Picture growing up with night blindness, receiving a diagnosis for a degenerative eye condition in high school, and then facing the reality of complete vision loss as an adult. This is the story of our co-host, Kimberley Dobbs, a mental health therapist and mother who has taken this journey with Retinitis Pigmentosa. Kimberley opens up about her life, sharing her compelling journey and the impact of her mother's cancer diagnosis during her own period of self-discovery. Her story serves as a testament to resilience, compassion, and undying hope.
Kimberley's narrative is not just about the challenges of living with Retinitis Pigmentosa; it’s about the power of human spirit and the art of making informed choices. From selecting a career path to deciding to have children before losing her vision, she shares insights on how she navigated these life-altering decisions. With her, we explore her experience with human growth hormone treatments in childhood and how it instilled in her a spirit of perseverance. Her anecdotes are a rich tapestry of life’s highs and lows, courage and faith. Step into Kimberley's world to find inspiration, discover a fresh perspective on joy, and learn to appreciate the beauty of human diversity.
Picture growing up with night blindness, receiving a diagnosis for a degenerative eye condition in high school, and then facing the reality of complete vision loss as an adult. This is the story of our co-host, Kimberley Dobbs, a mental health therapist and mother who has taken this journey with Retinitis Pigmentosa. Kimberley opens up about her life, sharing her compelling journey and the impact of her mother's cancer diagnosis during her own period of self-discovery. Her story serves as a testament to resilience, compassion, and undying hope.
Kimberley's narrative is not just about the challenges of living with Retinitis Pigmentosa; it’s about the power of human spirit and the art of making informed choices. From selecting a career path to deciding to have children before losing her vision, she shares insights on how she navigated these life-altering decisions. With her, we explore her experience with human growth hormone treatments in childhood and how it instilled in her a spirit of perseverance. Her anecdotes are a rich tapestry of life’s highs and lows, courage and faith. Step into Kimberley's world to find inspiration, discover a fresh perspective on joy, and learn to appreciate the beauty of human diversity.
Hey everybody, I'm Kimberly Dobbs.
Speaker 3:And I'm Jacob Miller.
Speaker 1:And we'd like to welcome you to another episode of Intuitive Choices.
Speaker 3:Kim and I are mental health therapists working in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1:But wait, jacob, that's not all we are. I mean, I'm blind and you're an Orthodox too.
Speaker 3:Yes, kim, that's correct. That's why this podcast is interesting.
Speaker 1:But what really makes this podcast interesting is that each week we invite a guest to speak about how their own intuitive choices have led them to live a more meaningful life.
Speaker 3:We hope that this conversation encourages you to make meaningful choices in your own life.
Speaker 1:Alright, off we go.
Speaker 3:Let's do it. Would you mind introducing yourself?
Speaker 1:Sure, well, I'm Kimberly Dobbs and I am 40 years old and I am a mental health therapist in the great city of Philadelphia. That's right, I've been a therapist for 17 years and I have a group practice in Center City, philly, philadelphia, and what's it? Called, and it's called intuitive counseling and wellness. I have a fabulous guide dog named Ursula who gets me to, and I'm a pro, and I've got two incredible teenage kids and I'm blind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, were you always blind?
Speaker 1:No, I went blind over time from a condition called retinitis pymintosa, so it is a degenerative eye condition of the retina and so it's a genetic condition. Although nobody in my family has it and it for me, and it's so interesting because it sounds like such a rare disease or condition or whatever you want to call it, it is not that rare.
Speaker 3:What's not that rare look like.
Speaker 1:I think a few million people have it in the world and it's just more common than you than you think and it started for me and it looks differently like from person to person from. Rp person to RP person. It's like it doesn't show up exactly the same.
Speaker 1:RP is the people who have it. Yeah, we'll call it RP from no one. And when I was younger, I always had a night blindness, so I wasn't able to see in the dark. But the funny thing is like this was just like a totally. This was like just normal. Like, oh, kim can't see in the dark and it's fine. I went to sleep boy camp all summer as a kid. It was just like this normal thing. Kim has night blindness and nobody ever really thought anything of it.
Speaker 1:And then one day, my freshman year of high school, I was a homecoming homecoming dance and I went to the homecoming incoming dance and it was dark, of course, and this is not the first dark event I've ever been to, but it was like the first dark event I went to where I thought like this sucks, like I can't see anything and I love to dance. I should like say that. So the dance is over. My mother comes to pick us up, my friends and I, and I say to her look, can we figure out what's going on with this night blindness? I really want to, like we should see if there's anything they can do for us. At this point I'm like in a 14 years old, 14 and a half. So my mother takes me to a retina specialist down in Miami, because that's where we're living down in Florida at the time and I did all these tests all day. I don't remember much about it, I just remember it was uncomfortable and it was hours and hours and they pulled my mom into another room.
Speaker 1:What was uncomfortable about it, like what kind of the tests are really different now because it's 2023 versus 1998, but they were like they would they like put this like contact, this like plastic contact, kind of inside my eye but like outside my eye, and it was all this gel so like, if you can imagine, just your eyes are just wildly irate, like it's just irritated, and these tests took hours and you had a sight to sit in one spot, like looking at bright lights, like it was hours of these like tests and again they're very different. Now I had the Marie Dunn, like two years ago, and I was like wow, technology has come a long way. Because I was dreading it, you know, and so they didn't tell me. They didn't tell me what I. They just told me I had something called rod cone dystrophy, which is something else other than retinitis.
