My love,
I am deeply ambivalent about our marriage. And I know that I am not alone in that ambivalence. I stayed and talked to Mary until 1:57pm after you left and we agreed that you would see her on Saturday and I would take the double session on Tuesday and that we would take this one day at a time. Actually, we were barely at taking it one hour at a time in my session. My family is so central to my life and I am so deeply distraught about the state of our union.
I spoke to Elie before we left for New York. She told me that David told her that you were looking at houses. On the phone, you told me that you told our children that I was giving them 60 days to leave their home and I said, Terry, that isn't true. Despite the volatility, the brokenness and the seemly inevitable dissolution of our marriage, I am fiercely loyal to my family. It is a quality I inherited from my father and I am very proud of it. I will protect my family from outside attack and do whatever it takes to make sure my children are safe, including putting myself in harms way to save them...and more importantly, giving up pieces of my selfish desires for the sake of their well-being and their physical and emotional safety. Elie's phone was in my hand when you texted her this afternoon and I asked her to let me read your text exchange. It hurt my feelings to read your text to her, but when I thought about what was in Elie's best interests, I could justify and support your decision to warn her that you didn't completely trust me to keep her safe and that you were doing your job as her parent and making sure she was prepared in case I wasn't able to care for her or in case another emergency arose. David and I talked to her when I dropped her off about why it is important to have some cash with you at all times, but I had not made the $20 safety pinned or in a shoe suggestion. It was a good idea. Thank you.
On the other hand, when I heard that you threatened to leave Sima at the police station as an abandoned child if Natalie couldn't drop everything and pick him up, I was horrified. Once you knew about my plans with Elie, you knew that I made an executive decision that Elie was babysitting and had her phone off but that I knew where she was and that we had a clear safety plan. I wish you would have said, Nehama, I don't like this plan. It doesn't feel safe. I need to leave this therapy session now that I know how to find the children and you need to help David locate the children immediately. And I would have called David with you and told him the 5 places Elie could have been and the best order in which to check the places to pick them...or to at least check on them and make sure they were safe. If we had worked together as coparents, Elie, Ezra, Sima and David would have been at either the Harvest moon nail bar, Wawa, Miles Park, the pizza place or our home within half an hour. We could have told Elie that Dad and Daddy didn't know about the plan for her to have her phone off and it made them very worried. We could have made the decision together that next time there is a change of plans and that she would be out of range on her cell phone, we would like to make sure all the parents knew where she was and what the plan was. From my perspective, when I woke up in the morning with Elie, Ezra and Sima in the house with me, I was the custodial parent until we transferred custody again. We didn't make a plan with each other about physical custody. I assumed that I was responsible for the children. I made a plan with Elie that involved a modification of our original plan. I asked Elie to look up the phone numbers for the absence late lines at PW and WES, so that I could report the children as absent, but I didn't follow through and make the appropriate phone calls because I got distracted and forgot about it. I should have told you and David about my plan, but I don’t think I did anything wrong by not telling you. If David tried to contact Elie and her phone was off when you had custody, he would reach out to you, and if he couldn’t reach you, I imagine that it would be a few hours later when the panic would set in. But I can imagine the thoughts creeping in right away and even the panic feeling starting much faster if there is some anxiety about the stability of the person in charge of the children.I would have told you about the changes in the plan if we were in touch. Now that I think about it, I can totally understand that you would have checked in with Elie at either 8:30 am before she went to school or at 11 am when she was supposed to be dismissed. I can imagine how scary it was to not know where our children were and in the moments when we are scared we think horrible and irrational things. We make wild threats and lash out when we are under attack. That is my best attempt at processing and understanding what happened here. Unfortunately, the feeling that I can't shake is that I don't trust you to be alone with our children right now. And you don't trust me to make good decisions for our children right now. So as devastating as it is, I would like to make a plan to be separated for now. I believe that the best way to do that and maintain the possibility of getting back to renewing our vows of being family to each other one day is for each of us to take everything we brought into this marriage and separate into new households with our children, our worldly belongings, our financial resources and what's left of our broken hearts.
