This is my third week of reflection on Elul, a time of reflection and teshuvah, or return, to our best path and best selves in the Hebrew Calendar. You can find week one here and week two here.
This is the week where the ritual recitation of psalm 27 starts to feel like routine. It’s a different kind of sacred, to feel the “sameness” of something. That routine feeling is, I think, a kind of special and singular in and of itself, but is certainly a different kind of feeling from novelty. There’s also always a risk my auDHD brain will forget what becomes routine, but I do my best to give myself grace around that.
I have let go of the nighttime psalm practice, and now engage with Achat Sha’alti in the mornings while I get ready to face my day. There are some Jews who recite this psalm every day of their lives, a reminder of inner and Divine strength in the face of whatever may come. I’ve considered this myself, but I think I need the special-ness of Elul, of these words of strength being a prayer for return to my best self.
This last week also saw me digging in earnest into Not Nice. I’ll be sharing a more in depth and dedicated review when I’ve finished the book, and I have my criticisms (chiefly that there is a distinct idea about “logic” as solution and “emotion” as problem, and also that I’m always suspicious of anything that has, even broadly, a goal of men trying to make themselves more dateable but isn’t written from an explicitly feminist perspective) but I’m really glad to have this resource. I’ve found myself moved a number of times in the first few chapters, mostly by the sense that I am so completely not alone in my dangerously self-effacing people pleasing tendencies. Both in the broad strokes and the specifics, many others have and do struggle with this.
It should be obvious, but in our struggle and suffering, it is so easy to feel isolated, to be sure that our particular traumas or trauma responses are ours alone and no one will be able to help us change. But I have found myself struck by not being alone all the same, and grateful to be in this community (whether I know them or not) of people seeking authenticity.
In my bio and getting to know me piece, I mention that I have a drive to understand the truest story of who I am, and help others do so. Authenticity has become such a buzzword I half worry it’s lost all meaning, but it carries a lot of weight in my work. And it’s work that never ends because who we are morphs and changes, year by year, day by day, even from one breath to the next. So I open myself to the hard work of facing down conflict, strengthening my values and sense of self, not to better know an unchanging me, but to create a guide as I move through the shifts and changes and turns of self that come with a life lived with truth and integrity. It’s hard work, and sometimes painful, but so, so necessary, and I think sacred too.
I look forward to sharing my final reflections on Elul next week as I face down the end of 5785 and welcome the head of the year, Rosh Hashanah 5786.