Becoming a succesful wife and Mother

How women can build their self-esteem. Women often suffer from low self-esteem. The stereotype that men become schizophrenic while women become depressed is statistically true. To access the key to self-esteem, we must first deeply understand the problem of depression. According to mystical teachings, the four easily observable physical elements—earth, air, fire, and water—parallel four basic negative character traits and four basic positive character traits. Earth parallels depression, because, unlike water, fire, and air, earth doesn’t move unless you move it. Depression is characterized by a feeling of immobility, of paralysis. The Maharal of Prague says that this feeling of immobility comes from being acutely aware of the physical difficulties standing between you and your goal while being acutely unaware of the spiritual strengths you possess by which you could overcome those difficulties. Let’s take an example: You’re making an engagement party for your brother and his fiancée. You’ve invited both sets of families and many friends. You’ve planned an elaborate dinner, you have all the food ordered, and you’ve allotted ample time to cook it with the help of a hired worker. On the morning of the party, the supermarket informs you that they can’t deliver the food and the woman you hired to help calls to say she can’t come. After you decide not to kill yourself, you may be so paralyzed that you can’t do anything at all. It takes a certain mental clarity to sort out your options: You can postpone the party; you can order cooked food from a caterer; or you can make a very simple menu. Will any one of these options cause a radical change in anyone’s life? No. So where is all the pain coming from? It’s coming from inside yourself, because your picture of who you are has become so intertwined with what you do that lack of success in any endeavor has become lack of success as a person. Depression comes when you identify your failed project with yourself as a failed person. DEFINING SUCCESS Therefore, the antidote to depression is success. Here women face particular challenges. The overwhelming majority of things that women do are in the world of divrei rishus, things over which they have their own authority, things not defined by specific halachic regulations. When you don’t have clear parameters of what defines failure and success, it’s very hard to see yourself as successful. What defines a successful Shabbos? You work hard on Thursday and Friday preparing for Shabbos, but come Saturday night, can you pat yourself on the back and say, “That was a successful Shabbos”? In order to feel that you’ve achieved success, you must have clearly defined goals. But what defines a successful Shabbos? That the guests went away happy? That the children stayed at the table for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch? That everybody sang the zmiros on key? That the cholent didn’t burn? So much of a woman’s life goes into childrearing, but when can you say you’ve succeeded in this endeavor? When your child is forty-five and wins the Noble Prize? When your child is declared Moshiach? Meanwhile, here you are trying to decide whether or not to take him to the park this afternoon. How can you possibly define success in that area? The nature of homemaking and childrearing is that you don’t clearly see success or failure. Since women gravitate towards goals which are less defined, women often feel less successful. The next factor is that even when you have a clear sense of what success would be, in wifehood and motherhood success is not immediate. When working a salaried job, employees know that at the end of the week or the month, they’ll come home with a paycheck. There are no tangible rewards for the domestic jobs women perform. Rewards, which bolster self-esteem, are not allotted after a week or a month of being a good wife, mother, and homemaker. The Gomorrah tells us that in ancient Egypt, when Pharaoh sought to create a spirit of depression among his Israelite slaves, he ordered them to build cities, then break them down, then build them again, then break them down again. The resultant sense of purposelessness made the Jews more dispirited than even back-breaking labor. Women, who spend a lot of time washing dishes, doing laundry, making beds, and cooking, can easily fall into the same sense of purposelessness. The clothes you fold today are exactly the same clothes you folded last week. And the dishes you’re washing today also look very familiar. Therefore, depression in women is often the result of three aspects of the homemaker’s role: 1. Success is indefinable. 2. A lack of defined rewards. 3. A feeling of purposelessness because of the cyclical nature of the work. SELF-ESTEEM AS A WIFE Self-esteem means valuing oneself. This requires that every woman define goals. She must define both short term and long term goals, and in two separate areas: with her husband and with her children. Let’s examine the long-term goal of being a wife. What is the purpose of being married? To help each other develop. The Torah defines the wife’s role as an ezer kenegdo, which means being a helper to her husband while being parallel to him. If you define your goal in nebulous terms, you undermine your self-esteem. If you say, “My goal is to be a better person and to help my husband become a better person,” then every time you feel like the same old you rather than a better you, you’ll fall into depression. The goal you set must be concrete. You