Breaking the Cycle (feat. Chana Leah Bleznick)

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Hi, welcome to the Neshamas podcast.
We at Neshamas are on a mission to promote mental and emotional
health within our community. Among the many ways we do this
is by empowerment through education.
This podcast is where we get to listen to personal experiences
of those who have been affected by mental illness, the pain, the

(00:22):
struggle to get better, and today, by the grace of God have
emerged with a message of hope and healing.
My name is Masha Khan, I am a grateful addict in recovery, and
I am a certified life and Addiction recovery coach.
I'm here to encourage vulnerability and allow for hope
to emerge from the internal journeys we share.
Please join me, hear the storiesof these heroes, and know that

(00:45):
you are not alone. Hi, welcome back to the Nishamas
Podcast. Today, I am honored to sit with
Hanalea Blesnik. Hanalea grew up in Arizona,
became from in college through Chabad on campus in 2015,
currently lives in Crown Heightsfor nearly a decade and her

(01:08):
husband with her husband and herthree little boys.
Hanalei is a professional advocate for disabled New
Yorkers, writing pieces of legislation and working with
elected officials. Today she is so generously
sharing her story of growing up and living through multi
generational addiction. Barkhosh and Hanalea works a

(01:33):
strong 12 step program through Al Anon and is breaking the
generational cycles for her and for her children once and for
all. Today Hanalea speaks about
addiction in the firm world. At various events, she sponsors
and mentors women living alongside the effects of a loved
one's addiction and mental illness.

(01:56):
Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me.
It's the honor of my lifetime tobe here.
It's really special and as soon as he's mentioned the honor and
the truth is that I get that feedback from people and it's
real. Thanks for having me.
You know, you put so much work to get to this place.
I have a vision board of things that I want to do and places I

(02:18):
want to speak and people I want to connect with.
For about 6 months you've been on it and through, you know,
every day I'm working on building self esteem and self
love and what does that look like and how can I show up in
the world in a way that I want to.
So when I reached out to you last month, I was so nervous but
it took a real act of courage todo that.
Bakasham, you said yes. So I'm really grateful to be

(02:40):
sitting here with you and to seethe manifestation of the work
I've been doing. I wonder if you have a similar
experience where, you know, after I spoke the first time
about seven years ago now, I think, and people came to me and
said what? Thank you for your courage.
And for some reason by me, it wasn't computing as courage.

(03:03):
I was just so aware about the effects and how effective it can
be to help people. By that time, I had already
shared things openly around friends and family.
And the amount of people that have been able to find recovery
as a result made me realize like, wow, if I go public, the,

(03:25):
you know, it can really help a lot of people, which it has, you
know, hundreds and hundreds of people by now have been able to
find the right help because because of that.
So when people asked, you know, said, wow, that's so courageous.
I'm like, I don't know if I would call it courage.
It's just like when I'm looking at how fearful I, I feel, which
I was terribly fearful. And on the other hand, I see how

(03:47):
effective and how, how effectiveit can be.
I was just like, yeah, I'm, I'm going to do it anyway.
I think what that sparks for me is the idea I think about
frequently. What did Hashem put me on this
earth to do for sure be a mother.
I live for my kids. By Hashem I have 3 little boys.

(04:07):
But additionally to that, I believe that I was put here to
tell my story, to be able to emancipate people from their
shame and their fear. And I know how living in secrecy
and living in shame and looking good, feeling lousy, you know,
putting us a happy smile on my face walking down Kingston Ave.

(04:30):
But living with such pain reallykept me stuck in that really
yucky cycle of my life. So I think that if I would have
had someone that I connected to or related to in that way as a
woman, as a young mother, as a young professional, I would have
felt less alone. Maybe I would have gotten help
sooner or my marriage would havegotten help sooner.

(04:52):
So I guess I'm in that vein. Also, like you're saying that
sharing doesn't feel courageous.I'm grateful to my husband for
allowing me to share my story and what we went through as a
couple in the early years of ourmarriage.
I'm so grateful for him for giving me the wings to fly
because he really does support me in being public and I'm only

(05:14):
able to do this and hopefully spread a message of experience,
strength and hope because of hissupport.
Whether it be physical, you know, if I'm leaving at night to
go give a talk or to speak at a meeting, he's doing bedtime and
bath for everyone. Or it be just that emotional
support of hey, I got you and welived through this and you don't

(05:36):
have to live in shame and secrecy 'cause I'm OK.
So what a blessing. So shout out to Shia.
Yes, thank you. Thank you on behalf of all of
us. Yeah, Please enlighten us and
what it was like growing up in Arizona, just what was happening
and what was your experience in the world?

(05:58):
Yeah, so as you mentioned in my intro, I did not grow up from.
So I had from the outside, what would appear to be like a pretty
idealistic childhood. My parents were affluent.
We lived in a really nice neighborhood in a nice home.
I was a very competitive tennis player growing up, so we

(06:18):
traveled a lot for my sport. My mom was a stay at home mom
for a lot of my life, so her andI were very, very close.
I had tons of friends. I was in a very large Jewish
youth group, and I served on a regional level and an
international level. I won a lot of awards in high
school and in college. In college, I went to the

(06:41):
largest public university in America and I was the vice
president and then eventually the president of that campus.
How was that? Was this all this stuff?
Was it actually exhilarating? It was exhilarating and it was
exhilarating going to prom and and I really had that, like what
you see in the movie Life. But as I've worked through my
stuff, I realized that I was a human doer, not a human being,

(07:04):
and a moving target feels no pain.
So the busier I was, the more popular I was, the more I
traveled a moving target. That's the thing with us in
recovery, like we have these, wesay.
Our sayings. Can you?
Explain what that means. So a moving target feels no pain
as in My parents divorced when Iwas 15.
It wasn't the first time my mom had left.

(07:25):
It had happened many other timesin my growing up and as I was a
teenager and didn't have the capacity or the tools to
actually feel those feelings, I just created distractions for
myself in the form of friends, jobs, leadership positions,

(07:49):
hobbies. Because if you're busy, I didn't
have to be left alone with my thoughts and people wanted me
around. And they always had one more
thing for me to do, one more convention for me to speak at,
one more, you know, freshman to mentor when I was a senior in

(08:09):
high school. So the more and more I did, the
more and more people wanted fromme.
And I don't know if this is the place to talk about it, but what
it's bringing up is like kind ofwhat I mentioned previously
about me having the quote UN quote, courage or self esteem to
reach out to you to ask to sharemy story in this format.
While I've spoken in other formats.

(08:31):
I had so much, I was a very confident person.
So people would always say to melike, oh, I didn't want to be
your friend at first because like you're that girl, like, how
could I touch you? You have a perfect life.
How can I get to know you? So everything in my life was
outside in. All of that love, all of that
admiration, all of the praise was coming from the outside, but

(08:53):
it wasn't seeping into my soul. So I had no esteem, but I had
tons of confidence. So I was loud and at the parties
and dancing and going out, but intrinsically I had no worth
because it was just outside in, not inside out.

(09:15):
So as I made myself busier and busier, I was just really
seeking that validation which I received constantly, but at some
point it was no longer enough for me and my soul.
Were there ever things that you were doing that you didn't want
to do and you were actively forcing yourself to do it?

(09:38):
No or no. But maybe I, I wasn't in touch
with with that part of myself tobe like, I don't want to do this
because I really did love it. And my natural tendency is to be
a leader and to take people under my wing and to organize
events and to speak and to, you know, be type A.

(10:00):
But I know that through my work and 12 step, I don't call them
my character defects, but they are my character defenses
because those are the things that kept me safe as a child in
my home. So I guess we could kind of go
back to how that all started in the intro.
You mentioned the multi generational addiction and I'm

(10:24):
Bolsheva so I don't have any of us, but I always think of my
family as like when we came and we were the Cavemen.
Every generation since the dawn of time in my family has been
plagued by the family disease ofaddiction, alcoholism, rage,
whatever you want to put in thatfill in the blank.

(10:47):
So my grandfather was quite an interesting person.
I lovingly referred to him as Saba and my grandmother joined
Al Anon in the 80s and that was after she had tried to leave my
grandfather many times. My mom is the youngest of three
kids. There had been tons and tons and

(11:08):
tons of abuse. My mother was raised in foster
care, eventually reconnected with her parents with the
disease of addiction and the trauma and the dysfunction ran
deep. So by time my mom met my dad
when she was in her 20s, she knew that she wanted to break

(11:30):
that cycle because she had grownup in such a traumatized way.
So she figured that when she metmy dad in the 12 step rooms that
this would be her way out, that she would, you know, she met a
nice Jewish boy who was working on his addictions and his isms.

