening. They want to bulldoze any challenge or problem or obstacle out of their children's way.

And that is such a disservice to our children, who will only learn to get back up and learn good things and challenging things about the world from their experiences, if they're trusted with their own pain. Yeah, if they're allowed to have. They're allowed to have their pain and their and their experience of grief and loss and shock, something they didn't choose happening to them. And if we can teach them that that's part of life and that that the important thing is where do we turn when that happens? How do we help other people when it happens to them? That's real life. And those are real life skills because pain is going to happen.

And if we can teach them how to hold that, that is a huge benefit to our kids. The blessings of a skinny, that book. I forget the author of that book, but you know that that's how you raise healthy kids. Yeah, and it is just what you're saying. You know, you share an experience because you've been there, you've felt some amount of pain, and you've learned to feel in a way that allows you to come to the aid of somebody else, even if it is, as you say, here's a lollipop. Which is what most of us want when life is hard. What I don't like is when people are going to tell me that there's a silver lining.

I can come to a silver lining, I can decide. This has been growth full because of how I've chosen to struggle through it, and the resources I've chosen to access, and the people I choose to have around me. Right. And the ways I choose. Because life is precious. So I can say, here's the silver lining for me what? I never wanted someone else to tell me the meaning of my pain, or to tell me there's meaning in this. Yeah, that I can't abide. That there's a reason for this. That nothing happens without a reason that is garbage. And it's it's spiritual junk food and it makes you ever saying it feel good.

In my experience, nobody wants to hear that we're not given anything we can't handle. How is that comforting? That God thinks I'm a badass? No, thank you. And you're right. But all I can think of that comes from those kinds of comments. So the speaker feels better because they actually can't handle. They are made deeply uncomfortable by my pain, by your pain. When I'm healthy and whole and I'm dealing with my stuff, I can hear your pain and empathize with your pain. And you do this day in and day out for this flock of people. And I'm very lucky. You're very lucky. They're amazingly lucky. There are some things in the Jewish tradition that are really, I think, I mean, they must be centuries old that speak to this already, like sitting shiva, you know, where you where you come and you're just present with someone who's suffered a great loss, a death in the family.

Can you talk about that? Because I think is just is just a beautiful way to feel. It's emblematic of Judaism, how we approach death and how we deal with people who have lost someone is really it's something we do. Well, I think, and I'm concerned that it's actually breaking down. That's another it's another conversation for another day. Let's remember that. Yeah. But because if you're talking about people whose family dies in Florida and they go fly to take care of that in those arrangements, they don't have their community with them to sit tiver. Yeah. So but so that's how community is breaking down.

But the practice of Shiva is is deeply wise and deeply helpful. I think the practice actually in a Shiva house is to leave the door unlocked and ajar. No one knocks so that nobody has to come to the door. So the family, it's called sitting Shiva because the family actually sits on not regular furniture, but on something low or on the floor. And that's what they do. For seven days. They sit. That's it. Someone else cooks, someone else picks up someone else. You know, make sure that they have what they need, and they sit with their grief for seven days together and people come and sit with them.

The one of the greatest, you know, fulfilling of an obligation in Judaism that we can do is sitting shiva with someone. What does that mean, accompanying them? The Hebrew word for funeral is live Allah, which means to accompany. We don't have a word funeral. Our word means to accompany, meaning you're accompanying the deceased and you're accompanying their family to lay them to their final rest. So sitting shiva is a practice of accompaniment of coming in and the practices again. You come in through an open door. Everyone's welcome. You don't pick who gets to. The door's open. You come into a shiva house and you don't speak.

You come in and you don't speak until the mourner speaks. Because what are you going to say if you really think about it? If you walk into a house. Where there's a silver lining. You asked someone, what are you going? How are you? I'm sorry. Means I'm sorry for you. It didn't happen to me. It happened to you like there's nothing to say. We sit. We sit down and we wait. And we sit with the comfort, the discomfort of silence and pain and tears. And when the mourner speaks, then we speak. Because what they're going to do is they're going to indicate by what they say, what they need. And if they say, I can't believe I have to live the rest of my life without him.

Then you. Know that, then you know that that's where they are and that's where they want to go. And if more of us could do that more often, when people are struggling in any way with any kind of loss or grief or pain or anxiety, or if we could just learn to shut up and sit open, ready to really hold what's happening for them and respond, wow, how much less pain? Because it's shared. We would have. I think it's a deeply wise, very old, very old kind of wisdom says you're just present and you sit and you wait. And you then listen, listen. And by really listening, you create a conversation around what this person needs.