have to set your goal in terms of your own and your husband’s specific capacities. The long-range goal is what you would like to be like thirty or forty years down the line. The short-range goal is the first step to getting there. For example: Elaine knew that her husband always regretted the fact that he had never had the opportunity to learn full time in Yeshiva. They had been introduced to Torah Judaism as a married couple in their mid-twenties, when they were already the parents of a small but growing family. After work at night, Benji attended the Torah classes available in their small and remote town, but he couldn’t even manage to learn a page of Talmud independently. By the time their son reached sixth grade, a rueful Benji was incapable of helping him with his Talmud homework. When their last child entered school, Elaine unveiled her short-term plan. She had used her spare time to enroll in a correspondence course in bookkeeping, had taken the tests, and had progressed to accounting. Now, she moved the entire family to a city with a large Jewish population and opened her own successful accounting firm, so that she could support the family while her husband learned Torah full-time. Benji began his studies in a yeshiva for beginners, progressed rapidly, and now studies at a respected, high-level yeshiva. Thanks to Elaine, her husband’s dream was realized. We can imagine Elaine’s sense of esteem. Tanach provides us with two disparate examples of wives who helped their husbands. First, let’s look at Devorah the prophetess. She lived in the period of the Judges, before the monarchy, when the Jews often fell prey to the Canaanites and Philistines living in the Land. Devorah was a prophetess, which means she had direct access to Hashem’s will. This exalted states comes only through a very high degree of spiritual development. According to the Talmud, Devorah’s husband was not initially on a high spiritual level. We are not told why they were married to each other. But we are told how she helped him develop. He liked to weave, so she would encourage him to make wicks for the lights in the Holy Tabernacle (the precursor to the Holy Temple). She gave him a way of expressing himself that he enjoyed and that also bound him to Hashem’s service. Hashem is the ultimate light, called mystically the Or Ein Sof, the infinite light. Light enables us to see what’s there, to see things as they are in truth. Devorah’s husband had the capacity to facilitate light, but he needed her to bring it forth. Devorah’s long-term goal was to actualize her husband’s potential to reveal truth. Her short-term goal was to have him make wicks and bring them to the Holy Tabernacle. In this case, the husband was on a lower spiritual plane than the wife. An opposite example provided by the Torah is the case of Rivka and Yitzhak. When they first met, Yitzhak was forty years old, descended from the saintly couple Avraham and Sara, and had gone through the Akeidah. Rivka was a little girl who came from a roguish family. When Rivka first saw Yitzhak, he was dovening the mincha prayer in the field. Rivka was riding on a camel from her ancestral home. The Torah tells us that as soon as she saw him, she slid off the camel. The implication is that she didn’t want to meet him in a situation where she was high and he was low, because she realized that that would contradict their true states. Part of one’s goal as an ezer kenegdo is to learn from one’s spouse. This entails submitting (when the situation calls for it) and admitting (that in some areas your husband surpasses you). Rivka’s next short-term goal in becoming a successful ezer kenegdo may raise some eyebrows. The Torah tells us that Yitzhak brought Rivka into the tent of his deceased mother Sarah. If Rivka had been into psychoanalytic theory, she would have resisted. She would have wanted to make a clear distinction between his mother and his wife. Rivka, however, didn’t resist because she was able to step into what his mother provided in terms of appropriately channeled feminine energy without feeling threatened that this was provided for him initially by another woman. The short term statement here is not only being unafraid to learn from the spouse, but also being unafraid to learn from his family. When Rivka stepped into Sarah’s tent, the three miracles which attended Sarah resumed. The candles that she lit before Shabbos stayed lit until the next Shabbos, her challah stayed fresh all week long, and a supernatural cloud hovered over her tent. What is a miracle? And why did these miracles happen? Most of us define “miracle” as something beyond the laws of nature. Yet how many human beings have a full grasp of all the laws of nature? The word for miracle in Hebrew is nes, which also means a banner or a flag. The function of a flag is to give people something to rally behind, something with which to identify. Seen in this light, a miracle is something which gives us insight into Hashem’s relationship to us. Weird happenings are not miracles; they are just weird happenings. What’s the difference between Uri Geller bending a spoon and Moshe splitting the sea? If you watch Uri Geller bend a spoon by mental telepathy, what do you know afterward? That Uri Geller can bend a spoon with mental telepathy. If, on the other hand, you had watched Moshe split the sea, afterwards you would know that G-d has a caring, saving relationship with the Jewish people. That revelation of Hashem is what defines a miracle. G-d caused these three miracles to happen in the tent of the Matriarchs in order to reveal His relationship to them and, as their descendents, potentially to us. Each one of the miracles parallels a different dimension of the relationship. Since the major weapon in fighting low self-esteem is having defined goals, let’s look deeply at these miracles, each of which parallels a goal in the marital relationship. 