(11:51):
What could be better? So they got married and in.
Case somebody know what doesn't know what isms are you just
touch on that. So a lot of people message me
and say I want to come to Al Anon, but I don't have a problem
of alcoholism in my family. So alcoholism is just when we

(12:15):
say the isms, we're talking about the behaviors that go
along with addiction. So someone can qualify for al
Anon if they lived with a personwho was addicted to rage, who
was addicted to money, who was addicted to sex, who was
addicted to chaos. So the isms of an addiction are

(12:36):
the personality traits that makelife complicated and make life
hard. Right and when when when I came
to recovery, they said addictionis meaning alcohol and drugs was
your solution. The problem are the what ISM
stands for I self me right? Like any type of self preserving

(12:57):
behavior that hurts other people.
Yeah. And I have my own isms, which
we'll definitely get to. And I've participated in that
behavior as a self preservation technique tool to keep myself
alive. So my parents got married and my
mom ended up pregnant with me. When she got pregnant with me,

(13:18):
she very quickly became sick andshe ended up having full organ
failure and one was fed intravenously through a feeding
tube. They put her into a medically
induced coma. Was that close to childbirth?
No. So they put her into a medically
induced coma. And when she was 12 weeks
pregnant, they woke her up from the medically induced coma.
And they said to her, Esther, this is a Catholic hospital.

(13:41):
We cannot perform an abortion, but this pregnancy is going to
kill you. We need to airlift you tonight
to the closest hospital and end this pregnancy.
And my mom, who is not religiousin the way of Shatol tights and
Shabbos but is extremely connected to her higher power,
said to the doctors, you need togive me all night to talk to my

(14:04):
higher power. And if I have the strength to
lift my head off this pillow in the morning, that's Hashem's way
of telling me this baby has to be born.
And no one in my family goes to Hashem alone.
It's either both of us or none of us.
So my mom prayed all night and the next morning she could lift
her head off the pillow. This was August and at 28 weeks

(14:25):
and 4 sevenths I was born. They said I would never walk. 28
weeks. So normal gestation is 40 weeks
and I was born 3 months early. They said I would never walk, I
would never talk, I would basically amount to nothing.
And the first thing that the doctor said when I was born is

(14:47):
baby does not appear to be blind.
And I lived in the and ICU, the neonatal intensive care unit for
a long time. My mom says that my first
visitor who visited me in the hospital was Blue Cross Blue
Shield because when any claim reaches over like $5,000,000,
they do an in person audit to make sure that it's not
insurance fraud. Because she had been in the

(15:07):
hospital and in the coma and then I required so much care as
a newborn. I eventually went home on a
heart monitor and breathing tubes and I was not a healthy
baby for quite some time. And during that time, I'm
working on reframing this for myself because the story I tell
myself and that I was told as a child is that the stress of that

(15:31):
caused my dad's relapse. And I don't want to claim that
anymore because that intrinsically makes me feel like
the problem. And I know that I'm powerless
over someone else's addiction. And me coming into the world
maybe was stressful, but not a catalyst for someone to blow up
their life until, you know, go back into their addiction and

(15:55):
abuse and neglect and all of those things.
So that's the story of how I came to be.
And when my mom realized that that's how she was going to go
home with this new baby who was very sick, she wanted to leave.
And the social worker in the hospital said don't make any big

(16:15):
decisions for six months. I'm thinking that that social
worker potentially didn't understand the the impact of
addiction in the family home. But so my mom didn't leave.
She left the first time when I was 5.
We moved across the country. Her and I do you.

(16:36):
Have memories from that 5? Years, Yes.
Very, very vividly. Yes.
We were living in Eugene, OR, and we moved to Evanston in
Chicago. They remember it very clearly.
I remember the sweetness of it just being her and I.
And we would put a picnic blanket down and we would eat

(16:56):
cornbread and watch TV before I went to sleep.
And I remember it feeling calm and safe.
And I remember even as a 5 year old not being afraid.
We moved in with her older brother who was single at the
time. And he had a very, very large
apartment and a lot of means to help my mom get on her feet.

(17:19):
And he wanted to raise me as hisown and you know, brother,
sister, kind of taking care of each other.
And I remember not being angry even as a 5 year old child.
And I have a six year old so I can't even comprehend this now,
but I remember as a 5 year old not being so rageful and so
scared when I heard his key in the door because it was such a

(17:39):
juxtaposition of how I would feel when my dad would come
home. Right, you know the difference
of the sound of the footsteps, of the keys jingling, of the
door opening. Yeah, absolutely.
And I think now through my healing work, when your child

(18:01):
reaches the age that you were when you were abused or had
different traumas in your life, it stirs stuff up.
And now when I look at my child,who's 6, I can't even imagine
him feeling that way about his tati coming home, what pain that
would cause me as his mother andwhat a wound that would inflict

(18:23):
on his. Like little sweet Neshama, you
know, he's such a sweet child. It really puts it into
perspective and allows me to have so much compassion and love
for myself and my inner child. Because even though I felt
parentified at that age, I was really just a little child, a

(18:45):
little girl who was, you know, living in chaos.
So it allows me to have love formyself in areas where I felt so
less than. I would appreciate if you can
share about the difference of what you felt you did touch upon
it. Yeah.
When you said that, you know putting the tape you said was a

(19:06):
tablecloth or. Something.
Yeah, My mom, basically. My uncle didn't want us.
I love cornbread, and as a little girl, I loved it.
It was a special treat. My uncle didn't want us to get
crumbs, so we would sit on the floor crisscross applesauce
together. What was your internal
experience on the other side? You mean like when my mom went
back? Yeah, like, again, the

(19:27):
circumstances are important, butwhat I, if you're able to
describe is like, what was your internal experience?
So what were? You feeling?
What were you believing? And then what?
When you had that breath of fresh air, somatically,
psychologically, all that? Yeah.
Like you had to reconcile something on your own.
Yeah. So let's stay there so I could

(19:49):
drop into my body and think whatI what I felt.
Yeah, my friends laugh at me because I have a psychotic
memory. I could remember every single
thing. If you show me a picture of my
childhood, I could tell you. Or even if you mention an event,
I could tell you what I wore, how much I weighed, who was
there, what we drove. But I don't have memories of us

(20:12):
going back. I have none.
I have like a photographic memory.
So there, but there's I don't remember leaving.
I don't remember going to the airport.
I don't remember a conversation that my mom must have had with
me that we were going home. Essentially, after six months I
have no memory of it. So the can you go back to the

(20:33):
sitting and eating the cornbreadand think what you felt then and
what that was a relief from? Yeah.
So I I didn't have as much as I had a childhood.
I never got to be a kid and be silly because I was so worried
about my dad showing up to the school and making an
embarrassment of me and my mom. There was shull because like we

(20:58):
would go for bar mitzvahs and mymom was the Hebrew school
teacher in the community. So there was shull.
I always say like we would lightShabbos candles and then go to a
movie. So there was shull.
But like, we drove there. So I guess the dichotomy of
sitting on the blanket, eating cornbread and watching a show or
a movie together felt like childhood.

(21:20):
And then when I went home, I guess my next memory or the
feeling inside of my body that Iremember is being so rageful and
so embarrassed and so scared of him, of how he was going to act,
how he was going to look. I was a little kid and I would

(21:40):
lay out his clothes for him because how he would show up in
the world was so embarrassing tome.
And I would make sure he showered because if he didn't,
it was so painful to me. And then I'm talking I'm 5678.
I mean, this this went on until my parents divorced.
Basically is that parentification of me.

(22:01):
My parents divorced when I was 15.
I kind of stopped doing all of that for him by time I was about
13 or 14. But just 'cause I stopped, you
know, laying his clothes out or begging him to shower didn't
mean that I stopped feeling those intense, intense emotions
of rage and fear and embarrassment.

(22:25):
So I think that if the question is what it felt like for me as a
kid to go from what felt safe toback to what wasn't safe, it was
just so much rage. I was so angry and I couldn't be
angry at my mom because I'm an only child because of her
pregnancy and the family situation.