Speaker 1:It was another condition. They're very similar to each other, but either way, they told. They told me this Internet was not really a thing, like it's not, like I went, I could go home and Google it and they said to me in front of my mom later on they said, oh, you know, there are support groups for this, so we get home that night and I was like mom, like I really want to join a support group. It would really cool to like meet people who are, like, also night blind, and she never told me that the prognosis was blindness. She never told me that it's day blindness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it would lead to eventually lead to blindness.
Speaker 3:Did you know how long?
Speaker 1:I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything. She didn't tell me anything.
Speaker 3:Did the doctors tell your parents, like I have?
Speaker 1:no idea I'm going to get to that. So my mom doesn't tell me anything.
Speaker 3:And this was what was her mood like? Could you tell her?
Speaker 1:No, just kind of just nothing.
Speaker 3:Matter of fact, we just went to the doctors.
Speaker 1:We went to the doctors. We have this name for it. There's nothing they can do about the night blindness, but and there's a support group for it. That's all I knew. Okay.
Speaker 1:And then at the end of what was it? My freshman year of high school, so that was the beginning of my freshman year of the end of freshman year, my mother gets diagnosed with cancer no cancer, so like April or May of that year, so it was 97 to 98., so I got the dates a little mixed up, but either way. So she gets diagnosed with cancer and then she ended up dying like nine months later.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh In January of 1999. And I'm saying this because all the while, like she still did, wls, going blind, so going through that, everything happens with that. And then one day and I literally happened this way I woke up in the morning, my senior year of high school, and I opened my eyes and something looked. It just looked different. Just what I, the view looked different.
Speaker 3:Like blurrier, less crisp.
Speaker 1:It's hard to even say. I think it was. I don't even know. People have asked me that I don't even know how to describe it.
Speaker 3:I was off.
Speaker 1:I knew it was off. I something was off. I kept holding my hand over one eye and then going back and forth and being like something is not right. And I look in the mirror and I'm like my reflection just doesn't look the same. And you know I'm I had, I was a contact user, like contact lens user, and you know, just something felt different. So I call up my aunt and I'm like, look, something's wrong with my eyes. I don't know what it is. So my dad and my aunt fly me up to the Wilmar Institute of Johns Hopkins in Maryland and I go through that entire day of testing again like three years later, and this time the doctor was like, ok, you have retinitis pymotosa. So it's like, officially, what I have is retinitis pymotosa.
Speaker 3:What's the second word?
Speaker 1:So it's pigmentosa P I G M E N T O S A pigmentosa. So she says this is what I have, and my twin sister was with me too. So it's like my aunt and my uncle, my twin, myself, and she's like so, unfortunately, this, this is a degenerative condition, which means that you will continue to lose more of your eyesight. And my twin, in a very like you know, very exacerbated, was like well, how long does she have? And I just looked at my sister and was like we got this, like let me.
Speaker 3:So I were you so calm in that moment.
Speaker 1:I had a similar conversation three weeks prior to my mom dying with her oncologist, because everybody was sort of like she's going to live, she's going to live, and I just had this incredible, incredible gut feeling that she was dying. And I had had that feeling for months. And finally we, the oncologist, came to the house and I just looked at him, very similarly to the way that I did with the eye doctor, and I said is my mother dying? And he's like, well, she has, you know, she's, she's very, very sale.
Speaker 1:He didn't want to tell this teenager that is not that her mom was dying. So I just said I was like can you just tell me? Like I just need to know, like I need this information. And he said yeah, he just said yes, and I said, well, how long does she have?
Speaker 1:Maybe three weeks? And I said OK, and then I looked at him and I put my hand up and I said do you mind if I cry for a minute? He said sure, and so I put my head down and I cried and then I said thank you, and I literally said thank you, and I got up and went into my bedroom you know when cried, and this felt similarly, although I didn't have a moment, I didn't, I didn't cry, but I did say so. So, yeah, what's, what's like, what's the timeline? And she said, well, a lot of people, that a lot of women, when they, when they get pregnant, for some reason, we don't really understand why, but they, they lose a lot of their eyesight when they are pregnant. And which makes sense to me now because I'm like, ok, because like a lot of your nutrients, right, or it's dead, you know it goes to the baby, right yeah?
Speaker 1:And and that was true, that did happen with both my pregnancies, my my significant vision loss happened in both my pregnancies. And and she said but for the most part, most people are like fully blind, I mean they'll have like light perception, which I do have, by the age of 40. That was pretty pretty spot on. So and I said, ok, and you know, a part of me maybe feels like maybe I kind of knew that, like I knew that this wasn't going to like get any better. Also, when you're 17 years old, 40 years old feels like an eternity away, like it didn't feel scary to me. I remember not feeling scared. I remember feeling bummed out and upset, but I didn't feel scared For me. I started to kind of go well, what do I then? What do I want to do with my life? Like, if I'm going to be blind, how, how does that, how does that life look? And so I decided I was going to be a therapist, because how do you get from one to the other?