1. The candles stayed lit all week long. Women have the capacity to bring light into the home. As we saw from Devorah, this could be done by revealing to the husband what light he has in potential. Or, this could be done by revealing to oneself what one can learn from one’s husband. 2. The challah stayed fresh all week long. Challah represents the process of elevating the physical. According to Judaism, sanctity is not reserved exclusively for the Holy Temple. Rather, sanctity can exist even in the mundane bread we eat. Women’s lives are full of physical chores. Someone has to make the beds. Someone has to fold the laundry. Someone has to cook the dinner. People sometimes mistakenly think that that someone could just as well be Jeeves the butler, that physical chores are only physical chores. This is a profound misapprehension because chesed takes place in the real world. If you want to become a person who expresses kindness and giving, then you don’t sit and meditate on chesed. No, you actually do something for someone. You make the beds and fold the laundry and cook the dinner. After all, if chesed is your ideal, whom should you consider more admirable—the woman who distributes sandwiches to the homeless once a week or the woman who feeds her family twenty-one times a week? Your relationship as your husband’s ezer kenegdo entails not only identifying what he needs spiritually, but also identifying what he needs physically: not just the light that needs to be revealed but the underwear that needs to be washed. Providing for the physical needs of your family is a short-term goal that requires real transcendence. The transcendence involved in putting down what you are doing and getting up to do what needs to be done is an act of genuine helpfulness. To the extent you can do it, to that extent you are a successful wife. Give yourself credit for a goal accomplished. 3. A cloud hovered over the tent. What does a cloud symbolize? A cloud consists of water, but when you look at a cloud, you don’t see the water. Although clouds are easily visible, their nurturing essence, their moisture, is not visible. That’s why the Torah’s most common symbol of the Shechina, the feminine presence of G-d, is a cloud. The cloud over the Matriarchs’ tent represented the third mitzvah specifically directed to women: the laws of family purity, the sanctification of the marital union by the woman’s immersion in a mikveh. This means not only the sanctification of the sexual act, but also the sanctification of the emotional bond. Many marriages fail because both partners got married in order to receive. The “what about me?” mentality can destroy a marriage. When a woman gives herself to her husband sexually, she is giving herself totally—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The key word here is “giving.” This attitude, that I want to give and nurture, is represented by the cloud. The most well-known episode in Rivka’s later life was when she overheard her husband Yitzhak tell their older son Esav to go and hunt and prepare meat for him so that Yitzhak could bless Esav. Rivka immediately instructed their other son Yaakov to impersonate Esav and receive the blessing. When Yaakov balked at the deception, Rivka commanded him to obey her, promising that she would bear any curse that might ensue. If we consider this story for a moment, we realize that Rivka seemingly put herself in a no-win situation. What did Rivka think would happen as soon as Esav came home? Of course, Esav would find out. And what would he say? “Oh well, I didn’t want the blessing anyway”? No, of course he would be furious. And of course he would tell Yitzhak that they had both been deceived. And how would Yitzhak feel? So how could Rivka have engineered a situation in which logically her son Esav would be furious at her and at Yaakov, and her husband Yitzhak would be furious at her and at Yaakov? She certainly knew she couldn’t get away with the masquerade for longer than it took Esav to enter Yitzhak’s room and claim the blessing. The answer to this is very deep. Rivka initiated this scheme because she knew her husband well enough to know that once he perceived the truth of who should get the blessing (from the way Yaakov presented himself, which is another complex idea beyond the scope of this essay), Yitzhak would have the emotional maturity and spiritual depth not to respond with anger. Rivka’s handle on her husband’s strengths—not his weaknesses, but his strengths—was so developed that she could trust that he would respond properly. Now we have five ways for a wife to define success: · Knowing her husband’s strengths and providing outlets for them (like Devorah did). · Being able to receive the light from him as well as give it (like young Rivka did). · Providing his physical needs with whole-hearted giving (symbolized by challah). · Bonding without demanding immediate return (symbolized by the cloud). · Showing him that she trusts him (like the mature Rivka did). SELF-ESTEEM AS A MOTHER The challenge to achieving self-esteem in parenting is that it’s a very long-term process with no defined ending. You never graduate from being a mother, with a diploma and a grade-point average. So how do you know if you succeeded? Every mother has the same expectation when her child is born: that maybe he’ll be Moshiach. By the time he’s three, the expectation has been reduced to: maybe he’ll be a great Torah scholar. By the time he’s thirteen, you’re just hoping that he’ll turn out a mentch. So, in terms of realistic goals, the secret is to make short-term goals. Let’s divide childhood into the three segments that the sages of the Talmud distinguished: early childhood, before a child can speak; later childhood, until the age of ten; and from ten until the age of bar or bat mitzvah. 