(22:45):
And I couldn't be angry at my mom because she was all I had.
I didn't have a sibling to go into our bedroom and say, holy
cow, isn't dad crazy? So I didn't talk about it.
My mom was an Al Anon and I would go to meetings with her as
a little kid and color my coloring books on the floor.

(23:06):
You know, help pass around the 7th tradition basket for people
to put their dollar in. But those tools weren't mine.
And she was definitely doing thebest she could.
But I had no one as a child to speak to about it because the
message I got when I did speak about it was don't talk about
it. Can you give me an example of

(23:29):
when you tried? I think an example of when I
tried this is a really crazy, horrible story.
We tried to be a normal family, so we went on a cruise.
It was right before my Bas mitzvah, so I was like 11 or 12.
So we went on a cruise because we were going to be a normal
family and take pictures and putthem on Facebook and be normal.

(23:50):
And when you go on a cruise, yousit communally for meals and
you're assigned a table because they want you to meet people on
the boat. And the first night we went and
it was a disaster. And that night the family who we
had been seated with found my mom and gave her a card for a
domestic violence shelter and told her these are strangers,

(24:12):
mind you, that her and her little girl needed to get out of
this situation. You saw them giving the card.
There was never a time when I was not with my mom.
Ever. We slept in the same room.
We were always together. Always.
What did you feel when you saw that?
So much shame that makes me cry now as a 30 year old woman with

(24:36):
three kids and a husband. So much shame and helplessness.
What was I going to do? I couldn't protect my mom.
When I went to say to my dad, why did you act crazy in so many
whatever words I said as a 12 year old little girl, he said,
what are you talking about? And my mom and I didn't talk

(25:01):
about it. I don't have an example.
I don't think examples existed where she said don't talk about
it. But she was also alone in this
situation. So I didn't want to cause her
pain by saying to her, why don'tyou get the heck out of here?
I didn't want to hurt her. So when, when, anytime until

(25:21):
now. And as you continue sharing,
it's really it's not about The Alchemist, it's about the ISM.
So this, this idea of dry drunk,you know, I in al Anon we say
attraction rather than promotion.
So I never promote al Anon. But I know and I, I, I pray to
Hashem that there are people whoare listening to me right now

(25:44):
and listening to you who might not live with an alcoholic.
Alcohol might not be their problem, but live with someone
who has the behaviors of an addict and that they know that
they can get help and there is aplace for them in Al Anon.
Because when I sit around in Al Anon meeting and even though we
use the word alcoholism, 50% of the people in that room who work

(26:07):
a really strong program are not talking about someone with
alcoholism. They're talking about someone
who's raging or who's abusive inany way.
So I just pray that people can open their eyes to the help of
the 12 step program that I've received, even if alcoholism
isn't exactly what you're experiencing in your home and

(26:27):
even if the addict is sober. There is like the 12th
tradition, so I'm not sure what the traditions are for for Al
Anon. I've personally recommended
people to go to Al Anon when they were living with somebody
that didn't abuse alcohol. So the tradition says we read it
at every meeting. So that's why I know it.

(26:49):
The tradition is, you know, Al Anon is a group that that
supports families and friends ofAlcoholics.
So that is the language. I run an Al Anon meeting on
Shabbos in my house and I've changed all the language in my
meeting to the family of addictsbecause you could be addicted to
anything and that behavior couldbe harmful to someone else.

(27:10):
Right. And can I, can I challenge you
for a second? With pleasure, it's called.
Al Anon, because the second partis anonymous, right?
So how do you how do you reconcile sharing that you're a
member of? So anonymity to me is about me

(27:32):
protecting your anonymity, but what I do with mine is kind of
up to me. There is a tradition in Al Anon
that says Al Anon will not alignwith any media, news,
television, radio, you know, will not be, ought not to be
drawn into public controversy isthe exact language of the
tradition. I think that there's an

(27:53):
interesting path that I've chosen in that I am OK with my
anonymity being broken, but youranonymity is of the most sacred,
special thing to me. I run into people on Kingston
all the time with my kids and I say like, you know, I want to
hug you and kiss you and love you because I know every single

(28:15):
thing about you, but you don't know what my husband looks like.
I don't know what your husband looks like.
So when I run into people like that, I just say, this is
mommy's friend. And then if my husband or my
kids ask, we met in a grocery store, we met at a Shabbos meal.
We have a mutual friend is usually what I go with so.
And I've also had mentors in thefrom space that have outed

(28:38):
themselves anonymity wise and encouraged me to do the same,
not in a pushing way, but in a way that, like I said in the
beginning, me telling my story hopefully will emancipate other
people from their loneliness andtheir shame.
So I think that if I wasn't from, I would go to Al Anon and
no one would know about it and Iwouldn't be on a podcast because

(28:58):
who cares, but because I live inthe firm world where there is so
much taboo. And you want to make like I have
a six year old, my oldest is 6, I think now, Oh my gosh, is he
ever going to get a shut off because I outed myself.
Those are real fears that we have in our community.

(29:18):
Is he going to get into yeshiva?Is he going to get into a good
masifta? Is he going to get a shut off?
So because there is that level of looking good, feeling lousy,
and there are so many families in our community that are
struggling but are terrified foranybody to know because of the
repercussions of, you know, the goshmias of living in a firm

(29:40):
community and wanting to be accepted and always and be a
part of. That's why I do it.
I appreciate it. I want to earn and keep the
trust of people who are in the program, you know, and who may
be like. I don't know if I could share
it, but the truth is, is that this really can help people and

(30:00):
I hope that they'll find a reconciliation.
Yeah, I happen to be a personality that can take it.
My husband happens to be a personality that can take it.
And I'm also, for the most part,on the other side of it, right.
So I'm not, you know, sharing mychaos when I was in it.
I'm really trying to share it asa story of hope.

(30:22):
You know, there's nothing to thein Al and on.
We say there's no situation too great or no unhappiness, no
situation too desperate or something, and no unhappiness
too great to be lessened. Right.
Beautiful. We've been there too, you know.
Thanks for sharing that and entertaining that question.

(30:43):
And I don't out anyone. I'm only talking about myself,
you know, now and on. We say keep the focus on us, not
the alcoholic, whether the alcoholic is still drinking or
not. So I'm not outing anyone else
other than myself and with the loving guidance and permission
of my husband to share my story.When you were 13, you said

(31:06):
you're like, I'm done setting upthings for him.
How did you manage? Like what did you do with the
rage? I stopped caretaking for him so
much, which truly intensified the rage.
I think maybe subconsciously I thought that maybe my mom would

(31:28):
leave if it got so crazy and he was so not functional and I was
so angry. What was your question?
Oh, what did I do with the rage?Right.
Yeah, but you're also touching upon something and that is the
way, like, was that the way thatyou were trying to control the

(31:50):
situation? For sure, it was the way I was
trying to control the situation.And now as a mother and as a
person who works al Anon, I can look back and see that my mom
didn't engage in rage because she was working her program.
So instead of my mom raging backat him, I did so when he was.

(32:10):
Why aren't you like, why aren't you sticking up for us?
I never asked her why she wasn'tsticking up for us because also
my mom's constitution as a person, very gentle.
She's a soft spoken. She's physically small and very
thin. Like she she just has a
different constitution than I have.

(32:31):
I'm a, I'm like a bigger person.I'm a loud person.
I'm an intense person. My voice is loud, my presence is
loud. It's hard for me to be in a room
without somebody noticing me. Usually for good or bad, I raged
at him for us to protect us. When he was going crazy, I was
in his face because she wasn't. So the rage just came out of me,

(32:58):
directed at him. And otherwise you continued
school. Yeah, I was the president of the
student government. I was like, I said, that picture
perfect kid. My best friend always says she
went to the principal's office as a kid and I said so did I.
I used to eat lunch with Principal Rasmussen because we
were buddies. I was the perfect kid.

(33:23):
Right. Because I needed that fill and
that validation and that belonging that purpose because I
was not getting it at home. So at 15, that's when she
finally left. And what'd you guys do then?
My mom bought a house, and we called it Casa de Serenity.

(33:44):
My mom had been married at that point for 20 years.
And I was a teenager. So even though I was like the
perfect kid, I was still had like, raging hormones and
sneaking out with boys and like,you know, doing all the things
that you do. And she was still deeply wounded
by that marriage. And there was a lot of growing
pains. And it happened to be that my

(34:06):
mom's first date, I don't even think the divorce was finalized
yet and we were definitely stillliving in our family home.
We hadn't moved to the townhouseyet.
Her first date ended up now as Iknow him as Tati, as my stepdad.
But I was so angry that she was dating and she was out all the
time and I had never ever, ever had to share her with anyone.

