Miriam Gisser: Recovery as Change

David Bashevkin:

Hello, and welcome to the 18Forty Podcast, where each month we explore a different topic, balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities, to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I’m your host, David Bashevkin, and this month we’re exploring teshuva, or transformative change in your life. This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big, juicy, Jewish ideas. So be sure to check out 18Forty.org, where you could also find videos, articles, and recommended readings.

Today’s episode is quite personal to me because I’m talking with somebody who I’ve known for many, many years, and really have followed her life through a great deal of building, rebuilding, destruction, rebuilding again, over and over again. And the story really begins probably around 10, 12 years ago, where, when I was a rabbinical student at Yeshiva University, going to get semicha, rabbinic ordination, there was a rule that in order to complete your rabbinic ordination, you needed to serve as a rabbinic intern in some organization, some shul, some school. And most people picked a synagogue, a shul, where they served as a rabbinic intern. A lot of people were educators in the classroom.

And I, probably foreshadowing a little bit of the ambiguity of what I do and who I am, I couldn’t decide. I didn’t really want to do a rabbinic internship, for whatever reason, in a shul. I also didn’t want to jump into classroom education all that soon. So I chose an organization known as JACS, which is for Jewish Alcoholics and Substance Abusers. And they were looking for rabbis and rabbinic interns who can go to their annual, sometimes bi-annual, retreats to participate, to serve as a listening ear, an encouraging soul in the room for everybody who was struggling at those conventions with addictions of different sorts.

So I joined JACS, and I went to several of their retreats. And I remember, at the first retreat that I went to, on Friday night, and JACS is just an amazing organization. I’m no longer affiliated with them, I honestly don’t even know if they still run retreats, but there’s a surreal experience of everybody coming together, and you look around, it’s the only truly non-denominational gathering I’ve ever really been a part of, where you have Chassidim in shtreimels, you have thoroughly progressive Jews, you have completely unaffiliated Jews, Orthodox, non-Orthodox, non-practicing, totally distant, but everyone is together because they all share a very common underlying purpose, which is dealing with addiction.

And on that first Friday night that I was at a JACS conference, on the way down, I think it was before davening or after, everybody davens separately, they have a whole bunch of minyanim, it’s like a minyan smorgasbord. They have something for everybody there. So on the way down I saw this person, I believe, if my memory serves me correctly, was wearing a shtreimel and a bekishe, and he had this unbelievably magnetic smile. And he introduced himself as Meilech Peltz.

Meilech was so sweet, and we started talking. And he told me that he was the chaperone of this group that was coming from a rehab facility that I believe was called Mike’s Place. And he was just so warm, so energetic, and we started talking and really built a friendship throughout that Shabbos because of our conversations about our mutual appreciation for the Hasidic school of Izhbitz, that I’ve mentioned many, many times. And it’s part of the namesake for this very podcast, 18Forty, because Izhbitz began in the year 1839, 1840, around Simchas Torah time. So we’re talking Chassidus, we’re talking life, and he admitted to me that he was in recovery, he was once an addict, but he was just so effusive, so warm. And that million dollar smile that he had has always stuck with me.

I met his family, his wife, Miriam, who we’re talking to today. And I believe she was expecting at the time. I think they had a little infant there in a stroller. I don’t remember all of the finer details. And after the shabbaton we kept in touch. We exchanged emails back and forth, we spoke about developing a newsletter, which I think he did, dedicated to this school of thought of chassidus. And over the years, we fell a little bit out of touch, but it became clearer and clearer over the years that he was struggling much more than he initially disclosed to me.

And eventually, and as years go by the relationship that began in-person with warmth and with real connection, it didn’t fray, there was no disruption, but it moved to more of an online relationship. We would comment on one another’s posts on social media. And I could see from his posts that he was changing and transforming. Eventually, I saw really only through Facebook, that he got divorced from his wife, he was no longer with his family, he was no longer clearly, very clearly no longer that involved in Jewish life like I remembered him as, those outward appearances clearly had disappeared. He took off the shtreimel, and he wasn’t wearing a bekishe anymore, wasn’t wearing a yarmulke. And he clearly was distant. But finding his way, he got back into boxing, he comes from a boxing family and working out. And he looked healthy and he looked great, but there was a distance from the Meilech Peltz that I once knew.

Fast forward a bunch of years, and I was at work in downtown Manhattan, and I bumped into a mutual friend who I knew from multiple places, but we both knew this intimate world of addiction. And this friend, let’s call him, for the story, let’s call him Sammy. And we met in the lobby of 11 Broadway, where my offices were, and I didn’t even recognize him right away, and we went upstairs, and I said, “Let’s have lunch together.” So we went upstairs, we were eating in my office talking, catching up. And as we were talking, I said, “Hey, why don’t we reach out to Meilech, send him a message, send him a picture, something that’s sweet.”

And we sent him a picture, it was very cute. Sammy stuck the chopsticks from his sushi in his nose. The message I wrote to him on Facebook on May 10th, 2017, at 12:07 PM, which I still have now in my Facebook Messenger, had the chopsticks in the nose, had me making a silly face, and I wrote to him, “Old times, old people, good people, sending love your way.” And as you can tell, with that little icon moved down, he read it. I believe this was on a Tuesday or Wednesday. At the end of that week on Friday, I got a call from an old friend of mine, who I knew previously, but I also knew from the JACS shabbaton, his name is Jeremy. And he called me up, and I heard like a quake in his voice, he doesn’t call me that often, and he said, “Did you hear? Meilech passed away, Meilech overdosed, and he’s no longer with us.”

And my heart sank because I had just texted him. I had just texted him just a few days ago. And to hear of him in that place was truly, truly, truly soul-shattering. Somebody who had so much excitement and optimism and effusiveness, someone who was really battling a lot of demons, even when I knew him, to hear his story come to an end in that way, was absolutely heartbreaking. And it was after he passed away that I actually reconnected with his then ex-wife, she’s now remarried, to Miriam. And I reconnected to Miriam, I reconnected to their children that she had with Meilech, Yaakov Moshe and the whole family, who are just unbelievable people.

And one of the things that I found so moving is that in his apartment in Florida, where he passed away, and it’s very likely he passed away on the day that I sent him that message, I don’t know how many hours later, but it’s nice to know that he saw at the very least in those final moments that there were people thinking about him, because I certainly was. But in his apartment they actually found a sefer that I had sent him. Because even after he left, even after he apparently seemed so distant from that Jewish life that he once embraced, when I published my sefer on sin and failure, particularly the Hebrew one, he reached out to me and said that he read it, and he sent me ideas and follow-ups based on it. And he was not all that involved at that time, but I was deeply moved that he even took the time to reach out, respond, and connect to it. And I had sent him a copy of that sefer, which was with him in that apartment when he passed away.