Speaker 1:When you say what do you mean?
Speaker 3:how do you get from? I'm going to be blind, so I will be a therapist.
Speaker 1:I was going to college. I was about to go to college to to go to the University of Rhode Island for school and you know, I knew I'd have to pick a major and I knew I loved talking to people, I love connecting with people, and I knew that I needed to, like I say this but I don't necessarily believe this now as a 40 year old like, oh, I had to pick a career at 17,. But that's like that was the narrative, right, that was, you know, I was like that's what I was. Like, oh, you have to pick a career. Like I have to know what I'm going to be when I grow up. I have to know what I'm doing here.
Speaker 1:I'm not because I'm going, not just because I'm going blind, but because, like that's just sort of like what was kind of taught to me. So I'd always wanted to be a teacher. So that's a, that's a piece of information I forgot, I left out. So I wanted to be a teacher, like a high school teacher. And so I changed my mind and thought, well, I really like people. I'll become a therapist because I won't need eyesight to do therapy. I don't need eyesight to talk to people.
Speaker 3:I am personally grateful that's the decision that you made in that moment, but I have to imagine you would have been able to be a teacher.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. I think you know I've thought about it here and there in the last like 10 years, not going back to teaching but being like, oh, I could have done that. That that would have been okay. But you know, again, it was like it wasn't like I was like asking people. I wasn't like, you know, I didn't, I didn't do any kind of informational interviewing. I was kind of like I was alone in that process, like really alone in that process. You know, like, okay, I'm going to like go to college, I'm going to, you know, pick a major, I'm going to pick a career and I'm going to pursue that. And I'm going to do that knowing that at some point I won't be able to see anymore.
Speaker 3:Do you think there was something about knowing you were going to overcome the hardship of losing your vision on top of overcoming the hardship of having lost your mother, that you thought you would have something to offer to people in therapy that would be different than you as a teacher?
Speaker 1:No, not a conscious thought. You hear the question yeah. Okay. Yeah, even if it wasn't conscious.
Speaker 3:Even it wasn't conscious. Do you think?
Speaker 1:I think that that potentially, like unconsciously, that could have been happening, but I was. I would say um no, I would say that started to become um no. I remember thinking through grad school that I was really, and in college I was really fascinated with with death and dying. So I minored in Thanatology. That transition of life to death is really extraordinary, like really incredible. And so you know, I had considered like going into like just exclusively grief counseling, things like this. You know, bereavement work, so in that way I think it kind of, but like that's that feels like more like surface, not like this, like deep undercurrent of like I feel like because of my life experiences, I can add value in this very particular way as a therapist. That didn't happen.
Speaker 3:I um, I know you've thought about this a lot, or at least like this is like this, like you told the story before. I know it's only makes sense. It just I think there's a depth there that is really profound, because, I think it again, you could have just stayed being a teacher. I think that it almost feels like a, like a, really a cosmic shift or something miraculous, like, oh no, this is what I'm doing instead, because I heard this information.
Speaker 1:That feels. That feels more right than like, whether it was conscious or unconscious, it it to me it it feels like more of like a like you, like you just said almost cosmic, or like like a universal kind of like shift into this other direction.
Speaker 3:Like it's so interesting, it's like a calling yeah, yeah, it would have happened anyway, even though you hadn't gone to the doctor, right, yeah, but by going to the doctor and hearing the information the way you did when you did it, it crystallized a path for you that hadn't been perceptible before. Yep, so you're at school. Yeah. You become a therapist, you move from Rhode Island to where.
Speaker 1:I, so I graduated college. That was the other thing I did. I graduated college in three years. How come? It was interesting, I'll say it differently.
Speaker 3:What led to that choice?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's a great thought. I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I kind of accelerated my life a bit. I, I, I don't want to ever take away from what it could be like to get a terminal diagnosis, a terminal illness kind of thing, but it, I think it was a little like that for me, like, oh, I've got to like do these things because this is how much this is like what's going to happen. So, again, like my first semester, freshman year, I was like I'm going to graduate in three years and I did. I, my now ex husband, slash husband, emeritus slash friend David, and I got engaged my last year of college. I was 21 years old. I got married at 22. And I remember like having very intentional conversations about having children, young, younger, because I literally said, okay, I'm going to like this is probably going to make me go blind and I'd rather have more eyesight on the front end of this than not. Then then when the kids, you know, when I am older and I'm already blind.
Speaker 3:So that is. It is such a wild decision to have children to begin with and everyone knows they give things up when they have children but to know the likelihood of you also giving up vision as part of that trade, I can't comprehend that. I know that's what happened, you know but, I, just can't. And it's so interesting. It's interesting because, like everyone gives up things when they decide to have children and if they don't, then they're very disappointed when the children arise and they see what they can't do anymore.
Speaker 1:But to know that at the front end, Thank you for saying you know, no one's ever said that to me before. Really. Yeah, yeah, I never, I never, yeah, I quite literally have never thought about it like that at all. I thought about it like like how can actually kind of circling back to what you were talking about about this like harmony between meaning and pragmatics?