(34:30):
My parents didn't sleep in the same bedroom.
I mean, it was her and I againstthe world.
So there was a lot of turmoil after she left.
She was getting on her feet, figuring out how am I going to
financially support this kid who's going to go to college
soon with absolutely no support from my biological father
because I refused to see him. I think the court order said

(34:50):
that he had shared custody, but he didn't like me and I didn't
like him. And that was never happening.
I mean, I had never been left alone with him in my whole life
when they lived together. So I never saw him.
She had me 100% of the time. I wasn't driving yet so I needed
still to be chauffeured to and from everywhere.
I was still dealing with a myriad of my health issues from

(35:13):
being born prematurely. What was that like?
Like when were you able to function as a baby like?
I'm not sure about how many months old I was when I stopped
with the heart monitor and beingon oxygen, but probably close to
about a year old. I had kind of cotton up to my
peers but I have always dealt with health issues.

(35:33):
So even as an adult now I still deal with health issues.
I have a form of epilepsy which causes me to have seizures and a
lot of throwing up. I went to tons of doctors in
college. I ended up in kidney failure,
double renal failure, and spent a while in the ICU in the
hospital. So I still deal with health
issues from being born prematurely.

(35:55):
I deal with them now and thank God my husband is really
supportive of me. Like when I have a newborn, he
takes the baby overnight always.I do formula at night because if
I don't get enough sleep, I'll go into a seizure cycle.
So there are still ways in my life that I have to work around
my medical issues. I work remotely because
commuting and traveling like on the subway with my like I get

(36:19):
motion sick that will cause me to go into a seizure cycle.
So there are still limitations that I have, but as I've gotten
older, they've been easily more manageable.
One of my diseases is more of a childhood disease.
And as I've grown up, I've been able not only to manage it more,
but it's also gotten a little bit less in its severity.
So that's just like something like, it's like the undercurrent

(36:39):
of my life. And in the background, you would
never know it by looking at me, but my close friends and my
family know that I deal with stuff like that.
Gotcha. Would you like to take a moment
to acknowledge your mom? Yeah, So my mom and my
grandmother, I have to also givea shout out to my grandmother,
who we called Safta. She died on Gimel Tamas a few
years ago. And at her funeral, Ashley said

(37:01):
that she was Lamadvov. My grandmother, she was the most
connected person to Hashem. She actually wrote a book called
An Ordinary Woman's Walk with Hashem.
It's not like published, but allof her al Anon sponsees and our
family has it and we share it aswe deem appropriate.
So my mom, you know, has it in her DNA to be very closely

(37:23):
connected to her higher power. And that's how she raised me.
And my mom also works a really strong 12 step program.
So she's a really incredible, fabulous woman.
And thank God now this other second-half of her life has been
really beautiful. And my stepdad, who I think
their anniversary is coming up, they'll be together 16 years.

(37:45):
I lovingly refer to him as Tati is the greatest thing that has
ever happened to our life. And she gets to travel and do
fun things with him. And, you know, I'm an only child
and she really gets to enjoy my kids.
And she's so, so connected with my with my boys.
And she's just a really impressive woman.
And she instilled in me the loveof a higher power.

(38:10):
And as I became from and startedhearing about people's journeys
with their higher power and likereligious trauma or like, if you
don't dress sneas, then Hashem'sgoing to punish you.
You know, all of these things that maybe people here in the
system, I cannot even relate to that.
So my best friends are not Boltshuva.

(38:31):
They're they're from from birth.And they laugh at me because
they're just like, we can't eventalk about this with Kanaleia
because her Hashem is like she could be dancing on the tables
at a bar naked and he and her are best friends.
And that is truly how I feel, that there is absolutely nothing
I could do to ever break my connection with my higher power.
That's incredible. So it's hard raising kids in the

(38:52):
system now because my little boycomes home and says if he, my 6
year old will say to my 3 year old, don't do muqsa, Hashem is
going to be so mad at you and hashisholm you could die.
And I say, Ellie, Hashem does not work that way.
So he's getting a little bit of mixed messages in the home
versus his yeshiva. But I'm grateful for that

(39:14):
because I hope that my children also know that that Hashem is
their best friend because he's definitely mine.
Whether my elbows are covered ornot, they are.
But whether they're covered or not?
Please share like what things were like after that, Right.
So your mom starts dating? Yeah.

(39:34):
So I got my license. The whole world opened up.
How exciting is that? I had a long term boyfriend in
high school. You know, we went to prom.
Like I mentioned earlier, I was the president of a very large
international Jewish youth group.
I traveled a lot for that. I got big college scholarships.

(39:56):
Because of that. I was accepted to Arizona State
University, which is where I ended up going.
I graduated early with honors. Life was still tumultuous
though, and looking back I know it's because I was there.

(40:16):
So I was not tuned in to myself enough at that age to know.
I was not tuned into myself enough at that age to know that
the one common denominator of all of my problems was me.
So when my relationship imploded, when my relationship

(40:39):
with my college roommates imploded, when I would have an
issue with a friend, the common denominator was me.
And I was not there yet. How did it play out and how were
you experiencing? So how it would play out is that
my parents would come in and save the day, both physically
and financially because my stepdad has a lot of means to do

(41:02):
so. He would just save me.
And I appreciate that because now as a parent and with
children, I needed to be saved. I was, you don't think this when
you're 18/19/20, but I was stilla little girl.
I thought I had the whole world figured out and I was living on

(41:22):
my own in a college, you know, like I was doing my thing.
But I still really needed to be saved by them.
And thank God I had them becausethey did save me so many times
and covered for me and cleaned up my mess and never chastised
me, never belittled me. I had a a sexual assault in

(41:48):
college and my mom had to pick me up from the dorm and I moved
home and it was a big thing. And instead of blaming me, she
let me repaint my bedroom and, you know, laid with me on the
couch for a long time because I was too scared to go into my
bedroom. And they just really saved me.

(42:09):
And maybe someone would say thatwas enabling, but I was a young
girl who had gone through a lot.And I'm grateful for them and to
them for picking me up when I needed to be picked up.
I actually have this question sometimes about I'm asking you,

(42:33):
I guess not from like a conceptual perspective, but
really because there is a conflict for many people who are
living with people who are suffering from their mental
illness, whether it be addiction, rage or any of these
things, and they're afraid to enable them.
Yeah. You know, if I show them love,
it will enable them. If they take them back, I'll

(42:55):
enable them. You know, and sometimes you have
parents, even single moms who are living with a teenager,
like, because the way you're presenting it is like it's
borderline. It would be considered like
this. This is the way I'm hearing.
You just said. It's in certain circles they
would call that enabling. But that's exactly what you
needed, and it really worked and.

(43:16):
It I want to give you this perspective of I was a young
girl in a big world who had had a lot of trauma and abuse and
had not taken any tools for myself to heal from that.
So I was blowing up my life hereand there.
So I think there is such a fine line that only maybe a parent

(43:36):
could know. Because I think if at some
point, basically the enabling, not the enabling, but my parents
picking me up and dealing with my messes really stopped by time
I was, you know, 21. I think if I was 30 and blowing
up my life, my parents would be like, I'm cutting you off
financially and I'm not coming. I'm not flying to New York to

(43:57):
help you. So I think it also, it had to do
with where I had come from and also the age in which it kind of
died down. Yeah, you know.
Yeah. And I appreciate.
And I was also really engaged inmy community and I was a good
person and I was a responsible person.
And I worked three jobs in college to pay for my college

(44:18):
apartment. When I say they helped me
financially, they weren't payingmy rent.
They were paying my phone bill. They were paying my car
insurance. One day I parked in the wrong
place on campus and I got the car towed.
They paid for that. But they also, they required of
me a great deal of involvement in my life and responsibility.
And they really instilled that in me.