And I’ve become much closer to the family, I’ve remained in touch with his children, particularly with Miriam over these years. And I actually connected Miriam to tell her story, I urged her to tell her story, because she is somebody who models and embodies a certain fortitude, a certain strength, a certain resilience that I find embodies the values of what teshuvah is all about. And the reason why that is so is because Miriam, what she had to contend with, a marriage that she entered with all of the hopes, dreams, and ideals standing in front of her that she quickly discovered was really a house of cards in many ways. The person who she thought she was marrying did not turn out to be able to live the life that she had hoped for.

And I think so much of teshuva is really about that question of control. Which parts of our story are we able to control? Which parts of our story are we able to fashion in our own making? And I don’t think it is a coincidence that the first blessing that we have in Shemoneh Esrei, in our daily prayers, after the standard opening blessings that never changed, the first request that we make of God is, we ask God for daas, for wisdom, for knowledge. And following that request, then we ask for teshuva. Then we pray, “Hashivenu avinu letoratecha,” God, please bring me back to your Torah, and we make the blessing, “harotzeh beteshuva,” who wants repentance. I want to come back, I want to be close.

And this juxtaposition, why the first request we make is a request of “Atah chonen le’adam daas,” that God, you graciously endow man with wisdom, and we close that blessing of chonen hadaas. And right afterwards, we make that request for teshuva, those are the two opening blessings that we make. Any time I say that prayer three times a day, I think back to JACS, and I think back to the privilege of being in those rooms with people who were struggling to find control, order, some stability in their lives. And they close all of those meetings with a prayer, and it’s a very famous and well known prayer. It’s called the serenity prayer. And it goes, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

And anytime that I pray, that I daven for daas, for wisdom in my life, I think of that serenity prayer. The prayer for serenity to accept the things that you cannot change, the courage to change the things that you can, and this, the wisdom, to know the difference, is what I think underlies all of our prayers. It’s that question of control, that question, of what in my life can I control? And what in my life can I not control? And I think so much of teshuva, so much of the journey of reinvention after disappointment, after trauma, after difficulty, after failure is that question of, which elements of my life story are within my control? What is outside of my control?

And anytime I talk to Miriam, I hear, I see a woman who has contended and confronted with that question of, what is within my control? What is outside of my control that I need serenity for? And where ultimately is that wisdom to know the difference? And I think in anybody’s journey of harotzeh beteshuva, anybody’s journey of seeking teshuva, it begins with that question of chonen le’adam daas, of giving me wisdom, God, to understand and appreciate what is in my control and what lies outside of it. And that is why I am so excited for my conversation with Miriam Gisser.

Miriam has really rebuilt her life in incredible ways, and you should go check out the initial telling of her story in Mishpacha Magazine. It’s under a pseudonym, she wasn’t at that time comfortable using her own name. Obviously that has changed. She has rebuilt an incredible life for herself with her amazing husband, Dr. Gisser, who I’ve met personally, and her children. And her story to me is a story of serenity, of courage, and ultimately, of wisdom. And I hope you appreciate how she has navigated her life, and how hopefully, the wisdom, the serenity, and the courage that she embodies can help reflect on navigating your own. So without further ado, our conversation with Miriam Gisser.

I am so excited to introduce someone who I know for well over a decade now, it’s probably close to 15 years, who I met when I was serving as a rabbinic intern for JACS, which is a Jewish organization, that I believe still operates, for families and individuals struggling with substance abuse. We’re going to talk about the story of recovery, not from addiction to substances themselves, but to a family member who went through this story. And it is our pleasure, my pleasure, today to introduce my friend, Miriam Gisser.

Miriam Gisser:

Thank you so much. It’s an honor to have this privilege of sharing my story and sharing my road to recovery, because even though I was never addicted to any substance, addiction played a big role in my adulting and my being a fully functioning human being in society.

David Bashevkin:

Yeah. And I know you and your whole family, and it’s really remarkable just how healthy and well integrated… Like, I know you well and I know your children, and it’s really a remarkable story that I think more than anything else is a story of teshuva, of return and reconstructing your very religious identity, your emotional identity. And the place where I wanted to begin is to talk a little bit… Your first husband, Meilech Peltz, who died of a drug overdose, we’ll say that right from the outset of how this story ends, tell me who was the person that you married when you first got to know and committed to Meilech.

Miriam Gisser:

So, Meilech was larger than life. He was funny, he was serious, he embraced religion. He didn’t grow up religious and he embraced religion with every single fiber in his body and his being. He took it seriously and he wanted everybody to share that same love for religion. When I –

David Bashevkin:

Enthusiasm, I would say.

Miriam Gisser:

Right. Enthusiasm. Before I met him, I was young, I was 19. I was idealistic. And in my mind, I wanted to marry somebody who really exemplified loving God, and lived it, and not only lived it because he followed a certain directive, but lived it that you can actually see that he was living it. It almost exuded from him. And that’s who I married.

David Bashevkin:

And there’s no question that that exuberance was extraordinarily apparent. I remember, I first met him at a JACS weekend retreat. And his smile was so infectious. Neither of you were raised Hasidic, but you adopted certain outward… He used to wear a long Hasidic coat on Shabbos , and an up hat. He had a very outward love for all of the, I don’t want to use the word “trappings,” but for all of the external manifestations of religious commitment. And it wasn’t just external, meaning he was in love.

Miriam Gisser:

Right. So when he put on all of that garb, it wasn’t just… He said to me, “I need my outsides to match my insides.” So I think he really felt like this was the right thing to do, that he was living it and he was internalizing everything, and so it was time to dress it also. I knew that that really was a cover. I knew that when he put that on, that he was starting to live an addictive religious life as opposed to a real one. I think his healthiest was actually when he wasn’t wearing all of that stuff, and he was just having a real relationship with God through his learning and through his knowledge of Torah and of Chassidus.

David Bashevkin:

So before we get into your own journey, because this is not a conversation about your former husband, and it’s just lovely to see you remarried, building this incredible family and incredible home, but I want to fast forward now. After you married this idealistic person and what he represented for you, which is obviously an important part of the story, each of you were trying to realize your ideals through your relationship with one another. When did you first realize that something was amiss, that there was a brokenness? He told you before you got married that he was a recovering addict. When did you realize that this was not just something in his past, but addiction still lived in his present?

Miriam Gisser:

So I was… I think I had just given birth to our first son, Yaakov Moshe, and usually –

David Bashevkin:

Shout out to Yaakov Moshe, who I know and love. And I have no doubt will be in my WhatsApps at all hours of the day breaking down this conversation.

