You Were Supposed to Climb the Mountain, Not Carry It

It feels heavy. And not just metaphorically. Your shoulders ache. Your back is tight. Your mind is worn. You’re exhausted in ways you can’t quite explain—because this isn’t just about fatigue. This is about a weight you weren’t meant to bear.

You were supposed to climb the mountain, not carry it.

But somewhere along the way, you forgot to start at the bottom. Maybe you panicked. Maybe you thought you had to already be at the top. Maybe someone told you that strength looks like pushing through with the summit strapped to your back.

So you picked up the whole thing—the grief, the pressure, the fear, the expectations, the past, the future—and tried to haul it all at once. You didn’t even tie your shoes. You didn’t pack water. You didn’t look up to find a path. You just began, with the full weight pressing down on you.

And now it’s hard to breathe. You don’t know if you can go on much longer. Every step forward feels like you’re sinking deeper. You wonder if this is just life—endless burden, silent struggle.

But here’s the thing: mountains aren’t carried. They’re climbed.

They’re scaled one step at a time, sometimes with shaky legs and unsure footing. You stop to catch your breath. You rest. You re-tie your shoes. You ask for help. You adjust your route. You don’t lug the whole thing on your back—you take it in pieces, meeting each stretch of terrain as it comes.

There’s nothing weak about starting at the bottom. There’s nothing shameful about needing to begin again.

You don’t have to prove anything by pretending you’re already there.

So if it feels unbearably heavy right now, maybe it’s not because you’re failing. Maybe it’s just because you were never meant to carry this mountain in the first place.

Put it down.
Start over.
Tie your shoes.
Take a sip of water.
And climb.

Right of Way

Sometimes life just feels so heavy. I'm not sure if it's because challenges seem to come in clusters, or when you're dealing with one hard thing you have less space and energy to deal with anything else. I've often felt that when one big thing is exceptionally challenging everything just 'tends to go wrong'.

And then I'm forced to take a pause. How much is this about focusing on the negatives? It's something we all do. We're programmed to do it. It's somewhat an evolutionary thing. We notice things that feel off, threatening, or wrong as a means to fix them. (Whether we take it that far or not is another story.) But honestly, I think this is a lot about the focus and meaning we attribute to things.

Of course it's easy to stay positive when things are generally easy and upbeat. Of course hard things make life more difficult, but I'm wondering if there's a "Right [of] Way" (driving pun intended obviously). How much does our self talk matter?

Negative self talk plays a large role in people's unhappiness, for sure. But how much does focusing on the positive work to make things feel "better"? I'm hardly a Pollyanna, but I do think that positive psychology is onto something. Gratitude journaling works because it forces us to think about good things that are happening around us that maybe we take for granted and not just focus the uncomfortable things that of course we let bother us. 

I do believe that when we turn up the volume on the good stuff life sounds a whole lot better.

The Waiting Game

In general this stage of life is a frenzied rush against the clock, grab your coffee and keys and herd the kids out the door vibe. I haven't had a lot of downtime, definitely not like the good ol' days when I could sit at my laptop for hours and just write, talk on the phone, or have multiple texting conversations at once. There's barely enough time these days to chew a morsel of food enough times before swallowing, let alone follow down a complete thought. My attention is required all the time by the little ones (or the equal one), but seldom do I have time to just take a pause. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I really hoped this would be the case. Right? I thought that after I got married I'd be released from the shackles of the Waiting Place. 

You know what I'm talking about - waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow, or waiting around for a Yes or No, or waiting for their hair to grow... 

And for the most part I have. I haven't had a lot of waiting really. 

Before marriage, I found myself needing to set exciting things into my schedule so I had things to look forward to. Now, my heart is so full. Are there challenges and benchmarks? For sure. And yes, I always need something to look forward to, something to look towards accomplishing, but it feels like it's much more baked into my life now. 

And that's why where I find myself at this present moment is so disconcerting and uncomfortable. It feels different. It's a culmination really of all the things I've taken for granted since I got married. But it's also a lesson. Yes, it's a lesson in patience, but also in life. The waiting game never stops. We can't skip to the good part. Inevitably we will have to trust the process and realize we're running a marathon not a sprint. It's just that we don't want to get stuck here. We need to power through or even embrace life's pauses. 