(44:38):
So I wasn't bumming around. I was working three jobs and I
was the president of the university.
I was getting a stipend from thecollege.
I was a nanny. I was running friendship circle
in Arizona. Like I, I wasn't friendship
circle. Oh.
That was after wait. Now I'm confused.
Can you just explain? So my mom for 15 years was the

(44:59):
she worked with the Schlechem asthe friendship circle like Co
director because my mom has a master's in special education.
So I guess this kind of leads into how I became from I grew up
around Chabad. My mom says that she's the only,
you know, woman who wears pants,who has a key to the Chabad
house. My mom, we were always around
the Shilham, always. I was babysitting for them, but

(45:20):
we weren't from. I was on the international board
of Friendship Circle. I would travel to West
Bloomfield, MI every year for the International Convention.
I wasn't from, but I was around Chabad because my mom was the
director of the Friendship Circle for many, many years.
Then my mom ended up kind of taking a step back from that and
I took over and I did like 2 years of summer camp and I was

(45:41):
helping with the Friends at Homeprogram.
I worked in the Kabat house. I had a desk.
I had an office. How old were you, 18?
18 Well, when I was a teen, I was 15161718 when I volunteered.
But then by time I was like, youknow, working for them in a paid
capacity. I was 18/19/20.
So by time I showed up to Kabat on campus like all the shlokum,

(46:03):
other like the shlokum not on campus, the campus shlokum
didn't know me, but all of the community shlokum did.
And I had spent Shabasam in their house and they all knew
me. They knew my mom, everyone,
everyone knew us. So it wasn't foreign to me, the
idea of, you know, being from and having a lot of kids, that
it was not foreign to me at all.Was there ever any point through

(46:25):
all those years that anybody noticed something and asked you
about it? No, because I cannot stress
enough to you. Like I would be booked to do
nanny gigs 6 months in advance because no one would leave their
kids with anyone other than me. I was like a full adult.

(46:46):
So like OK, I had a bad breakup or like OK, my roommate and I
people just over kind of overlooked it because I was such
a leader in the community. But like I said, it kind of
ended at 2021. That's kind of when people
started giving the side eye. It was like a lot of blow UPS.
What were they saying? I think they started noticing,

(47:11):
and this is so hard for me to talk about.
I think people started noticing that there was something
intrinsically in me that was looking for chaos.
I think people were noticing that when I was given
responsibility and given opportunities to show that I was

(47:32):
responsible, I rose to them. But then I would also bring an
element of chaos with me. It stopped being as squeaky
clean as it had been in high school.
Once I got to college. And also I was getting older.
I was pushing the envelope a lotmore.

(47:54):
But like, I was the director of the summer camp at the Jewish
Community Center, where there's 700 kids.
You're like, I can't even stressto you how involved I was.
Right. Which ultimately it's so shiny
and on stage that nobody even bothers.
Like would never enter their mind.

(48:14):
Yeah, like, they know that they got divorced, but like,
everybody gets divorced, OK? She doesn't talk to her dad, OK?
The police are here because her dad's stalking her.
OK You know And I had the same group of friends from 7 to 20
ish so I didn't have to explain it to anyone new.
Everyone had my back. Everyone knew my mom.

(48:38):
And when people started noticingthings, was there anyone that
was helpful? No.
That's a strong no. Can you say more?
Anything else attached to that? I don't know what anybody could
have done, because if anybody would have said to me you need

(49:00):
to get help, I would have blocked their phone number.
What are you talking about? I'm the president of the larger
public university. And you have tons of stuff to
shove in their face. I'm graduating early with
honors. What are you talking about?
Don't you dare go there. You were scared.
I'm an intense person. I had friends.
I had my parents who always backed me up.

(49:23):
No one tried and it is possible that in my head no.
How could somebody get through to you at that stage?
No, you couldn't have. No, it's not possible.
Can you get through to somebody in that stage?

(49:44):
That's such a great question. I think truthfully, I am
powerless over other people's behavior.
But I can listen and I can sharemy experience, strength and
hope. And I can tell you what it was
like for me when I hit rock bottom and then rock bottom

(50:04):
again. And I could share with you what
I did to get better. So there are a few people.
I'm just going to reflect to youwhat I'm saying and that is
there a few people that have thecapacity to meet somebody like
yourself when you were in that stage and actually talk from
compassion as opposed to fear? Also another thing I want to say

(50:25):
on that is I didn't respect any adult because no one saved me
from my house as a child. I was the adult in my home and
you are all you have all let me down.
The only person I can count on is me.

(50:46):
I don't know if that's specific to me, but I've really, really
worked on that in the last six to seven years.
Before that, I respected no one because no one knew what I went
through. No one lived through what I went
through and was as successful asme.
If you would have lived through what I lived through, you would

(51:08):
be a drug addict in the alley. But I lived through what I lived
through and look at all the things I've done and look at how
I've picked myself up, you know,gotten married, had three
beautiful kids. Like look what I've done with
the cards I was dealt. I have so much shame around that
now to share that. But it's truly how I felt.

(51:28):
And when I speak to other ACOAS,which stands for Adult Children
of Alcoholics. The most underrated 12 step.
Recovery, the most beautiful recovery and fellowship.
So if you're an ACOA, please reach out to me so we can be
friends. When I speak to other adult
children of Alcoholics, they feel the same way.
So I don't think my experience is unique in not respecting any

(51:51):
other adults. But maybe I took it a little a
little too far. But that was the reality of it.
No one saved me and I lived in craziness and look how well I've
done because my friends around me and my cousins around me were
blowing up their lives way more than I was.
And they had grown up with two happy parents in immense

(52:11):
privilege with immense wealth, and they were bumming around.
So look what I've made of myselfwhere we were the least wealthy
of anyone and I'm the president of everything.
I did not have anybody who couldhave said anything to me.
But to this day, I had women in my life who were my mentors in

(52:32):
high school and in college, you know, like the executive
director of the Halal on campus and the regional director of the
youth group that I was the president of, who I still speak
to. And they send me gifts when I
have babies. And I was their nanny in high
school and college. So I didn't have anybody who I
would have really listened to. But I had so many adult women

(52:53):
take me under their wing and love me and be there for me and
be a cheerleader for me. And that changed my life.
So maybe they did say it to me in a way that they knew I could
receive it. And if you could put that
experience into words, what was the message that you got from
all that? That I was worth someone's time

(53:16):
that didn't have to give it to me.
They saw something special in me.
Even though. Even though I was so involved in
so many of these women's lives as they ended up having children
and getting married and moving through that, and I was so much
younger than them. I mean, now I'm 30, these women
are in their 40s, so it's not such an age gap.
But when you're 16 and they're 26 or 30 and they're married

(53:38):
with two kids and I'm just getting my driver's license, I
was so involved in their lives and they gave me so much.
And I'm so grateful for those mentors and those relationships
and those women who reached out and loved me because I really do
still keep in contact with them.Yeah.
I want to share something that Itexted you that reminds me of

(54:03):
that because I think one of my points about hope and like me
being, you know, quote, UN quoteon the other side of so much
pain is that I could not and I did not do it alone.
And through the power of female mentorship and female
friendships that I've eventuallybeen able to cultivate, they've

(54:25):
changed me intrinsically. The love and reflecting back me
from them has allowed me to viewmyself in such a way.
My mom always says like I have distorted mirrors.
Like when I look at myself in the mirror, I see like Shrek the

(54:47):
ogre, and I see all of my mistakes and all of the things
I've ever done when I look in the mirror.
But when they reflect me back tome, how they perceive me, it's
so beautiful and gentle and kind.
And they show me that I'm a great mom and a Good Wife and an

(55:10):
excellent daughter-in-law and a beautiful person.
And when I've been able to receive that from my female
friends and mentors and they believe it so strongly, I
eventually started believing it too.
So I sent you something. I saw it on Instagram and it

(55:31):
says she was cutting vegetables while her best friend scrolled
on her phone beside her. Then she said it softly, like
the words had been waiting in her chest for years.
My dad used to yell a lot. I still flinch at loud noises.
Her friend paused. She didn't say Oh no, I'm sorry

(55:53):
like the others might. She didn't try to fix it.
She just leaned her head on her shoulder and whispered, you're
safe now, I promise. And they kept chopping onions
together. And that is so powerful.
And what I attribute the healingof myself and my family to is

(56:17):
that that womanhood that I've been able to cultivate around
me, it makes me cry so. What?
How old were you when you started becoming like from?
19. So you were 19, OK and?
So I was 19 when I started becoming from with my campus
shlokum, and by time I was 21, Iwas fully from living in Crown

(56:42):
Heights, living in the seminary dorm on President St.
OH, and wearing the pantyhose I quickly became from.
And it wasn't that big of a change for me.
It was in terms of the boys and the dress.
But I had such an intense relationship with my higher
power. I thought to myself at the time,

(57:04):
if what I'm doing over and over and over again is not working
this time, let me try it with God.
You know, if I've dated every boy on the planet Earth and I'm
not married yet, let me try it this way.
I have nothing to lose. I love God, I love community, I
love being involved. I always wanted to have 412

(57:24):
children, even when I wasn't from Let me try this.
Let me try this. So I graduated college from the
next. I walked across the stage, got
my diploma. That night I got on a flight to
Crown Heights. The next morning I woke up in
the seminary dorm. I was in seminary for 18 months

(57:45):
before I was allowed to start dating.
Not because I didn't ask 3 1/2 times every single day.
Can you please let me start dating?
Please please please please please let me start dating.
Maima Shibia actually told me I needed to go to a summer's worth
of codependency anonymous meetings before she would let me
put my shit up resume anywhere. Which is so interesting now

(58:07):
thinking back because she's not a 12 step person at all, but she
must have seen something in me and I listened because she had
the golden ticket of all the boys Chadak profiles.
I remember actually dressing really cute during the code, the
codependency anonymous meetings.Maybe a boy would like me.