Speaker 1:and practicality around, like okay, what can make this? And again, I don't think this was like like I'm talking about this very, very practically right now and it was not. I remember sitting down with David and saying I really want to try to have another child We'd had Molly already and he was like I don't know if we can afford it. You know the same conversations I think all of my new, my new mom slash dad clients are having right now around like you know, the financial, you know challenges around children and those kinds of things. And he's like I really don't think we can afford it. And I said to him I don't know, like maybe this is the benefit of being 26 that I said I think it'll work out, like I just, I think it'll be fine. You know, let's just, I really.
Speaker 1:I remember crying to him and being like I really I really think we need to do this now. And he said okay. And then we, you know, thank God, we, we really, we really very thankfully did not have we easily got pregnant with both of our kids. And then God had very healthy pregnancies with both of my children and and that was the hardest one that pregnancy not the pregnancy wasn't hard, but I started using like a cane, a white cane, like right after having Alex your second, your second child?
Speaker 1:Yes, and and you know it's funny I have three siblings. Two of them are older and one is my twin sister nobody has it. By the way, nobody has this, can, nobody has blindness in my family and they all have younger kids. My twin sister has a six year old, my brother has a nine month old and a two year old and my other sister has a three and a half year old son and I spend time with them a lot. Right, we're all really close and it's like man, thank God.
Speaker 3:thank God because Thank God for what's with us.
Speaker 1:Thank God that I had my kids with more eyesight on the front end, like it's just, it's a weird thing to be around really, really young children. Look, it is not to say that I couldn't handle being a mom, blind, I think. Look, I don't think blinders should stop us from doing anything. I always say we're not disabled, we're differently abled. But it's sure as hell is easier. So to have a 15 year old and a 13 year old when I'm blind, you know, and versus having a three year old and a five year old being blind, totally different.
Speaker 3:So I cannot begin to imagine taking care of my three and a half month old son with any less senses than I currently have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's a thing right, like, would it be possible? Yeah, but like again, you know, would it have been harder? Yes, yeah, that's a unique.
Speaker 3:You appreciate how unique that mindset is of even knowing like it would be possible. What experiences have you had in your life that afforded you the ability to choose the mindset of? It would have been harder, but it would have been possible.
Speaker 1:So you're telling me that having the mindset of it would have been harder but possible is interesting to you. Very. Okay.
Speaker 3:Why? What's the what, the counter question? You don't think it's a.
Speaker 1:Tell me why you think it's interesting, and then I think I'll be able to answer your question better.
Speaker 3:It is interesting because I think that's one of the points of this podcast. How can people cultivate a mindset like that? Okay. That it doesn't matter if it would be harder, it's still possible, cause I think the default mindset of most people I meet in general and the people I meet in my work as a therapist.
Speaker 3:They get stuck when harder immediately becomes impossible. And the work we do is say no, no, no, no, definitely harder, acknowledging it's harder still possible. That's all the work we're doing. Not all of it, but a significant portion. Yep, harder, I'm not going to take it away from you. I'm not going to say it's not harder, acknowledging it's harder, in fact. Maybe I'll show you how it's even harder than you acknowledge which is why you feel it's impossible.
Speaker 3:Let's give you more insight on actually how hard it is. Now we can approach it, figure out what to do so, the mindset that seemingly manifested in you more naturally than others. Yep, that would have been harder, but still possible. How do you get there?
Speaker 1:I think I've had, I think I had, a lot of experiences in my life that were hard, and what's coming to me is something else about me is I'm also only four foot 10. Okay. And I'm saying that because at like three years old, I wasn't even on the growth chart from like what I was told. I was so small that I wasn't even. I was like wasn't even on the growth chart, whatever that means.
Speaker 3:And you're saying that in and of itself is like what have been a thing.
Speaker 1:Well, it was. Yeah, like you know, when we talk about percentiles, like with your son Akiva, and you're like, oh, he's in the top percentiles, I like was in the lowest percentile, if not, like even on the, there was like a, you know, a growth chart of like where you're supposed to be at a certain age and. I like, was so small that I wasn't even on it. Okay.
Speaker 1:And my parents decided this was the early 80s that they were going to put me a part of like a pilot program for human growth hormone, and so I still remember it. I had to go to a hospital. I was three and a half years old and I called it the blue thing. I don't even know what it was.
Speaker 3:The hospital was the blue thing or the treatment.
Speaker 1:The treat, the, the test I had to take. It was a an ongoing multi hour blood test, maybe like two or three hours, and now I know it was. It was an IV and they wrapped, blew something around like a blue brace around my arm to keep the IV in, because I was so little. I remember it, I remember what it looked like, I remember the waiting room. I remember the place that in the waiting room. I remember crying every time they brought me, but I have a very good memory.
Speaker 3:I remember crying. That's also something like your memory is incredible and I have to imagine that also has helped in.
Speaker 1:I maybe.
Speaker 3:But I don't think it's a maybe.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I can't cause you I like yeah, I'll let you keep going.