Perhaps it's about control (because aren't most things?). If we knew the time frame of this whatever situation, it wouldn't feel as sharp. If we knew we only need to hang in there 2 more weeks or what have you, it would be easier. But most of the time we don't know. We don't know if or when we'll get where or what we need. And so what now? I guess we can feel our feelings and be angry and sad. We can work on ourselves and strengthen our emunah and bitachon. (I actually find it really comforting that I don't understand all the ways of the world and maybe what I think I want or is good for me G-d maybe says is not or not yet. But that perhaps is a bigger topic for a different time.) We can also just embrace the messiness and ambiguity of life. If you can just show up for one role in your life while you're at this Waiting Juncture, maybe that's enough. 

But yes, this time can be really character building, if you let it.

The Late-Night Musings of a Tired Mother

It’s now 3:15 am. The baby is awake, again. For the nth time tonight. She wants to go back to sleep, but sleeping just isn't her thing, and apparently mine, in this era of our lives. The night is quiet, and the only sound is the hum of the white noise machine and the groan of my own frustrations as I try to get my daughter back to sleep and she wakes up again as I try to shift her out of my arms. 

My nighttime routine used to be simple. Sure, my son needed to be fed, bathed, changed, swaddled (as an infant), rocked, and eventually he'd sleep. Did he wake up during the night? Of course, but eventually he started sleeping through the night. But with my daughter? It’s like a marathon with no finish line. The endless rhythm of rocking, shushing, singing, and softly whispering “It’s okay, go back to sleep” is like chasing the horizon. Not only is it frustrating, but all I want is to collapse into bed myself. Sleep through one continuous night.

As I cradle her, the exhaustion wraps itself around me like a blanket. And finally, as my baby’s breathing steadies and she drifts off, I find myself in the most unexpected of places: lost in thought. All I want is to sink into my pillow and let the cobwebs of sleep take over, but the quietness of the night bears rumination.

How did I get here? Did I not want to be here for the longest time? It's this strangest feeling of being stuck in-between being needed 24/7 and often completely invisible at the same time. I also think about how much marriage and motherhood has changed me. There was a time where being up at the wee hours of the morning meant having a good time and probably sleeping in the next day. But now, it’s just part of the routine—multiple late night/early morning awakenings every single day of the week. Tired eyes, sometimes heavy heart, and yet, somehow, my heart is so full, holding that tiny, warm hand in mine.

And I wonder: When will I get sleep again? The answer comes in the form of a small cry as I place my baby back in her bed, trying valiantly not to wake her, for the nth time.

And so for now, I savor this: the quiet breathing, the warm, soft weight of my baby’s body in my arms, the small moments of connection that are all too easy to forget during the day.

It's not just about motherhood, but about marriage too—about the quiet, unseen work of partnership. These nights (and days!) are exhausting, yes, but they’re also full of tiny, sacred moments of connection. Not just with our children, but with each other. Sometimes it's in how my husband takes the baby and is "on call" throughout the night, and sometimes it's in carrying the weight in a different way. We don’t always get long, uninterrupted conversations or grand gestures these days, but in this hush of the night, I’m reminded that we’re still showing up for this life we’ve built together. Quietly. Tirelessly. Side by side.

But tomorrow, when the sun rises and the kids are jumping on my head because the sun has risen, I’ll probably feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Until then, though, here I am—holding my baby close in the dead of night, wondering how much longer I’ll be able to do this, while also knowing these moments are fleeting, and I’ll miss them when they’re gone.

For now, though…please, let me sleep.

Newlywed to Now: Picking Up Where We Left Off

It feels almost quaint to be returning to blogging. I'm not sure how long I'll be here, but I'm here for now. No one really blogs anymore—at least not like we used to. We’ve traded long-form reflection for quick bits—stories that disappear in 24 hours and bite-sized reels. But I missed this space to process. To wander through a thought instead of distilling it into a punchline. This blog was born in the early days of marriage, sort of the child of my shidduch blog, and though the world, and I, have changed a lot since then, the desire to make meaning out of the mess is still here.

I stopped blogging, and to be honest, writing altogether more or less, because life got full. It was hectic, messy, complicated, beautiful, and sometimes hard. It's still busy, tangled, and jam-packed with noise, carpools, and laundry, but I'm trying to cut through the noise and lack of sleep to process it all. I'm more experienced, wiser, seasoned and more weathered if you will. My idealism has shifted somewhat, but I still hold onto the same values. Much of what I wanted for my life has been challenged, but I'm not one to shy away from the battlefield.  

My goal is to provide you with some honest reflections, stories from the trenches, the joys and gut-punches of the day to day now that it's been almost 7 years into this marriage. The lanes have merged, but the road keeps changing.