(58:27):
It didn't work out for me, but you know, I was trying and I
came back to Crown Heights afterthe summer.
One second, yeah, Al Anon, I just want.
I don't. Aren't familiar with these
things. There is a fellowship called Al
Anon. Yeah, which?
Is for friends and families of addicts.
Right, then there is Coda. Which is Codependency Anonymous,

(58:49):
which I no longer participate inbecause I feel that anything
you're getting from Coda is justa very watered down version of
Al Anon and everything I would need from that fellowship I get
in my Al Anon work. Got it.
Which Coda is my understanding needs to be what you're calling
water down because that's what people who grew up as children,

(59:13):
right? So it's adult code, not Coda,
Sorry, I'm talking about ACA. OK, So Coda is Codependence
Anonymous. That's another fellowship
because I'm not very familiar, but ultimately it's
codependency. It's like for people who would
say that they have no problem ofaddiction in their family or
friends and they're they have codependent tendencies
themselves. I did not find my place there.

(59:35):
I feel very at home in Al Anon. That's where I belong.
But I wasn't ready to be in Al Anon at that point and it wasn't
suggested to me. And I guess she was only
familiar with Coda, so that that's where I went.
I knew about it. My mom knew where all the
meetings were, so I went. Right, so that so al Anon coda
and now and there's also something called ACA adult.

(59:56):
Children of Alcoholics, but I call it adult children of
addicts. And dysfunctional families.
Yes, absolutely. Right, so this is for adults who
were or are children of. Alcoholics or dysfunctional
people. So I went to a summer of
codependency anonymous meetings,and obviously I was cured.
He's being sarcastic. I'm making eyes.
You, you can't see me, but I'm being sarcastic.

(01:00:19):
And then I went back to seminary.
Like to like hello we go back and by Tishrei my resume was
written with my you know 5 non negotiables and by November I
went out on my first date and five months later I married him.
Care to share anything in between?

(01:00:41):
Yeah, but I'm saying like it wasvery fast.
The first boy that I was suggested to in the system I
married. It was so, so obvious while we
were dating that we were bashart.
There were so many crazy storiesand we were just like, we
couldn't believe that we had metbecause like, how could all this

(01:01:02):
be happening? Like this is so obviously a
bracha from straight from Hashem.
Like this is it. By the third date we had planned
our wedding. We had a little bit of a longer
engagement because like I mentioned, I'm an only child and
my husband is also an only childand we're both bought shuva so
our parents needed a little bit of time to get comfortable.
But we were sold after three dates.

(01:01:23):
That was it. We we knew we were getting
married. The infamous story if you come
into my house for my Shabbos al Anon meeting or to hang out with
me, there is a framed picture ofmy wedding invitation and above
that is a picture of rabbits andhana.
When my mashbia was suggested myhusband for about 5 weeks, she

(01:01:44):
said no, she's like this is not a boy for Hanaleah, this is not
what we're looking for. And my husband kept calling her
and anyone else he could think of, the principal of my
seminary, my teachers, and saying you have to let me go out
with Hanaleah, Why are you not letting me go out with Hanaleah?
He was like, why are they not letting me go out with this
girl? And one Mosi Shabbos my Mashbiya

(01:02:09):
calls me in and she's like, thisboy will not stop calling.
His Mashbiya won't stop calling.He won't stop calling.
Just go out once. It's going to be probably A1 and
done, but just go out once. So she goes to the aisle that
night and after she leaves the rabbi, she goes over to Rabbits
and Hana because that was the namesake of my seminary and my
name and my Mashbiya's name. So, you know, so she went over

(01:02:31):
to Rabbits and Hana and she's asking Rabbits and Hana for a
bracha that she should be able to bring me the right Shirak
that she should be, you know, Matslya that to to find the
right boy for me. And as she's turning away from
Rebertson Khanna, my now husbandwas walking towards her and my
Meshpia recognized him from the pictures.
And so she came home and she said, Hanaleah, I have to tell

(01:02:53):
you a story, but you have to promise me not to tell him this
on the first date. And I said, OK, she said, you
know that boy who won't stop calling.
I said, yes. She said, well, you're going to
marry him and I'm going to tell you what just happened.
And obviously I told him that story on the first date and we
got married. That's insane.
So it was so clear, and there's many other stories just like

(01:03:15):
that one while we were dating, that it was so clear that this
was my person that Hashem wantedme to get married and have
children with. Wow, that's wild.
With respect to your husband, when did you notice something
was wrong with what was going onin your marriage?

(01:03:35):
So barf Hashem, I got pregnant with my son the night of my
wedding. Our son is the love of our life.
My oldest son is the love of ourlife.
But we noticed very, very, very early on that there was there
was some issues. We had had an incident when we
were engaged that maybe we were going to call it off.

(01:03:56):
We went forward with it. But because we noticed so early
on, but because I was also pregnant, like we were in it.
So I thank the abrascher for that blessing and that test.
Because if it hadn't been for myoldest son, I don't know what
would have happened with us because it was so glaringly
obvious. And I don't know if it was

(01:04:17):
exacerbated by pregnancy hormones.
I mean, like to become from, to move across the country from
your family, live in a new place, get married and have a
baby all within like 3 years is a lot for anyone.
And so I don't attribute my behavior or our relationship to
all of those changes, but it's definitely a whirlwind for

(01:04:38):
anyone, even the most stable people from the most stable
backgrounds. So we noticed really early on.
But like I said, this baby was coming.
And then when my oldest son was born, we were in heaven in
bliss. My husband is the most
incredible father, extremely hands on with my children, the

(01:05:00):
parent they call for out of their cribs.
You know, their first words are always tati.
My husband invests a lot of himself into our children and
I'm so, so grateful for that andthankful because that was my
dream because I didn't have thatas a kid.
Our kids kept us together a lot of the time, but my issues were
becoming so much more apparent. And I don't want to only blame

(01:05:23):
it on myself and I don't even want to say the word blame
because I'm really working on self love and re parenting my
inner child. And I'm not blaming myself.
It's just how it happened when we were together.
And I truly believe this. We didn't know it but our wounds
found each other. The the unresolved things in me

(01:05:47):
connected with the unresolved things in Him, even though those
were not things that we discussed when we were dating.
It was like Hashem really wantedme to be in this relationship,
to first turn my skin inside outand throw all of my crazy on the
wall to then heal it. Can you give me an example?

(01:06:11):
Sorry. Yeah.
I totally understand these expressions.
An example of my wounds on display was in the beginning of
our marriage, I was very triggered by some behaviors of
my husband's parents. I think like any newlywed, like
any woman you know, a mother-in-law and a
father-in-law is not an easy thing to to adopt overnight.