If they want to have a conversation and if they want to sit for an hour in silence, you're. You're there. You're saying, I don't need you to talk for me to want to be here. If we need to sit and quiet for an hour or two hours, that's what we'll do. I'm not going anywhere. Your silence and your pain doesn't scare me. I care about you. So people who grow up with this practice, when you are ultimately the person who has lost someone and you've got your loved ones and whomever else sitting with you. I would think that if you've grown up with this, you know that you don't have to feel stress about like so, you know, can I get you.

Some cookies? I think that's a really important point. People are given permission to not entertain if they want to entertain, because right now that's what they need. Fine. We'll talk about whatever you want to talk about. But from a very young age, they are given by model, by example, not by words, but by example. They are given permission not to hold space when they're in pain. When they're in deep grief, they are not expected to hold space for other people. And then for the other people who are in the room who are present. There's a gift to them, too. I can't do anything to change your circumstances.

If I'm told your pain is not scary, it's hard. But it's hard because I care about you, and I'm feeling some of your pain because I empathize. If we're taught you can hold it, you can handle it, it reinforces it. We can handle our own pain also, because that's the other thing that happens in our culture is we're afraid of our own pain because it means something's wrong. And so we want to stuff it, shove it down, we want to distract, we want to numb it. We want to shop. We want to nap. We want to drink. We want, we want to do whatever we can to to not feel like something's wrong. That pain is normal and natural and a deeply important part of our human experience is not honored nearly enough.

And so if we're taught we can trust ourselves to deal with our own pain, we don't have to run from somebody else's. It's not scary if we've learned to sit with our own. Well, you are the most amazing example of all of that. So thank you for all of this today. Is there anything you'd like to tell us that we should know moving forward from this kind of a conversation? Just that it's really possible, no matter where we are in life, to come to learning that is really profound and deep. When we think, you know who I am, I'm too old to really see things differently. I think it's so exciting. Not that I would want to go through either the fire or breast cancer, but there is something really exciting about wearing loafers.

There's something really exciting about wearing my hair like this. I did a chemo cut in case I start losing my hair. I'm wearing it naturally curly, which I did not know. I had naturally wavy hair until last year. I thought it was frizzy and so I had blow dry it straight so it would be smooth. Like who knew? And it's beautiful. It is what it is like. It's very exciting. And I think if we could really demonstrate that as elders that we can change and learn and grow and experiment and have the joy of novelty and discovery at our age, I think it would communicate something so differently about what aging is about.

And that's another conversation we should have at some point, is our culture and aging. Because our culture is pretty off the rails when it comes. To this. Yes it is. And and I'm finding I'm loving not being the point of my career and worrying about, you know, will I make it the next step? Will I get a promotion? Will I improve my salary? Well, I get better health insurance coverage. I'm actually really enjoying being at the fruition point and learning to get better at pickleball. I'm loving it. We need to have those experiences more and communicate them. I think so because there's excitement around.

Growth there. There's change there is. And when we look at other cultures and see how differently the elder community is treated, it's like. Wow. Where do we go wrong here? And it's, you know, I feel like there is sort of a more of an openness amongst many youngsters to be excited about the experience that the elders in their lives are having. Whether they are or not. What a disservice we do them. If we in any way shortchange the incredible richness of this part of life because they're going to be there at some. Point, they are. If we show them by living it, that it can be really full and rich and rewarding, then they can come into it ready to have those experiences, whether they get it now or not.

And but I do feel like we are communicating to them by writing our bikes, by playing pickleball, being at the beach with the dog, I think we are communicating to them that it doesn't have to be the way we've been brought up to believe it has to be. I was raised thinking at a certain point I'm definitely on the downside. Exactly. But I am more thrilled about my life now than I ever was. So I only imagine that, you know, continuing except for some horrible disaster that may or may not happen. And even then. Yeah. Turns out the woman in the loafers said, thank you so much for being here, and I look forward to these other conversations that we're going to have me to really appreciate it.

Thank you for what you're doing. Oh thank you. And you have a podcast. Yes. So every Friday morning I teach Torah. It's up. By Friday afternoon you can go to Kayla Israel or any place you get your podcasts and look for Rabbi Bernstein's Torah study. And we take the texts that we're studying as the Jewish people that week from Tura. And we I have a conversation where we apply it like this to, you know, what is it? What does it mean for us today in the world that we're dealing with, in the world that we're facing, so that we can build lives of depth and meaning? So pay attention to that. That's great.

Thank you for opening that up for us to pay attention to. And what a lot of work that is. Enjoyable work. Yes. Please follow, rate and share our podcast and pass this episode along to someone who might need it. This is a now love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Thank you.