Miriam Gisser:

Right after he was born, Meilech started struggling with his new role as a father, and juggling his learning and his job at Yeshiva, he was a teacher at a Yeshiva in Israel. And usually, with addicts, a lot of them go through an emotional relapse before they actually use again.

David Bashevkin:

That’s an important point. State that again, and clearly.

Miriam Gisser:

Okay.

David Bashevkin:

An emotional relapse before you start using.

Miriam Gisser:

Right. So there’s an emotional relapse before an addict picks up again for the first time. Meaning, in that time, if they’ve been sober before, they stop going to meetings, they stop working with twelve steps, they stop surrounding themselves with people in recovery, and they start resorting to behaviors that are like survival techniques for them. So they start getting arrogant, they start to try and control the things, people, and places around them, they start to deflect. And if you know there’s a problem, then it becomes the other person’s problem, and not their own problem. They blame a lot on what’s happening to them as opposed to taking responsibility.

That was a big one in our relationship. It was always my fault, and there was no accountability or responsibility. I knew that Meilech was on the road to that relapse, he was already emotionally relapsing. So I would say, when Yaakov Moshe was a baby, that emotional relapse took place. And that emotional relapse usually lasted about a year before he actually picked up. And… Yeah.

David Bashevkin:

No, I just want to pause in this, because the notion of having an emotional relapse before you return back to the actual actions that cause the suffering, meaning the very actions, to me it just resonates so much. I thank God every day, I have an addictive personality, I am not an addict in the formal sense, but to me, when I think of the cycles of teshuva, of recovery, of return, I know in myself that there are these emotional relapses that I have before you go back to those patterns of behavior that can be so destructive. And it’s such an important diagnosis to be able to see somebody withdrawing into that emotional place, where they’re not going to be able to make the choices that ultimately sustain them. So tell me more, at what point did you realize that the emotional relapse had become much more than that?

Miriam Gisser:

So I would say Yaakov Moshe was a baby when I noticed certain behaviors that I would call leading into a full blown emotional relapse. And then I got pregnant with our second, Nuni, and about six months into my pregnancy, I realized that he must be using, but it took me a full year to find any evidence. So I lived a crazy life.

David Bashevkin:

So explain to me, meaning, obviously, addicts, and this I think anybody who’s ever done anything destructive in their lives, and everybody in one way or another, whether it’s your relationship with food, your relationship with religion itself, your relationship with your family members, we’ve all had moments where we do something destructive, but there’s a privacy, there’s almost an intimacy, to the destructive behaviors.

Miriam Gisser:

Right.

David Bashevkin:

Was he deliberately covering his tracks, so to speak?

Miriam Gisser:

Yes.

David Bashevkin:

Hiding it?

Miriam Gisser:

He was hiding it. He was denying it. I was crazy. I didn’t see anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about. He even at one point framed a friend, like, “This guy is suffering from this, and he needs painkillers, and he’s getting it from out of country, and he has to hide it from his wife.” And I was so in denial and steeped in denial that I believed it. And then when his friend called me to say, “Look, this is what’s going on,” I was like, “No way, this is your stuff. Don’t put it on me.” It was crazy. I mean, I opened the door to a mailman, accepted a package, opened it, saw the drugs, gave it to him, and then they were gone.

David Bashevkin:

Wow.

Miriam Gisser:

And so I was nuts, because he didn’t have anything. And so that was kind of the pattern that was happening in our house. “You’re using.” “No, I’m not.” “Yes, you are.” “Prove it.” I couldn’t. There was nothing.

David Bashevkin:

There was a gaslighting component. It reminds, me in many ways, though obviously the stakes were not quite as high, I remember in high school, it was always a whole game to buy alcohol when you were underage, which is not something I’m proud of, or obviously endorse. But something that I remember happening, I remember one morning, my mother picked up one of my jackets. I was still in bed with my eyes closed, but sleeping, and I heard when she picked up the jacket the clang of the bottles that were inside of the jacket. And I remember the fear that my private discretion of me and my friends was now exposed to my mother, and I had to think fast. And I remember getting up yawning, with my mother in the room, who just found me, and saying, “Those are for Purim,” and I blamed it on a friend. Purim was like in three months, and I blamed it on a friend. It shows you the gaslighting that people will do to cover their own brokenness.

Miriam Gisser:

Right.

David Bashevkin:

Now, I just want to cover the basic timetable of events before we unpack them. So you now exposed him a year after this emotional relapse. Did you confront him? Did you say, “I’m going to walk away from this marriage”? Meaning, the marriage didn’t end right then and there. So what was the next chapter?

Miriam Gisser:

Right. So he was forging prescriptions from our family doctor in Israel, and the family doctor… Yaakov Moshe had a lot of ear infections, and I was at an appointment, and he said, “I need to know that you’re safe. I figured out this is what’s happening. Can I do anything for you?” And I said to him, “Well, my husband actually has a gun in the house.” And at that point, the drugs made him paranoid. And so he was thinking things were under the bed, and there was a gun in the house, and two babies in the house, and myself in the house. And he said, “Well, tonight,” the doctor said to me, “Tonight you have to say, ‘Give me your gun or I’m leaving.’”

And so that night that’s what I did. I said, “Give me your gun or I’m leaving,” and he wouldn’t give me his gun. And we left to good friends of ours who took good care of us. And the doctor actually called the police and he spent a night in jail. And this is the craziness of addiction, is that when I saw him at the police station, he looked at me and he said, “This is all your fault.” And at that point, since he knew I wasn’t coming back, I guess he hit his rock bottom for that period, and he ended up going to rehab in Pittsburgh. He came back after two months and knew that he needed more time, so we went to Pittsburgh for the summer and we ended up staying in Pittsburgh –

David Bashevkin:

And this is probably when I first met you was after this first relapse and his first stint in –

Miriam Gisser:

Right. So he had a good year, and then we met on a JACS shabbaton, that was the first one that I went to, and I was pregnant with our third child at that point.

David Bashevkin:

So you were willing to give this another chance? Meaning, after a stint in rehab, bring a gun into the house, and now you’re pregnant with a third child. At this point, help me understand, what was the final straw that ultimately dissolved the marriage?

Miriam Gisser:

Well, there were two more relapses, and another child. And at that point I said, I started Al-Anon, we did marriage there, couples’ therapy, I did individual therapy. And I kind of turned to God and said, “I’ve done everything I think you want me to do, and so now I’m done.” And I’m going to put my children and myself, more myself, because I believe that I always kept my children first, but I was ready to say, “I’m not scared of being a single mother. And I’d rather be a single mother than be married to somebody who could possibly relapse again.” I just, I was ready.