(01:06:35):
I was extremely triggered by a lot of stuff with them and with
my husband and the dynamic and the the whole thing was not for
me. And I made some really strong,
rageful, intense ultimatums of them or me, this baby inside of

(01:07:01):
me or them. My husband used to say to me,
you never know, one day the relationship could turn around
and I would say to him, I know everything.
It will never change just like that.
Like so egotistical and rageful.And it caused so much turmoil in

(01:07:25):
our life because he's an only child who loves his parents.
And I was having the first grandchild and they wanted to be
involved. And I was so deep and stuck in
the mud of my own stuff that I couldn't see where I was showing
up in the whole equation. And as I went through my al Anon

(01:07:50):
recovery and as I learned that I'm powerless over other
people's actions. Take what you like and leave the
rest. I can't change anyone and it's
not about me. Like someone else's behavior
doesn't have to be a reflection on me.
I was able to evolve that relationship and my

(01:08:11):
mother-in-law is my best friend.And people think I'm joking when
I say that now, but our relationship evolved so much
that she is my most trusted confidant and my favorite person
to be with the wreckage that waslaying in my wake every time I

(01:08:32):
was so rageful about seeing them, being around them.
Why do you say rage fall as opposed to like intense?
Because it was rage. It was me ripping door handles
off the doors. It was me breaking door frames
down. It was not intense.
I'm an intense person. My nails are an intense color.

(01:08:54):
I was raging and I grew up with a rageaholic as a parent and
subconsciously I was behaving the same way as the addict was.
And I'm so grateful for my family for sticking by me
because I did not realize the depth of my trauma and the

(01:09:17):
messages that I received as a child of how to behave and how
to be in a relationship. I never saw a marriage ever in
my life. So to be in one, in a firm
community where you're pregnant right away and you have to make
everything look perfect because you're, you know about Shuva.
I I had no tools and I was rageful.

(01:09:39):
I was not angry and I was not intense.
I was rageful. When you noticed your age.
Oh, of course, 'cause I didn't. In the moment, I didn't care
what happened to me or to my kid, or to them or to my
marriage. But of course I did.
Deep, deep shame. Because my best friends in

(01:09:59):
seminary who got married weren'ttalking about anything other
than how perfect their lives were and how perfect their Shina
was. Shina was.
No one was saying the real stuff.
No one. I had no friendships in my life
that were saying the real thing.No one was saying I'm raging and

(01:10:23):
I don't know how to stop. No one was saying my baby woke
up because we were fighting. No one.
And I was so alone and I did notknow what to do.
I'm just really taking a moment of silence.
Yeah, that's why we're here. And I don't want to say no one
because maybe you were at that time, this is only like 6 years

(01:10:45):
ago. But no women, I didn't see a
woman role model for me, no offense.
A man is an addict. He goes to rehab, his wife stays
with him. Very nice.
I've heard the story 100 times. No woman was saying I was the
crazy one. No woman was saying I hid the
car keys, you know, because I was also being the perfect

(01:11:08):
mother. And we had matching outfits and
we took Russia channel cards andwe sent them out to everyone.
And you know, my kid had the most extravagant 1st birthday
party on the earth. And I was also being, you know,
Martha Stewart at home, which I love.
But I was also ripping the door handle off.

(01:11:28):
What was the point where you were finally ready to get help?
So we've gone through all those like peaks and valleys of being
happy and living for our kids and going on date night and it
being OK. And then I would be so triggered
and it would be a lot of really messy stuff.

(01:11:49):
And I had my second son, my first two boys are two years
apart and we moved into bigger apartment.
And so I thought it was going tobe a locational change.
We were just fighting because wewere in a tiny apartment.
Now we have this big gorgeous apartment.
So everything's going to be fine.
He got a better job, everything's going to be fine.
We're going to have another baby, everything's going to be
fine. So when all of like the nouns,

(01:12:11):
like the person, place and things were right, and chaos was
still evading my like when chaoswas still permeating my soul and
my home, I was like, OK, so the apartment's right, the car's
right, the job is right. We have gorgeous kids, healthy
kids. It's got to be me.

(01:12:33):
Can you describe that day? May 22nd, 2022 I walked into the
Monday morning Garretson Beach Al Anon meeting.
What was? The day before that day.
My mom came to town. I'd gained about 75 lbs.
I had no mirrors in my house except the little one in the
bathroom. And my mom said to me, do you

(01:12:54):
know you have no mirrors in yourhouse?
And what that said to me was notonly, and I'm very vain, like my
nails are always done and my outfit is always pressed and
like I'm very care very much what I look like, good or bad,
like it's just who I am. And I realized when she said
that not only can I not look at myself physically, I cannot look

(01:13:17):
at myself emotionally in the mirror.
Now I have tons of mirrors in myhouse to see us happy and joyous
and free and that and life is not perfect now.
We still fight, we're human and we're married and we have kids
and financial stress and Shabbosguests who fall asleep on the
couch and life. But May 20, So May 21st 2022, my

(01:13:40):
mom said to me, do you know you have no mirrors?
And May 22nd, 2022, with a 7 month old baby on my hip and my
mom in tow, I walked into my Al Anon meeting and I cried and I
cried and I cried for months. And then one day I cried a
little bit less. And then one day I responded to

(01:14:02):
a trigger differently. And then I lost 75 lbs.
And I really made friends where I could say the real stuff.
And I had women in my life who Icould tell the whole story to,
not just the pretty parts. And I became free.

(01:14:27):
One of the purposes of why we'rehere is for people who are
experiencing what you have alonecan number one know that they
are not the only ones as well asknow that there's there's hope
and a solution for them also forthe loved ones in that person's
life to have a better understanding and perhaps behave
differently around them. The work is the change in the

(01:14:51):
work that's going to happen in people is going to be happening
when they show up to a conversation with you or so if
perhaps I really appreciated howyou, you said like 4 things.
I don't remember what they were,but there were four things.

(01:15:12):
That was how you described taking full responsibility for
your experience in this world and therefore your behavior and
therefore the how it affects others.
It's hard. The gifts are so real and
there's no shame in the work andthere's no hopelessness in the
work. I'm reading a book right now and

(01:15:34):
there's two ways that people kind of come out of childhood.
Either that everything is their fault and they're the problem,
or that their whole existence until the day they're going to
die, good, bad or indifferent, is because they were mistreated
as a child. And I strive to not be either of

(01:15:55):
those. There are some people who get
stuck in their stuff because of what was done to them and
they're angry at their that person, their abuser.
And so they get stuck because it's justified.
It's absolutely justified that you're angry and you're negative
and you're judgmental and you doall these things because you

(01:16:17):
were hurt. What's up to me?
What was it like for you? I think I'm so grateful for my
children, and I'm so sad that insome ways I had to learn on the
job with them. But they gave me the courage and
the push and the wisdom to be able to take my life into my own

(01:16:39):
hands and no longer be a victim of my circumstance because they
were becoming victims of my circumstance and they were
innocent. They've never met my dad, and
they were becoming victims of myabuse and my trauma.
So when I was able to take the power back and I didn't want the

(01:17:00):
power because that made me have to be responsible for my
behavior. I just want to put a dash in
between Response and Abel. For a lot of people, that could
be very liberating. You're not responsible, meaning
it's not your fault that things happened right?
But you have the ability to to respond to what happened in a

(01:17:21):
different way. An Al Anon friend of mine says
that when I walked into the rooms, I was responding to
spilled milk and murder the exact same way.
When my children were spilling cereal on the floor.
I was flying off the handle because I was triggered like I

(01:17:41):
was a child again. And that was my responsibility.
I wasn't responsible for what happened to me as a little girl,
but I am responsible as a 30 year old woman for how I show up
now in the world and how I show up as a wife and a mother and a
friend and a daughter and a daughter-in-law.

(01:18:03):
So I took that power back, whichwas very painful because I
didn't want to have to take responsibility for the things I
had done. And there's the idea of making
an amends in 12 step can be extremely daunting.
And so I love the concept of a living amends where instead of

(01:18:27):
like there are some relationships in my life that
I've never made a formal amends.I'm really like, for example, I
never said to them, I'm really sorry for the toxic ways I
behaved in the first few years of my marriage, but I'm so
grateful for where we are now because I'm still growing, I'm
still evolving as myself, but myliving amends to them is

(01:18:49):
inviting them to my home, being kind, warm and loving towards
them, including them in my life and in my children's lives.
So I also, I'm still a work in progress even though I've taken
the reins of my life because what I realized I was also doing
is I was repeating the cycle andI was abused.