1. Early childhood. Many mothers have a skewed notion of what constitutes success with babies. How early the child sits up, or walks, or gets toilet-trained has nothing to do with the child’s subsequent success in life or your success as a mother. That your baby can say “Modeh ani” at a year, or knows the alphabet at eighteen months also does not qualify as success. And the idea that a “good baby” is a baby who is quiet and well-behaved is a total non sequitur. The mother’s major effort at this early stage of childhood should be to lay the foundation for the child’s character development. According to the Tomar Devorah, Hashem made human babies so much more dependent than animal babies so that the child can experience his mother’s compassion. The example of the mother’s compassion, imprinted in the baby before any conscious memories, lays the foundation for the child to develop into a compassionate person. Therefore, the short-term goal for a mother of young children is to set an example of good character traits. When you get up in the middle of the night to answer your baby’s cries, you’re teaching her to respond to the cries of others. When you clean out the tub before giving your baby a bath, you’re teaching him to care about the comfort of others. When you stop what you’re doing because your baby bumped her head, you’re teaching her that comforting others takes priority over other activities. If you routinely do any of these actions, rate yourself as a successful mother—even if the laundry is piled up and the sink is full of dishes! 2. Later childhood (from three to ten). According to the Or HaChaim, when a child reaches the age of three and is now verbal, in the sense of being able to extract abstract ideas, the child is now able to express his/her Divine image. This does not mean that three-year-olds are such big philosophers, but, unlike two-year-olds, they can express ideas beyond the concrete realities of food and toys. They understand what “good” and “bad” mean. Therefore, the short-term goal appropriate to this age is to foster the child’s spiritual self-image. For this reason, in the religious community, three-year-old boys start wearing a kippah and tzisses and girls start dressing with some modicum of modesty. The purpose of these new regimes is to instill a sense of spiritual self-awareness. The way to reinforce a child’s sense of his/her Divine image is to reward good deeds. Punishment is appropriate only when the child clearly knows s/he has done something wrong that can cause harm to themselves or others. Otherwise, reward is the appropriate mode. Reward at this age must be concrete and immediate. It does not help to tell a four-year-old, “You’re such a fine person.” He couldn’t care less about being a fine person. But a treat or a toy reinforces the idea, “What you just did was good to do.” Therefore, the mother must get out of her own needs to be more abstract, more intellectual, and view the child in terms of his/her own needs. A mother who can do that is a successful mother. 3. Age ten to bar or bat mitzvah. This is the stage when children become socialized. There are two goals at this stage: to facilitate the child’s forming friendships with children who are positive, rather than negative, influences; and to include the child in the mitzvot you do. You cannot pick your child’s friends, but you can send her to a school where the student population exhibits the kind of behavior of which you approve. You can sign him up for clubs and extra-curricular classes with other children who adhere to your values. It is unfair to expect a child to be the only one in his crowd who refrains from what the rest are doing. Don’t send your child to a school where the kids use drugs and tell him, “Just say no!” Find a school for him where conforming to his peers will produce results which match your values. Including your child in your mitzvot means that if you are having guests, he can set the table. If you are cooking for a family with a new baby, she can cut the vegetables. TWO DEVICES I’m going to make another suggestion in terms of short-term goals which confer a sense of self-esteem. Two devices facilitate the process we’ve laid out: 1. Keep a chart for yourself. Every time you do an action that you’ve defined as a short-term goal, give yourself a check. Nothing builds self-esteem like seeing rows of checks—whether you’re five or fifty! If you don’t perform the desired action today, leave the box blank. Nothing undermines self-esteem worse than an ugly “X.” 2. Reward yourself. Thirty checks or five consecutive days of a particular action gets you . . . a pint of Ben and Jerry’s or a new scarf or whatever you choose appropriate to that amount of effort. While you’re eating the ice cream, every cell of your body will be screaming: “I’m a success!” That will prime you to take on the next short-term goal.