David Bashevkin:

So this is really the focus of what I want to discuss, because as I mentioned, I have extraordinarily fond memories of Meilech. And really, I am still able to sustain the beauty that he was, even with all of the destruction, unfortunately, that he left in his wake and the tragic end of his life. But what I really want to talk about is your journey towards recovery. And I want maybe the unpack a little bit about what is Al-Anon? It is for family members of people who are addicts, and who are in addiction. But I would almost ask you like, you just married this guy, you’re not addicted to anything, allegedly, what exactly is Al-Anon treating for you?

Miriam Gisser:

Okay. So when you come into the rooms of Al-Anon, you’ll hear a lot, “I came to fix him, and I stayed because it made me better.” So, going into Al-Anon I believed that if I went to these groups, and I worked the twelve steps, then he wouldn’t use again. And the point of Al-Anon is not to fix your addict. The point of Al-Anon is to create a stronger person in you, a person that believes in themselves, a confident person, a person that recognizes they can’t control the addict, they didn’t cause his addiction, and they can’t cure it, and a person that can live in the world and be happy despite whatever their addict is doing.

And the twelve steps, we use the same twelve steps as Alcoholics Anonymous, and what we unpack in the twelve steps is character traits in us that keep us addicted to the addict, keep us dependent on the addict. And whether I needed this before I married him, or he created monsters within me that I had to unpack, is I guess a question. But being married to an addict, or having friends or family members that are addicts, it really destroys your self-image, your self-confidence. And I needed to rebuild that. And I think that Al-Anon is what rebuilt it for me. It really brought me back to life.

David Bashevkin:

Because I think for me, the reason why I find the lens of Al-Anon almost even more insightful than AA is that not everybody struggles with addiction, and not everybody understands what that is, but nearly everybody has people in their lives that make them feel a certain way. And we kind of become addicted, as you said, to the image of that person, and we take on too much responsibility, we come too enmeshed in that person’s success at the expense of our own. Tell me a little bit about the process of Al-Anon. In your mind, when you were going there, was this parallel to your religious identity, or a part of your religious identity?

Miriam Gisser:

This was a part of my religious identity. So I grew up, just rewinding a little bit, I grew up in a religious home, a modern, regular, Jewish home. I went to day school, I went to yeshiva high school, I went to seminary. And I knew everything that I was supposed to do, but I didn’t really have a relationship with God. So they told me to daven twice a day, I did. They told me to light Shabbos candles, I did. But there was no meaning behind it. There was no real connection to it. And in my journey in Al-Anon, it didn’t only create a healthy person, but it also created a healthy relationship with God, as how I think he would want me to live my life.

David Bashevkin:

He being God himself?

Miriam Gisser:

He being God, exactly. Exactly. So when I came into Al-Anon, I still kept everything. Through Meilech’s addiction, there were moments where I was angry at God, but I think my foundation from growing up was strong enough that I believed whatever was happening was for a reason. I just had to figure out my part in this journey. So instead of living Meilech’s journey with him, I had to figure out what God wanted me to do. And I couldn’t figure that out just by talking to a rabbi, or talking to a mentor in my Jewish circles. I needed Al-Anon to help me figure out what my journey is.

And Al-Anon is a spiritual program, it’s not a religious program. So you’re sitting in a circle with people that say – we don’t call it God, we call it a higher power – and they’ll say, “Love is my higher power,” or they’ll say, “God is my higher power,” or they’ll say, “My neighbor is my higher power.” Everybody picks their own higher power. Because of my foundation in Judaism, my higher power is Hashem. And so, I worked the Al-Anon twelve steps, which are the same twelve steps as Alcoholics Anonymous, through the Jewish lens.

David Bashevkin:

So tell me a little bit, because I’m always intrigued by stories of teshuva. And when I first called you about this, you right away said, “Yes, this is a story of teshuva.” But what I’m always intrigued about is, we have a certain image of stories of teshuva leading to more religiosity. But from an outside observer, when I first met you, you had a Hasidic looking husband. Now your second husband is a lovely guy, great looking guy, but he’s a doctor, a regular person. Your kids when I met you had long peyos, and now they no longer do. And a lot of your outward affiliations, those outward markings of your religious life, have gone in the other direction, but at the same time, you look at the trajectory of your story as moving towards more religiosity.

Miriam Gisser:

Right. So –

David Bashevkin:

Tell me, I just want to frame one point in this. I want you to unpack a little bit abou t why you felt… You had mentioned that you didn’t feel comfortable reaching out to rabbis or your typical mentors. Was that because of your own insecurity in the trajectory of your religious journey? Was it because of the sensational way that your religious journey was structured and what you were dealing with? Why wasn’t it that your story could be solved or fixed by just the normal… I don’t know, speak to a rabbi?

Miriam Gisser:

I don’t want to make a generalization, because a lot of rabbis do understand addiction, but rabbis don’t understand addiction. And so, when you go to a rabbi and say, and I’m going to be very blunt now, “I have to go to the mikvah tonight and I do not want to be with my husband because he is emotionally abusive,” and they say, “Well, you have to go and you have to daven,” I’m sorry, I don’t want to go to a rabbi. Right? So, they meant well, like God forbid I would never, ever say anything bad about it, they meant well, but they just so –

David Bashevkin:

I’ve always been struck by how hesitant you are at criticizing, which, it’s really lovely, but –

Miriam Gisser:

But they don’t know addiction, they don’t understand what it’s like to be married to an addict, and they don’t understand the emotions and the crazy that I was living. But when I called my sponsor in Al-Anon and said, “I don’t want to be with my husband,” she was like, “So don’t. You need to be true to yourself. You need to listen to your gut, you need to pray about it, talk to your higher power, and then do what you know is right for you.” So she didn’t negate God. God was there. Pray about it. But then do what’s good for you.

David Bashevkin:

Just tell me, was your sponsor Jewish?

Miriam Gisser:

No. My sponsor was… She’s Catholic. Yeah.

David Bashevkin:

Was that hard for you? That, again, I’m trying to unpack, because you grew up not just in a very religious home, but you served as a religious mentor to others. And I think a lot of times we become addicted not just to the personalities of our spouses, but to a certain image and conception of who we are religiously. And it sounds like in your story, you needed to let go of a lot of those conceptions that you probably cultivated when you were seen as a young, cool teacher in a yeshiva, and you had a husband who had all these students. What allowed you to let go of that?