Speaker 1:The point of this, the reason why I'm telling you this, is because I remember all of those things and I remember crying every time they drew my blood cause I thought it was painful, even though it probably wasn't painful. That test determined that I was not actually growth hormone deficient. But this is the 80s and I don't know. But I, my parents, were able to put me apart of this pilot program and I got human growth hormone, anyway, and I had to take an injection every other day, and these were intramuscular, which meant that they were, they would go into the muscle. And, again the 80s, these needles were not very, very thin, they were very thick, and my mother had to give me this injection before school every other day, to the point where, like, I wouldn't even be able to walk up the stairs because so, and we did this for years and I took these injections for years.
Speaker 3:Okay, you do you feel like you were actively choosing to take those injections? I was not.
Speaker 1:In fact I actively did not want to take those injections. But to circle back to your original question around, like this is harder but it's possible. Like you know, it's I've that, I think significantly, significantly shaped. It's not my mother dying, it's not the blindness. I actually think it was going through that experience of being really really small, internalizing that this is not okay. Like my physically, who I am, is like not okay. So we're going to like do whatever we can to make this better for you.
Speaker 1:And even though I didn't want, it was very painful and it continued to be painful and and you know, for year, I mean, I took these injections for years, how many years?
Speaker 1:About about 11 years, 11 years, 11 years till I was 15 years old. So you know, and it didn't, it wasn't always it was intramuscular, but you know and maybe it's a conversation for another day you know kind of transition to like you know, you know the injections were a little bit easier because they weren't intramuscular injections, but then there were every day. It was like a whole thing. But the point is, is that it was like this, this again, I don't think this is like a direct connection of like okay, this thing is like why have this mindset of like? Just because it's harder doesn't mean it's not possible. But I think going through that like and like, like it was, it was hard, you know what I mean. And and I like in some weird way, like I remember thinking like kind of a badass because I give myself injections and like I'm kind of like I'm tough, you know.
Speaker 3:You are tough.
Speaker 1:And it was like this. It was just the way that whole experience again, I don't know, I don't know specifically, because, again, it's not like. It's like, oh, because it just, you know, it makes me think things are possible. It wasn't that. I just think that that shaped me to being able to persevere despite that it like wasn't okay, like I didn't like it, I didn't like it, it didn't. I remember thinking like is this even helping? Like I'm still short as f*** you know what I'm saying Like but yeah, so, but that's that's literally what I thought. I thought like I would think it like it's still so short, like I don't even know if this is working, but I'm still doing this anyway, so, yeah, so that's, that's a, that's like a nice detour to like you know, just give you a little bit more of my background and like I think some of the things that like shaped who I am and why I am.
Speaker 3:There's a benefit in. I think, really think there's a gift in knowing how hard life is, and I think people try to convince themselves either it's not hard or that it shouldn't be hard. I don't think it should has anything to do with it.
Speaker 1:You know I really embody this idea that hardship it's all relative to only your own experience.
Speaker 3:Oh, for sure.
Speaker 1:So for me, like sure, I get like, look, I'm a therapist, right, so I mean I talk to people about their own hardships all the time and you know, by comparison, I'm just like wow, and also, you know, it's, it's we only know what we're living. You know, I mean, sure, like we have empathy and I mean most of us do and so I can truly empathize. I can, I am a very empathetic person, even empathic, you know. But like just not comparing yourself to other people and being like, okay, like this is hard for me, right, it doesn't have to be relative to anything else. That you're your you're, you are your own benchmark.
Speaker 3:Frustration is frustration and every emotion you feel is eternal. Yeah. What's interesting to me about our conversations and about the podcast and about our work as therapists is we have conversations that transmit communal knowledge of how to overcome hardship conceptually, so that when you face it literally, it eases the process. Yeah, that's.
Speaker 3:That's, I think, more miraculous than people give credit to, and I think one of the primary benefits of us being therapists is that we learn About a segment of the human experience of overcoming hardship all day long when we need with different clients and what we can do is, as the nexus of those conversations is not only share principles of psychology and Therapy that can help people, but we we are like we hold communal knowledge of the what people are coming to us with and we can.
Speaker 3:Think, ah, I one client went through something similar and this helped them intuitively. Let me share something that they had said with you that they would. You would never come up in conversation because it may be too intimate, too hard, but like we can Transmit that information for people, I think that's our hope for the podcast also.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a hundred percent agree, and even from our, I think even even pulling from our own, our own life experiences.
Speaker 3:Yeah you know, this may not be relevant, but actually I bet it is relevant. I just don't know how to bring it up in a more natural segue. Can you talk to me a little bit about your grandmother and how she may have been Significant or helpful in the hardships that you yourself faced or impediments that you yourself faced?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. It's funny you bring her up, because a few minutes ago I was actually thinking about her as I was talking Um. So my grandmother, grandma Fanny, she is going to be 93 years old In 11 days. Wow and she is a survivor of the Holocaust. She.
Speaker 1:What she experienced was Really really, really crazy. Can't get into it now, but yeah, hmm. But what's interesting is that About a month and a half ago I had a bar mitzvah for my son and she hadn't she hadn't, like, left her house in three years because, you know, we were all dealing with a pandemic and she traveled up here to the Philadelphia area from Florida To see her great-grandson Be bar mitzvah for people who don't know what bar mitzvah is, what's the significance Like?
Speaker 3:why would she be willing to go so far? And I'm gonna defer to you because no, no, this year your son's bar mitzvah.