(01:19:12):
So I was being an abuser and then they were going to be
abused. And that was absolutely not the
trajectory. I didn't want my children to go
down because I didn't want them to be wounded like I am.
And it's my privilege and my honor of a lifetime to be their
mother. I dreamt of them my whole life

(01:19:35):
and they deserve a better me, a non judge mental me, a me who
loves herself because hopefully they'll love themselves too.
But it's hard work because I hadto make a list of all of my
character defects. I had to tell my sponsor really
horrible things that I've done. But the most powerful tool in

(01:19:58):
healing that I've learned and that I hope I can impart to
other people who are listening is that healing cannot happen in
a vacuum. You cannot do it by yourself.
You cannot do it by reading 1000books and highlighting them for
yourself. You have to interact with other
people to do it. And that requires, you know, 1

(01:20:23):
leaving your ego and your embarrassment at the door.
And also, yeah. And what was it like sharing
that with your sponsor? How did?
She react. So the things that in my head
are the worst things that anyonehas ever done, you know, because
we're the main character of our own lives.
So the things I've done, like upuntil very recently, I've had

(01:20:45):
dreams about breaking up with myhigh school boyfriend and how I
ruined his life. This was like almost 20 years
ago. So in my head, these are
horrible, life changing things that I've participated in and
that I've done and that I've said, and the freedom of saying
it out loud and my sponsor looking at me and saying OK

(01:21:08):
releases something so powerful from like the burden that I was
carrying. And now and on we say, like, you
know, there are those among us who have done them too.
I ripped the door handle off. I broke the door frame.
I was going to get divorced because XY and ZI said this to
someone. I behaved this way.

(01:21:30):
They've heard it, done it or seen worse.
And in our heads, when we're trying to heal ourselves by
ourselves, we think that we are the monster in everyone's story.
And I was able to learn that people are human and people make
mistakes, and I'm catastrophizing them in my own

(01:21:51):
mind because I'm my biggest critic.
You know I'm my worst enemy and my biggest critic and the
freedom to share that with a safe and trusted person and not
be met with any shame, guilt or judgement is truly life
changing. Right.
That's really what I was hoping people can hear, that there are

(01:22:12):
people that exist, that we can share our deeper darkest secrets
and they have the capacity to respond either by not being
affected by. It.
Or like compassion and things like that.
And what I want to share, what Iwant to share as a sort of
disclaimer, because before I gotinto program and I was sharing

(01:22:35):
those things that were going on in my home with my Mashbiya that
ended up not being a safe personfor me.
That was not the right Ave. of someone to speak to.
And that person could be your sponsor, too.
Not everybody's equipped. 100% but so the discernment to know
is this a safe person? And a lot of time, hello, it's

(01:22:55):
trial and error. I've said things to people that
either I was given terrible advice or I was shamed, or I was
made to feel worse about myself less than, etcetera, etcetera.
It's an important thing, especially in our community
where people do feel that shame,to make sure you're really
sharing it with a safe person who can receive that from you
instead of someone who is not safe.

(01:23:17):
Right, this is just like suggestion.
When in doubt, trust yourself. Yeah.
When in doubt, trust yourself. Or ask your higher power.
Invite your higher power into the situation and say, Hashem,
is this a safe person for me to share this with?
And listen to that little knowing inside of your gut
because Hashem will guide you. Hashem will tell you if this is

(01:23:38):
a safe person or a safe space safe situation, or if you know
better not. And that doesn't mean that your
mashviya can't be your mashviya and talk about henna and raising
your kids and getting your kid into the right yeshiva and about
your hala recipe and about your mikvah questions.
But that might not always mean that that person can also take
on the things that we who live with the effects of the family

(01:24:00):
disease of addiction go through.Right.
Build a team for yourself. I'm a huge I attribute, if not
all most of my recovery to my support system.
Yeah, absolutely. And I don't want people who are
listening to this, who say, but I don't have anyone or I can't
share. It's too shameful to feel turned

(01:24:23):
off because I promise you I feltthe same way and I had no
friends I could share with for many, many years and it.
Builds up slowly. Right, slowly, slowly, slowly,
and by getting myself into the right rooms and the right
spaces. But I don't want you to feel
discouraged in any way for you to think, oh, well, she has a
lot of friends. No, do not feel discouraged,

(01:24:46):
because if you want it and you ask your higher power to help
you get it, you'll get it. So I have two more questions,
and we'll wrap up #1 is you mentioned this idea of when you
round the time, like when you hit bottom is like, you took
your power back. Yeah.
How does that align with admitting powerlessness?

(01:25:11):
By taking my power back, I only started focusing on my cell.
So I was attributing my behaviorto my husband, my in laws, the
cashier at the grocery store, the guy who cut me off.
I'm a jerk because of them. Right then they have the power

(01:25:32):
over me. Right.
So when I took my power back andI said I'm behaving this way
because I chose to or because there's a wounded part of me
that needs to be addressed, healed, loved, nurtured.
I also, on the flip side, was able to give the respect, love
and understanding to other people that they're in charge of

(01:25:54):
their self and I'm not in chargeof them.
Right. And is there like a magic that
happens that all of a sudden they start becoming more?
The other people well, so in Al Anon, we say that the family
situation is bound to improve whether the alcoholic is still
drinking or not. We urge you to try our program.
I changed and then the whole system changed, the whole family

(01:26:17):
dynamic changed. I want to highlight that, like
really put that on the silver platter.
So many of us, if not all of us that has somebody that we love,
that's that we don't have control over and they're
causing, you know, they're they're.
They but we don't have control over anyone.
We don't have control. Anybody.
In every situation, there's a system, yeah, either call it a

(01:26:41):
family system or you can call ita constellation, or you can call
it whatever. It doesn't make a difference how
or an who changes. If anyone changes, even if we,
like my sponsor says that changeis going to change the
constellation, it's going to change the dynamic.
So by you taking full responsibility of your

(01:27:05):
experience of the world of others, whatever that changed
the family dynamic. Think about it like a dance.
If everyone knows the steps and you've rehearsed them for five
years, 15 years, 30 years, and that's how your marriage works,
that's how you parent your children.
If all the sudden the steps are completely different and you're

(01:27:26):
doing a different person. If I'm all the sudden doing a
tango, but we've been doing, youknow, Cowboy Slide for 15 years,
it does take an adjustment period because I was working my
muscles of program of I'm not going to respond this way.
I'm not going to respond to murder and spilled milk the same
way. I'm not going to engage in this

(01:27:48):
behavior. I'm not going to blame shame or
judge. And as I worked on my muscles
and my dance moves changed and my behavior changed, you could
almost feel like everyone in my house kind of took a deep breath
because like, OK, you spilled the Cheerios.
Are we going to eat them off thefloor or are we going to pick
them up? You know, it's it's so not a big

(01:28:10):
deal. OK sweetheart, let's clean them
up. Or we just had a situation.
We keep having this crazy situation with our car and it
breaks. OK, well, maybe previously we
were calling the baised in over the car because we cannot make
this work. We are two dueling enemies
towards each other. And this past week the car broke

(01:28:33):
and he had it towed. I went to the thing.
It's all good. It's all good.
It's just a car. When you're able to let the air
out of the situations that feel so intense and take them for
what they are, everyone is able to do that.
It's not murder. It it like it's all good, but it

(01:28:56):
it didn't used to be all good. For me, everything was red alert
because for me a frustrated word, a raised voice, a conflict
is red alert abuse 911 run to the bomb shelter when in reality

(01:29:18):
the bills are really stressful and he really is misbehaving
tonight and bedtime really didn't go well and the car is a
money sucker. But it's OK, and I have support
and I have people I can turn to,and my higher power is in this
equation and everyone changes. But I really want to impart also

(01:29:43):
is that yes, everyone changes, but that does not mean my life
is perfect at all. We still fight, we still have
conflicts with our children, we still have disagreements with
our parents, there's still moneystruggles.
We are human. But it's just that I have a
toolbox now that isn't rage blame, you know, ignore,

(01:30:08):
disassociate, eat. It's go to the gym, journal,
call your sponsor, remind your spouse that you're on the same
team and get a diet soda and just take a deep breath.
Any final words? No matter how far down the

(01:30:29):
rabbit hole you think you are, you can always climb out.
And you can do this. And it's hard and it's painful,
but I promise you, you can do it.
Because you're not doing it alone.
Hashem is with you every step ofthe way.
Hashem loves you, Hashem is guiding you, and I promise you,

(01:30:54):
you can do this. Thank you very much.
Thank you so so much for having me on.
Behalf of everybody who can benefit from this and your
husband. Thank you so much.
Thank you for listening. Please share your feedback by
emailing us at podcast at nashamas.org.

(01:31:14):
We hope you'll be back for the next episode of the Nashamas
Podcast. This is Masha Khanan, wishing
you a healthy and a meaningful day.

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