Miriam Gisser:

So, you’re right. Part of what attracted me to Meilech in the first place was that he had the look. And you’re right when you said that usually, when people go through a spiritual journey or a religious journey, they end up taking on more, or looking a little more religious, I guess. And in my story that didn’t happen. And that’s because I was attracted to the look, and I didn’t realize that you also needed to live the look. And I’m married to a wonderful husband now who may not look like it, but he lives it. He is it.

David Bashevkin:

No, we love your husband.

Miriam Gisser:

Right? So, I wanted a mensch, and I wanted somebody who was religious, and I wanted somebody who davens three times a day, and learned in yeshiva, and cared about Halakha, and what God had to say, and I got that the first time for a little bit, but overall the addiction took over, he couldn’t really live it. And that was with all the trappings. And I realized that the… Is it externality? The externals don’t really matter. It’s really the way you treat other people and your relationship with God. And I think that’s the key, is that prior to my journey, there was no relationship, it was just doing. Now there’s a relationship, I talk to God. It’s like, how are we going to do this today? And it’s not just Modeh Ani, or just blessings over the food, but it’s about, I am a co-director right now of a preschool. “How is this going to happen in three weeks? God, how are we going to do this? Tell me what I need to do. Allow me to be open to suggestions.” And then all of a sudden, things start to happen.

David Bashevkin:

So I want to fast forward to the real point of tragedy. Your story was told in print under a pseudonym in the pages of Mishpacha Magazine under a very moving title called Relapse, Rebuild. And it was in the Lifelines section, I actually was involved in the magazine at the time, and connected you to them. And it’s a beautiful article that I’ll of course link to. And in that article, they quote you as saying, “In Al-Anon they say, ‘There are three things that can happen to drug addicts: they can get clean, they can land in jail, or they can die of an overdose.’ On some level, I,” referring to you in this article, “always knew that any of those things could happen to your husband. I just preferred not to think about the latter two possibilities.” At some point my story intersects with this because I had sent Meilech a message literally the day that he passed away that I know that he read, you could see it’s a read message, it was probably hours before he died. You got a phone call that Meilech had overdosed. Tell me a little bit about what flashes through your mind when that chapter, you’re not yet remarried, but you’re already living on your own with your children. What are the feelings that bubble up when it’s such a long chapter in your own life? I mean, you were divorced at the time, but this was a big chapter closing. What was your reaction?

Miriam Gisser:

I mean I’m still crying. So, it’s hard to believe that it actually happened. My mother-in-law, ex-mother-in-law, Meilech’s mother, was calling me and calling me, and I knew, because I was at work, that the only reason she would call me and call me was because something like this happened. We had separated for three years, officially divorced for about two, and he had only seen the kids a handful of times because in the time that I left, the last time, and I was saying, “I’m getting divorced,” to the time that he overdosed, he was in and out of relapsing.

So my kids were like, “We want to see Abba, we want to see Abba.” And on some level, I had originally thought, “Oh, he’s a disgusting father, he’s not even seeing his children,” but I realized that really he was just protecting them, because he was in such a bad place. So somebody actually said to me, “Why are you even sad? You divorced him.” I spent a lot of years with him, and a lot of emotional energy, and shared four children with him. And so it’s sad that he died, and it’s sad that he couldn’t overcome his addiction, because he did have the tools. And AA and Al-Anon, they always say, “It works if you work it. If you work the program, you’ll stay sober. One day at a time, but you have to work it.” And he just couldn’t work it every day.

David Bashevkin:

So, I’m seeing clearly, and you’re such a strong person, I rarely see you display that vulnerability and emotion, because I feel like you’ve packed it up so well, and it’s so well organized on that shelf all the way in the back of the attic. But I want to talk about a question that was addressed in the article, but I wanted to unpack a little bit more about this residual emotion, about periods in your life that didn’t go the way that you wanted them to. How do you make peace with the questions of what if? I think any story of teshuva, any story of reimagining yourself, there’s a double pain of confronting the choice, but also the residual regret of, why couldn’t I have done this sooner? Why couldn’t I have left sooner? And I wonder if this period in your life, where does it exist in your mind? Are you constantly thinking, I wish I could have gotten out of this sooner? I wish I could have asked better questions when we were dating and not marry him? How do you confront the question of what if in your story and your life?

Miriam Gisser:

So, I asked that question, what if, once. And I’ll tell you what the story was. It was when I wanted to get divorced. I was ready. It was the third relapse. And I called, this time I did call a rabbi, I called Rav Yoel, who’s… we were very close to in Israel and I kept in touch with. And I said to him –

David Bashevkin:

He’s a rabbi in the yeshiva that he was teaching. Yeah.

Miriam Gisser:

He’s a rabbi at Netiv Aryeh, and we were very close with him. Yaakov Moshe actually just went to visit him, he’s in Israel now, and Yaakov Moshe just went to visit him.

David Bashevkin:

Beautiful.

Miriam Gisser:

And I called him up, and I said to him, “I want to get divorced.” And he said, “Are you sure you want to get divorced this time?” I said, “Yes, I’m sure.” And I also said in the same conversation, “But what if we hadn’t left Israel? And what if this? And what if this?” And he said to me, “Miriam, you have enough to deal with. If you want to go crazy, keep asking what if. But if you want to live your life, stop.” And I never asked what if, because part of it is, I created, through Al-Anon, a relationship with God, that whatever happens, happened, and whatever… This is my journey, this is all part of a journey. And so, I can’t have my four beautiful children and not have been married to Meilech for as long as I was. And I couldn’t have ended up in Pittsburgh and met my future husband if I wasn’t in the relationship that I was. And so, yes, hindsight is 2020, but at the same time, there’s a purpose. And so, I handle, I guess, my what ifs with finding the purpose in it. And I never wanted to get divorced before I actually decided. People always said, “You should have, you didn’t, why didn’t you?” Like, I wasn’t ready. And that’s what I tell when people call me and ask me when they’re in situations, whether it’s addiction or not, or just marriage –

David Bashevkin:

Life.

Miriam Gisser:

Life, what should I do? And I’m like, “Don’t make any big emotional decisions in the heat of the destruction. You have to wait.” And that is a piece that Al-Anon really gave to me. Don’t make any big decisions, sit and wait. And the best advice my sponsor gave to me was, don’t talk, just watch. And you’ll know what you have to do. And at that point, I watched. And I even told this to Meilech, I said, “It’s November. I’m going to give this six weeks. You get help, great. If you don’t, great.” And I didn’t say anything. Literally, I did not say anything, and I just watched. And it became so clear to me that this is what I had to do for my family. And I don’t think I could have done that after he relapsed the first time.

