mother-daughter connection

This past week I gave over a workshop designed for Mothers and Daughters, who were learning together in preparation for the daughters bat mitsvah. Oftentimes the relationships which are most important and special to us, can be taken for granted. Just as it is important for us to work on ourself, on self actualization, it is important for us to work on our relationships with other people, particularly ones who are important to us. Tal Ben Shachar, Professor at Harvard University, recommended writing a letter to someone that includes detailing why the relationship is special to you. As part of the workshop each mother and each daughter wrote a letter to one another including special memories, things they are grateful the other person did for them, and qualities they respect in each other.

As part of the workshop we also explored different songs that were written. There are many beautiful songs written to mothers or children, and the power of the music and the words moved many to tears. It is sometimes easier to express in song what can be difficult to express through talking. I shared one song from my cd. I created a cd a number of years ago for mothers, focusing on motherhood, pregnancy and birth for the Jewish Mother. For a sampling of the songs you can listen at the following website: http://www.jewish-ema-music.com/discography/

One of the songs that I shared, which I wrote, is called בשבילך נברא העולם. There is a Jewish concept that the world was worthy of being created for every neshama that was brought down into the world. Often, when interacting with people it is easy to forget that every person has a pure soul. Every one of us has a pure soul, even though it might be covered over and hard to see. Every one of us has goodness inside of us, though we may need to take a journey to discover it.