Speaker 1:Well it's, it's a pretty significant rite of passage into Judaism. It's it's when the Jewish boy becomes a man at 13 years old, and there's a ceremony that comes along with that, where the Jewish boy or girl because there's spot mitzvah now too, although that's a relatively newer Tradition they will read from the Torah, because prior to your bar or about mitzvah, you are not to read from the Torah. That's my understanding, okay.
Speaker 3:It's at those for when a girl is 12 and a boy is 13. They are not responsible for themselves. Yeah, and because they don't have responsibility, they're not given privileges or they can't Do something for someone else. Reading Torah is actually you're reading Torah on behalf of the whole congregation, and so because a boy before the age of 13 is, not obligated in learning Torah.
Speaker 3:Because they're not obligated in anything, they can't do it for someone else. But once they themselves become obligated and responsible for themselves, then they can do. They can be an actor, a messenger. Yep to carry out the obligation for someone else, so I I think this, we, this is.
Speaker 1:This is really great, because I you and I Were both Jewish. You are with the docks and I am Reconstructionist, which is, we'll get into it and I'll get into it. We'll get into it, and I don't even know how to explain it, but I'm, I'm, I.
Speaker 1:Sometimes they would say I'm like a secular juice, so it's very this is also the reason why I think we have such interesting, for for us I'm not necessarily for everybody else but why our conversations are interesting, but anyway, yes. So my grandmother decided to come up After the bar mitzvah. She, she went home and we talked on the phone and she says, kimberley, that was the most beautiful bar mitzvah I've ever been to in my entire life she's been to a lot of them and I said, oh my gosh, grandma, thank you, I can't even believe you came. I mean, I've said all this to her when she was there. But and she said I don't know how you did it. I don't know how you pulled off such a beautiful bar mitzvah without being able to see You're the most incredible person I know and I Was like I've never said this to my grandmother. My grandmother never really articulated that sentiment to me, I don't know. She said exactly that like you're the most it. But she said yeah it was that sentiment.
Speaker 1:She goes I couldn't believe it. You're so amazing, you know, you've made so much of your life. And then I said you know, grandma, I, I got that from you. And she said no, no. I said no, grandma, yes, yes, this is a conversation was like only like three weeks ago. I said yes, I did. I said I really need you to know like you survived Hitler and Came to the United States as a 17 year old girl all alone, and the person that you were supposed to stay with, your uncle, had died Like prior, like while you were in transit on the boat on the way to America, and you literally had to create a life for yourself without knowing the language and just surviving Auschwitz. And I said that is why I am extraordinary, because you are extraordinary. And then she told me that. Then she said when are you gonna come visit me? Because you bring light into my life. I think she deflected a little bit, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but she's allowed.
Speaker 1:She's allowed, she gets a pass, but it was really, it was probably the most profound Dialogue I'd ever had with my grandmother, and that happened just three weeks ago. So, yeah, I I Think that it is, um, I don't know like when it that's modeled to you or Of course, are able to manifest it without it being modeled of course, of course, and and and, even if it is modeled to you Maybe, maybe it's not the same, but yeah to me, yeah, I um that, I think it really.
Speaker 1:I think it was played a huge role in In my approach to life and also, you know, not for nothing, but my grandmother has really instilled in us. Like you know, we have a responsibility as as Jews, you know, because she survived the Holocaust their responsibility to what to Continue to carry on Judaism and those kinds of things. Right, so that you know to practice Judaism, to carry it on those kinds of things, yeah, so, not not necessarily saying that we do or don't, but it was something that was really, you know, encouraged.
Speaker 3:So Maybe that is a unique thing that the Jews do carry with them. It's like how to survive because, like the Holocaust may be the most thing that's most recent, but there's, like every generation, there's actually something, yeah, resembling a Holocaust, and we just keep, we keep going Yep, that's what we do, and now they're going. It's like thriving and yeah and I think you and I I Feel a similar sentiment, that like not because of our Judaism necessarily, but like we just love to see people who can thrive.
Speaker 1:I I love to see, I think I love when, I love when people thrive, and I think that I really Love to help people find Whatever they need to find within themselves literally anyone yeah well, you and I are similar that we will help any single person we meet Be their best selves.
Speaker 3:Yeah, even if we disagree with who that best self might be like on a personal level, like an Uh, either a professional level or a level higher than our own person hoods, we just like to see people be their best selves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and like whatever I, I think that whatever yeah, without without inserting what, what my Like, what my version of a person's best self like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's yeah, exact without inserting your version of a person's best self. What a person feels that they are thriving? Yeah, that person is a person that's filled with like kindness and and a healthy sense of competition that like is not like gonna take anything for anyone else. Those people are givers, those people are conduits of confidence and respect, and those that can look radically different for different people. Yeah, but you get there Via the choices that you make.
Speaker 3:Yeah we spoke about several choices that you made In the past. In the episode so far, we spoke about the choice to Continuously get your GH your human growth hormone shots and even though it was hard, you did it anyway and you had the impression of yourself that you were bad.
Speaker 1:I felt like I actually didn't have a choice in that, but yeah so what part of it did you have a choice in?