David Bashevkin:

There’s a duality that I’m just so intrigued by in you taking ownership and being empowered in your own story. Because I think that this duality underlies so much of people’s religious and emotional struggles, which is that you had to let go of your insistence on control in order to take control of your own life. Meaning, you were trying to control so much that was outside of your control, the Meilechs, the perceptions, and all of these things, that you were really unable to write and empower your own story. And I’m just curious what your relationship is now with religious control? Meaning… Let me even rephrase it differently. When people say, “God will never send you a test that you cannot pass,” or, “Everybody has the ability to overcome,” do you still look at that statement in the same way? Have you reimagined what your individual capacity is for dealing with stress of this nature?

Miriam Gisser:

I believe that. I believe that God doesn’t give somebody something they can’t handle. I believe that he puts tests and challenges in people’s life as a way to reach out to him and ask for help. The outcome might not be what we necessarily want to control it to be, but if we really let go and allow God to work in our life, the outcome might even be better.

David Bashevkin:

I love that.

Miriam Gisser:

And I think that is in Al-Anon 100%. Meaning, you come in, and you’re right, you think you can control everything in your life that’s outside of you. And the first three steps, I’m not going to say them all because they’re pretty long, but in a nutshell, the first three steps is, I can’t, you can, so I’ll let you. Like, I can’t juggle, I’m powerless over the, when it was the addiction, I’m powerless over the addiction, I’m powerless over my husband. Or even like, I’m powerless over the way my daughter dresses. Or, I’m powerless over how much TV my kids are watching when I have to work. You can, God, just let me know. I’m giving it to you. And now I’m going to let you. So whatever happens, happens. And sometimes the house is clean, and they weren’t watching TV the whole time when I was at work.

David Bashevkin:

And sometimes they were, meaning –

Miriam Gisser:

Sometimes they were, right. Right. Exactly. But that’s okay. It’s really allowing God to work in your life. In Al-Anon and AA they have a phrase that, “Oh, your best thinking got you into your rooms, into these rooms.” Right? So my best thinking got me married to an addict and into Al-Anon. And really, my letting go and allowing God in my life and working the program kept me in Al-Anon, created a strong person that could divorce the addict in my life, and created an even stronger person that could raise children by herself, and then want to get remarried and want to rebuild.

David Bashevkin:

I think the most moving part in the original article that retells your story under a pseudonym is this paragraph which, if you’ll allow me to read, some of it you’ve already mentioned. You write, again, it’s written in first person, and so the ‘I’s refer to you.

Miriam Gisser:

Right.

David Bashevkin:

And the article says, “By this time I was able to detect the pattern. Each relapse coincided with your husband shouldering additional responsibility, whether due to the birth of a child or due to the family’s financial needs. About 8 to 12 months before each drug relapse came an emotional relapse, in which he would stop going to meetings and start heaping blame and emotional abuse on me.” Now, this is the part that I found so moving, and wanted to talk to you a little bit more about. “Addiction is a disease of isolation, and meetings force people to share and connect instead of closing themselves off and turning to drugs or other ways of escaping their pain.” I am curious if you also were suffering from the disease of isolation? Meaning, in your role in Al-Anon, before you were able to come into this program, what was your relationship with isolating yourself? And how did you break out of that?

Miriam Gisser:

Well, I had to hide that my husband at the time was an addict. So, I couldn’t tell my friends.

David Bashevkin:

And you did hide?

Miriam Gisser:

I did hide. I did. I didn’t tell my friends, I didn’t tell my family at the time, I didn’t tell his parents, I didn’t tell anybody. So, in the house, I was falling apart, but outside of the house, I took my children to nursery, I had a job, I did the grocery shopping. And then I came home and fell apart again. It was very hard. I was very alone. And this happened when we were living in Israel after the first relapse, and when we were living in Pittsburgh until after the second relapse. After the second relapse, I was much more rooted in Al-Anon, and when he said to me, “I don’t want you to tell our friends,” I said, “I need to. Because I need support, not only in the rooms, but I need support in my friend circles too.”

David Bashevkin:

To live an integrated life.

Miriam Gisser:

Right.

David Bashevkin:

Because I think, any time that I would get trapped in any sort of addictive behavior, and again, I’m so thankful for the fact that I was never an actual addict of drugs, but everyone has behaviors and patterns. There was a ritualistic isolation component to it. Meaning, it was almost the opposite of what you think is the social smoker, the social drinker. The addict retreats and does it in absolute private and doesn’t want… Because they want to preserve that outside image. And to be able to let go of that and expose those vulnerabilities is really a path forward.

Which leads me to what I, in many ways is the final question in this entire story, which is a persistent theme in literature about teshuva, whether it’s in the Talmud, or in Midrash, is the way it reinvents your past, the way that your past mistakes can become merits. But in another sense, the way that the past is separate, that we’re not supposed to remind somebody of things that they did inappropriately, you’re not supposed to bring up those stories of difficulty and pain and suffering. And my question for you now: you’re remarried. You have this wonderful, amazing family. Where and how does Meilech exist following this teshuva story in your life right now?

Miriam Gisser:

Everywhere. Meaning, through everything I was very open and honest with my kids. And so, we keep that open and honest relationship. The kids will often tap into, well, what would Abba say about this? Or what did he think about this? Or Yaakov Moshe getting more into learning, he’s on some level trying to learn what his father, learn to see if he could connect to it, and realizing like, I have my own journey. I don’t need to do those things. He helped me help me.

David Bashevkin:

No, I’m curious because you have this very healthy relationship with your own past. You don’t isolate anymore. It’s a very public part. You weren’t all that hesitant about talking about a story about your first husband overdosing on drugs, when much of his career was spent as an educator in a yeshiva. And I’m just curious of how do you… Because you’re not separating the flaws out from the memories, you’re not sifting away the difficult times. How do you manage to preserve a healthy relationship with this chapter in your life given how far away proverbially your family has gone since this very difficult chapter? How do you manage to preserve the memory of somebody who was so complex, had such beautiful qualities, and obviously caused you personally a great deal of pain, but you preserve this for your children? What gives you the strength and ability to do this?

Miriam Gisser:

It’s just what it’s supposed to be. I don’t know if I can really explain it or put it into words, I just think that, like we said, God gives people a test, and then what do you do with the test? Right? So I think that part of my journey is raising my kids to be aware of addiction, raising my kids to be compassionate to people that might suffer from similar things that they suffered from, being available to people that may be struggling with similar things.

It’s like, the Jewish people are supposed to be a light unto the nations, and I feel like, if I just compartmentalize and put my story on that shelf in the attic, then what was the point? But if I can spread that light, a difficult light, but if I can spread it and help people, then that’s the goal. And the goal is not even like, oh, maybe if she listens to this, then she won’t marry the addict. No. The goal is, whoever’s listening to this and whatever they’re struggling with, that there’s hope, that there’s like… that we are given the strength, the DNA to overcome challenges.

And so, whatever is in front of you, it’s just a matter of figuring it out, how to overcome it. And it’s not going to take 24 hours or 10 minutes. It’s all about being patient with yourself – I had to be patient with myself – and allowing things to happen at the right time. Which goes back to, I didn’t get divorced after the first time he relapsed, that wasn’t the right time for me. And so, it’s a journey. Life is a journey.

My husband now, he’s always like, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a marathon, and there are obstacles along the way, and if you can take those obstacles and learn from them and make them part of you, and then continue to share them, then I think that’s what you’re supposed to do.

David Bashevkin:

So before we get into our rapid fire questions, and I just so appreciate your story, and you know how inspired I am by your journey, I just want to ask a broad, 10,000-feet up in the air question. Help distill for me: when you look back on your chapter with Meilech in Israel, moving to Pittsburgh, what do you think the takeaway for others is regarding their understanding of teshuva? How did this reorient the way you think about teshuva itself, repentance?

Miriam Gisser:

I think the way I look at it is that you don’t just do teshuva once and then you’re done. I think it’s a story of hope, and it’s a story that… I’m thinking.

David Bashevkin:

No, I love that idea. You don’t do teshuva once –

Miriam Gisser:

Once. Right.

David Bashevkin:

There was a perpetual thread of moving forward, retreating, and that patience in many ways is what gave you the strength to endure all of this.

Miriam Gisser:

Right. So I think it’s… right, you don’t do teshuva once, and that life is a journey, that things happen that are out of your control, and that can you live through it, or rise above it, or survive it, or find meaning? It’s really finding meaning in it. Can I find meaning in the experiences that I have? And if I can find meaning in it, then that strengthens my relationship with God. And I think teshuva, you break down the word, is returning. Where are you returning to? You’re returning to God.

So it didn’t matter that maybe I looked more religious 10 years ago, I needed to return to God. It wasn’t like God was like, “Well, you look good, so you’re good, I’ll leave you alone.” It was more, “You might look good, but where’s the real connection? Where’s that intimacy that we’re supposed to have with God?” And I think that doing that teshuva, getting on that journey, and really unpacking what I’m supposed to be doing and how I’m supposed to be living my life has made my connection stronger.

David Bashevkin:

That perpetual commitment to teshuvah itself is something that I see you modeling for your entire family, for your children, and it’s something so heartening. I always end interviews with more rapid-fire questions. My first question is, somebody who may not be an addict, but is looking to understand the process and the steps of Al-Anon, or AA, whatever it is, because I do think these steps are more relevant, far more relevant than just for people who were formerly drug addicts in whatever which way. What is a book that you found helpful throughout your journey?

Miriam Gisser:

S, I really like the Al-Anon twelve steps, and it’s called… Oh, Al-Anon Twelve Steps And Twelve Traditions. It goes through each step, it’s very short chapters, they go through each step and each tradition. And then there’s a lot of stories in the back, and they’re very relatable. Al-Anon has a lot of daily readers, which are also good. So it’s like, a little paragraph each day just to familiarize yourself with the steps and the slogans of Al-Anon. A book that is not from Al-Anon or AA, there’s a book called God of Our Understanding by Rabbi Shais Taub. That is a really good book for anybody who doesn’t… You don’t have to be an addict, and it’s a good book. It’s a strong book. And it really uncovers the steps and the traditions.

David Bashevkin:

That is absolutely fascinating. And it sounds to me, correct me if I’m wrong, that the steps still play a role of sorts in your life.

Miriam Gisser:

Yeah. Well, I was going to say before, from your other question, the 10th step is basically unpacking the day and making amends right away. So it’s thinking about your day, and it’s literally like teshuva in 30 seconds. Thinking about your day, thinking about the interactions you have. Did you do the right thing? Did you make good choices? Yes, great. No, okay, how do I fix it? And I wake up in the morning and I do that really quick. I can’t, you can. So, I’ll let you, and at night I do a really quick, did I do okay today? And it works if you work it.

David Bashevkin:

To this day that is absolutely beautiful. I’m always curious, if somebody gave you a great deal of money that allowed you to take a sabbatical, go back to school, and get a PhD, what do you think the subject and topic of that PhD would be?

Miriam Gisser:

Wow. The topic would probably be, and this is not in any fancy words here, is how to be nice to yourself.

David Bashevkin:

How be nice to yourself. What a lovely… I don’t know if that’s in the psychology department, or in the sociology, but what a lovely topic.

Miriam Gisser:

Basically, a lot of people, and myself included, we’re very hard on ourselves, and we push and we push and we push, and we’re not really sure when is enough. I mean, I still struggle with this. And it’s just how to know when you really did the most. And you could say, “Good night. I’ll see you in the morning.” And just being patient with yourself.

David Bashevkin:

I love, how to be nice to yourself, a book that, if you ever wrote it, whether it’s from an accredited university or just a pamphlet, I would absolutely read. Because it is something that I think, it underlies a lot of that emptiness that the addict is trying to fill, whether it’s the addict or people adjacent to their lives. They’re not nice to themselves, they feel inadequate. And it’s that foundational inadequacy that they’re trying to fill, but don’t have the ingredients to ever make a dent in that hole.

Miriam Gisser:

I actually think probably most people in the world are not nice to themselves. I mean, I can’t imagine somebody who works until one in the morning and then gets up at four in the morning, it doesn’t matter how much money they make, that they’re really nice to themselves. They must have something going on underneath that is pushing them to work like that. And I can’t imagine that that’s really healthy. Whether it’s their love of money, or their love of being busy… There’s a story from Rabbi Twersky, who said, he went to the hot springs, and after, in really short, and after like two minutes he was done. And they were like, “What do you mean? There’s this, and there’s that, and you have to sit here for at least an hour.” And he realized, he couldn’t sit with himself for an hour. And so, I think most people in the world can’t just sit with themselves, myself included. I struggle with this all the time.

David Bashevkin:

Because they’re not nice to themselves. And that’s why your –

Miriam Gisser:

Right. They need to be nice to themselves.

David Bashevkin:

That’s why your forthcoming book, How to Be Nice to Yourself, is so needed and so important, particularly in the process of teshuva, in the process of adjusting our expectations. Like, there’s an idea that I heard from my rabbi, Rabbi Ezra Neuberger in Ner Yisroel, who said at the heart of teshuva is doing teshuva on your expectations. That sometimes our expectations are simply too high, and sometimes they are simply too low. And the greatest place to focus the intensity of the teshuva process is on our expectations themselves. And I think that that’s grounded on this notion of how to be nice to yourself. Not too nice, you don’t want to have no expectations, but you also don’t want to have unrealizable expectations and live with that inadequacy. I absolutely love that.