Speaker 3:was your mindset yeah, right yeah. You chose the mindset to get through taking the human growth hormone shots. Yeah, you chose to have children, even though it was gonna be get the cost of your vision. You chose to become a therapist because it would maximize your Desire to speak with people your gift is speaking with people and manifesting a career that was meaningful to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:How do you make those choices? Are they the same? Are they different?
Speaker 1:You mean like, where does that come from within me? Yeah, I think that I don't know. I think that it comes from a place of wanting to live and Knowing what it feels like when, like knowing what joy feels like and knowing that, for me, joy experiencing joy, I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing that, for me, joy experiencing joy comes from, you know, living a life of meaning.
Speaker 3:Is joy, the guiding force in Allowing you to make those decisions the pursuit of Joyful moments.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not excitement.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think. I think it's a huge deal because excitement could be like I'm gonna go.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm gonna look for. I look forward to this trip. I'm going on.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, no, it's like deep, satisfactory, meaningful joy joy Mm-hmm. Yep.
Speaker 3:There's 10 words for happiness in Hebrew and each has specific meanings okay. But the one that most people are familiar with, and the one you may be most familiar with, is Simcha. Yeah, what's a simcha? So it's a party you know you have an assembly. Yeah but the depth of the word simcha is the type of joy that comes from the process of trying to manifest something. Simcha is the joy of the process. Yeah and it's hard.
Speaker 1:But even even when something's hard, the process of something is hard, like you can still feel, you can still experience joy.
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah, but and I'll say differently you have to go through something that's hard to experience that type of joy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The pursuit of joy pursuit of joy I. Think it's, it's, it's like it just drives me. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you have clarity on that also. A lot of people. It's hard for them to find that clarity, but there's a pseudo joy that's really. That's something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I and like and also just I just really want to be very clear. It's hard to describe what, what joy feels like in the body, but I can tell you it is, it is not, it's not, it's not. It's not excitement, it's not. I think it's beyond the body, yeah, and I think it's it. It's like embodied, I don't even know like it's, like it's transcendent, yeah, it's, it's, it's for, it's transcendent, like that's how I mean it, that's, that's.
Speaker 1:That's what I feel like joy really is. Is this transcendent experience in your mind, body and your spirit, that that like it's so funny, I keep getting this like vision of my head like that just makes that just sort of creates a smile, like literally, like a literal smile, you know, and it doesn't have to be a smile, but it's just the feeling of a smile the feeling of a smile and it's like okay, and I and I think Somewhere in my 40 years earlier, early on, like Lee, I think I learned early on what that feels like, but again not and not in like this, like Intoxicating Lee, like I'm looking for excitement kind of way.
Speaker 1:I really want to be clear about that. But I think I learned what it feels like to embody joy.
Speaker 3:It's a meal versus a piece of candy. Yeah it's more like an entire diet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh well for you maybe yeah. But that's what I, that's, that's what it is, and so for me it's like. I think, when you are talking about this idea of like, like, what drives me to have this mindset of like? You know it's hard, but it's still possible, or it's?
Speaker 3:hard, but it's still possible.
Speaker 1:Part of the Still possible participating in life, even when things get hard. Or it's like Because at the root, at like the root of my existence, on it like a cellular level, driving everything like my engine. You know what I mean? Yeah, is like the, the pursuance or pursuit. What's the word pursuit? Pursuit of joy, of joy and Like, and and what I've learned, and not in the so far, you know, like not not that far, not that long ago, I mean the last 15 years or something is Like Mike, the conduit for that is through meaningful experiences.
Speaker 3:So that's what I do that's a deep, a deep truth. Yeah, there's really a guiding principle. Thank you for giving me different language for that, because it's like it's not just you know, it's not just like I've worked with clients and said, like to pursue meaning, yeah, but like that's kind of I see how short-sighted that is because it like what do you mean meaning?
Speaker 1:How do?
Speaker 3:you know it's meaningful, etc. Because if you're engaging in something meaningful, it manifests in a sentiment of joy. Yeah, I was talking to a friend over Over the weekend on Shabbat, on the Sabbath, and he's a very deep guy. I asked him how Does he know he he Achieve that meaning, he he achieved a level of depth in a, in a in Jewish prayer. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:Like how do you go? How does he know? He went beyond saying the words, like actually accomplishing his goal of the prayer, because prayer and Judaism is not just like, it's actually prayers, not a good translation, the word is actually self-reflection.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how do you?
Speaker 3:know you, appropriately self-reflected Mm-hmm, and he says when he, when he steps Because when Jews pray they stand at the pinnacle of the prayer when he steps away from his moment of prayer, from his self-reflection, when he thinks he did it well, he gets a just the feeling of that was right or I am more aligned with myself than I was before I stepped into it. And I think that's what you're talking about. When you, when you appropriately self reflect and align yourself with who you're supposed to be, it is Very difficult and at times even painful, but when you do it with the best intentions and with the right mindset, you step away from having made that decision with that feeling of joy.
Speaker 1:Maybe not right away, but it gets you yeah, definitely not right away, but it gets you.
Speaker 3:Yep, that was great. I had one more question I want to ask you, but that, I think, is a nice place to wrap up. What do you think?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you can ask me the question and we can always cut it out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel like this is a little silly at this point, but I still want to ask the question If you could time travel and you had five minutes to meet a younger version of yourself, which version of yourself would you meet with and what would you say to her?
Speaker 1:When you texted me your questions and you were like I don't love them, I had a feeling that you might have been referring to that question.
Speaker 1:No, that's the one I like the most okay good, because that's the one I loved the most too, and Even, just even, just like closing my eyes and visualizing Me at different parts of my life. It was I like I get emotionally been even just thinking about it. It's like a very, very, very evocative Question. I think it's even more emotional for me Talking Like having this whole conversation today, that's doing this episode with you and then and then answering this question at the end. Mm-hmm, when I read the question originally before we, like this morning, when you sent me the questions, the, it was me at 11 and and it was just a very simple like everything will be okay Because 11 and 12 was.
Speaker 1:That was a difficult time, you know, of like going through puberty and Dealing with like Not really liking what I looked like.
Speaker 1:You know, and you know lots and lots of people at that at my, at that time of my life, were like I was getting bullied, a lot like that kind of thing and telling myself everything was gonna be okay.
Speaker 1:But what's interesting is when, with the context of our conversation today in the US that question it both Me at three and a half four years old, getting that blood test at the beginning of that whole, you know, 11 year relationship with human growth were bone and myself and puberty, because actually, believe it or not, the conversation for another day, but my puberty kind of like all of that stuff, was very much a factor in in that experience, and so it was. It was both. Those ages came to my mind just now listening to you answer the or ask the question, and I'm thinking if I could, if I could say something to those two parts of me, it would be. I know this is painful now, but it's gonna. It's gonna shape who you are and you don't know what that means yet, but I promise you Everything will be okay. That's what I would say.
Speaker 3:You just have to trust that, the process how would those younger versions of yourself respond to hearing that?
Speaker 1:well, what I see in my mind is they like hug me, like they're like comforted by that yeah yeah, yeah, because it's like there's so much stress and challenge and like in, like every day, every day, for everybody, and I think we deal with it. Some of us deal with it. You know it's easier to deal with than others, but we all have it yeah. But like there's this simultaneous existence of beauty that Also exists.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's harder to to to like bring that into focus, but like it's there yeah it is so there in the hard times even in the hard times, I Think a big part of the work I do with my clients and maybe this, you know, this stems from just like my again like a core belief is Doing some reframing, you know, because, hey, like things really look like a bunch of Maybe it might feel like a bunch of manure right now, and it is. It is easier to point out beauty, beauty for other people right when you're not living in it, which is also, I think, of the beauty of therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah and the benefit of therapy is having somebody objectively, you know, walk you through your life with you. But yeah, that's a big, big part of the work I do is like I can see it, part in the pun.
Speaker 3:When I Talk to people about like my job, my office and whatever my life looks like as a therapist, etc. And I go oh yeah, my my. I know you don't like when I call you my boss, I say what am I?
Speaker 1:You're my boss.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is my, my boss is blind and like what You're like, like, how blind, and I know you well enough. I don't think it'd be offended by this, but I was like, like the cane, the dog, like. The whole thing like really she's really blind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like they're like, oh my god, I could never see her as a therapist. I was like why? And they're like my problems don't matter. They're like how could I sit down across from her? And and you know, like I would like I could. I feel so bad and what I always push back them is like, if that's true, maybe you realize that your superficial problems don't matter, but you'd be the best person to have you get to the heart of it. Well you really help you get to the next step.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's an, you know it's.
Speaker 1:It's interesting. It's interesting big. Yeah, that's that's. I Don't realize that.
Speaker 1:I just had a client that I've been seeing for two years tell me that she was. She made an appointment with me. She had talked to multiple therapists, consults, and we had a nice console and she said, god, I really love talking to you. I'm that, I think I really want to schedule an appointment. She called her adult son it was like 30 and was like I'm gonna go see this therapist, but she's blind and I'm kind of scared and Her someone's like I'd be scared too Like what is it gonna be like? She's like I don't know what should I do? Like what's it gonna be like? And she just told me this like two sessions ago she goes, you just get it. You just you just get it. She goes. You know I hope you are, you aren't offended that I and I said no, I, you know, I felt thankful that she did, are that she shared her, her fears of me.
Speaker 1:But it is interesting because, you know, I don't, I don't know any different. All right, I Really would also like to use this platform, this podcast platform, as, like you know, like an opportunity to also, like you know, educate people on differences amongst human beings and like educating people on on that right like Not in like a weird way, but just you know the mostly the blindness. Like helping people to like de-stigmatizing that for people a little bit so that people have a healthier, like more comprehensive, understanding of what what it actually looks like. So, all right, that was great, all right, kim.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks for going first.
Speaker 1:Well, one of us had to go and I'm glad it wasn't me. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3:See you later. We want to thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If anything in today's episode spoke to you, please like. Subscribe great review. Also, don't forget to share this podcast with friends and family.
Speaker 1:And if there's anybody that you know that you think would be a great guest on intuitive choices, please email us at intuitive dot choices dot podcast at gmailcom. Finally, if you want to know more about our mental health practice, intuitive counseling and wellness, please check us out at intuitive counseling of Philly comm.