My last question, probably the easiest one though, my guests always trip and stumble on it and they find it’s the most irrelevant question, and they are probably right. What time do you go to sleep, and what time do you wake up in the morning?

Miriam Gisser:

Okay. I go to sleep between 11:00 and 11:30, and I wake up between 5:30 and 6:00.

David Bashevkin:

Hello, 5:00 AM, that’s not a joke. You’re doing Daf Yomi? What’s happening? 5:00 AM, that’s very impressive.

Miriam Gisser:

No, I didn’t say wake up at 5:00 AM, my alarm goes off at 5:00 AM. I try and get out of bed by 6:00.

David Bashevkin:

Got you.

Miriam Gisser:

And I have incorporated running into my healthy habits of life. And so, my husband and I try and run in the morning. Whether we do it together or separately, I try and exercise in the morning.

David Bashevkin:

My blessing that I know I will never, I don’t know if I will ever realize in my life, is to become one of those couples. That is when you know that the Bashevkins have been fully realized. Let’s just say, we are not even close to any part of that dream of waking up early and running together. #Relationshipgoals.

Miriam Gisser:

Yeah, except that we don’t talk. So we’re just literally running. But it’s still, we’re doing it together, it’s something we share, and we like to make it, so yes.

David Bashevkin:

Miriam Gisser, thank you so much for your time today. It has been such a privilege and pleasure hearing your story.

Miriam Gisser:

Thank you.

David Bashevkin:

I mentioned in the opening that I had sent Meilech Peltz, her first husband, alav hashalom, who died tragically of a drug overdose, I had mentioned that in his apartment when he passed away they actually had a copy of the book that I had sent him. And I asked Miriam to send me the inscription, because I didn’t remember, but I know that I reached out to him to send him something. And she found it, and she sent it to me, and I thought it would be appropriate to read now, because it happens to deal exactly with the time of year that we are in now. I wrote to him the inscription in Hebrew, but I will translate. And I hope in some ways the blessing that I wrote to him, however unfulfilled it may have been in his own life, whatever sparks or residual elements of that blessing is really what I wish to all of our listeners. And I wrote to him as follows:

Leyedidi hagibor haamiti, to my beloved, my friend, the true warrior. And I called him a warrior, because the Mishna in Pirkei Avos says, “ezehu gibor,” who is a true warrior? “Hakovesh es yitzro,” somebody who has self-discipline, somebody who’s able to conquer his own desires, which is what the battle with addiction is all about. I wrote, bebirchas kesiva vchasima tova, with blessings for it to be inscribed and sealed in the book of good, leshana tova umetuka, for a happy and sweet, a good year and sweet year. Beguf ubenefesh, both in your material life and in your soulful life. Ubetefila leHashem yisbarach, and with a prayer to God, hamisratzeh berachamim, who wants and desires mercy, umispayis betachanunim, and is appeased with our prayers, sheberogez rachem tizkor, that even in your anger, God, please remember mercy, vesheyimalei kol meshales libcha, and that all of the requests of your heart shall be fulfilled, vesabenu mituvecha mamesh, and that you should be fulfilled and satiated from the good in your life. Mamesh, I meant literally.

Because I think a lot of times in life we wish people blessing, it should be good, a good that one day you’ll see, hopefully, maybe if you squint, if you look a little bit further, but sometimes the good in our life is not a good that we feel is satisfying, because it’s not one that we can see. And to really be satisfied with a good meal, the Talmud tells us, you have to see the meal, you have to see the food. You don’t want an astronaut bar that you bite into and it just gives you the calories. So much of it is in the presentation.

And that’s why I think that in Jewish life, we use this phrase “vesabenu mituvecha”. We don’t just ask for good, we ask for a good that we can be satiated with. We ask for a life, for a family, for a world. That the good in that world is something that satiates us. Because we want to see the good. We don’t want to have to squint, we don’t want to have to know about it later, we don’t want to see it in the next world: we want to see it right now in this very moment. And I think Miriam’s story and everything that she has battled with is that struggle to see a good that you can be satisfied, to see a good no matter the difficulty, no matter the tragedy, no matter how much you need to rebuild, to be able to find and discover that good in your life. And no matter how much of your life is ultimately out of your control, Miriam is able to focus on what is in her control.

And it reminded me in many ways of a beautiful poem that they say at Al-Anon meetings. In Al-Anon meetings, which is really, as she mentioned, for family members of addicts, for people who are contending with relationships with addicts, there’s a poem that they share at some meetings called Letting Go, and I want to read it for you.

Letting go does not mean to stop caring; it means I cannot do it for someone else. Letting go is not to cut myself off; it is the realization that I cannot control another. Letting go is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences. Letting go is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands. Letting go is not to try to change or blame another; it is to make the most of myself. Letting go is not to care for, but to care about. Letting go is not to fix, but to be supportive. Letting go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being. Letting go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own destiny. Letting go is not to be protective; it is to permit another to face reality. Letting go is not to deny, but to accept. Letting go is not to nag, scold, or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them. Letting go is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it. Letting go is not to criticize and regulate, but to try to become what I dream I can be. Letting go is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future. Letting go is to fear less and to love more.

And I think Miriam’s story, and what we do really entering into Yom Kippur and the High Holidays, is in many ways we let go in that positive way, we let go of our wrongdoings to one another, we let go of the wrongdoings that we’ve done ourselves. And I think it’s baked in the very word “mechila,” which I’ve mentioned and I write about in my own book, mechila, which means to forgive, also has the root word in there – and this is from an article from Mitchell First – meaning chalal, meaning to create space. Because ultimately, to forgive is to create space for another, and to create space for ourselves. To accept the things that we cannot change and the courage to change the things that we can. And ultimately, in any healthy space, in any positive space, lies that wisdom to know the difference.

So thank you so much for listening. It wouldn’t be a Jewish podcast without a little bit of Jewish guilt. So if you enjoyed this episode or any episode, please subscribe, rate, review. Tell your friends about it. It really helps us reach new listeners and continue putting out great content. If you’d like to learn more about this topic, or some of the other great ones we’ve covered in the past, be sure to check out 18Forty.org. That’s the number 1-8, followed by the word F-O-R-T-Y, 18Forty.org, where you can also find videos, articles, and recommended readings. Thank you so much for listening, and stay curious, my friends.