I would like us to accomplish that task amicably and with minimal collateral damage. Today, my plan is to live in our home for the summer and to start looking for a new place so that the kids are set up to start the school year and their new routines with ease. I don't know where we will live but I have 3 good ideas. Time and looking around at options will let me find the right place to land. Today, I hope that by August 1st 2019, we will be able to celebrate our anniversary as a family. I am afraid that since it’s already our anniversary this year, we will be/already are grieving for that family with a scary uncertainty about whether or not things will ever be the same again come August 1st. Today I can tell myself and my children that things are never the same. That time marches on and change is the only guarantee in life. And it is my deepest hope that this change leads us to a stronger and deeper love and bond as a family. Because I believe that I have a forever family. And that you cannot ever lose your family, no matter how fucked up it gets. Because no matter what, once that bond is created, it is permanent. I have bonded to you and Elie and Ezra and David and Shoshie and Ruth and Elijah and Jodi and family and Sarah and family and David's extended family and Shoshie's extended family and your parents and aunts and uncles and your brother. This list isn’t hierarchical...but it is very very long. And I hope that my extended and chosen family continues to see you as family after we separate. That would be the best way for our friends and family to support us. Even if they don't want to be around, even when they don't like us, they will still be in relationship with us. Because "Death ends a life, not a relationship." And though there is a baby out there named Nathaniel J'elijah who is alive and well, for our family it felt like we had a death in the family when our adoption was interrupted. And when we take our children and separate them from each other and when we separate from each other, it will feel like dying. Because our family, our queer, happy, rainbow Brady bunch family will die. And the family tree will have slashes across places where flat lines used to be.
But I'm not in utter despair and I'm not losing everything. Because I see this as an opportunity to mend the relationships I have with all of the members of my immediate family. And instead of trying to hold this together and continuing to feel like I am living on a rig in the ocean attached to an unstable well that could burst at any moment and kill us all, I have decided to release the pressure and kill the well. And just like in that movie I watched, it's going to be a disaster. Because we saw all the signs and we did our due diligence for the most part, but we also know we cut corners and we wanted it to work, and we didn't want to lose the investment so we pushed and patched and ignored the tests because there were other ways to explain the problem. It wasn't a bad well, one side argued. There were other explanations for the data. And there was no oil on the floor. So it couldn't be that the pressure was too high. But the guy looking for the oil on the rig floor thought that was the only place for the pressure to be releasing. And he couldn't see the cracks in the ocean floor that made it so obvious that the well was bad and that they need to close it up and try elsewhere...because it's only with enough distance and perspective that we can see the whole picture and figure out where the problems are and work together to fix them. And that's what couples therapy offers. A chance to step back from looking at the rig floor. A chance to take all of the test results and get an expert opinion on how to move forward. And then, ultimately, each person is responsible for making their own decisions. But as you so wisely pointed out, it takes two people to make a plan together, but one person can cancel that plan without the consent of the other. And that is the power that autonomy has over connection. But I don't want to have power over. I wanted to be the kind of person who has overlapping circles with all of the sentient beings in my life. I am a hippie at heart. Both biological sides of my family have spent the last century in the Catskills. And before that, in the wide open spaces of the shetls of Galitzia, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and in the mountains and red sands of Northern Africa. We need wide open spaces in my family. We need to be free to love and be loved without boundaries and we don't like being tied down to institutions. We rely on each other for support, and we have an inherent distrust of bureaucratic systems and chains of command. We are socialists, with a touch of fiscal conservativism. And we are not pure socialists because we are also fiercely loyal and clan protective and we don't want to be caught being obligated to share and not having enough for ourselves or our families.
Terry S Lubin, I married you under a huppah in the backyard of our family home and what I remember most is our family ceremony and our Sheva brachot of post-humanist values that we committed to honoring with our lives.
I don't want a divorce. I don't want to take an ax to our beautiful ketubah and each walk away with half of the broken wood, splinters making our hands bleed and we try to soothe ourselves with the memories of good times and the roses and also the splinters and the thorns...they are all parts of us. The honey and the beesting...like the Nomi Shemer song al Kol eleh.
I will end my letter to you with a prayer from that song. (My translation):
For all of this
For all of this
Please guard and protect me
Because i trust that the universe and all of its inhabitants are inherently good .
On the honey and the beesting.
On the bitter and the sweet.
Don’t uproot what is planted
Don’t forget about the hope.
Restore me
And I will return
To that good land.
I will love you forever and you will always be one of the greatest loves of my life, one of my favorite lovers, one of my best healers, one of my role models for the best practices in teaching and parenting, someone who I respect and love and appreciate for the way they teach their children, the way they love their children and the way they shine brightest when they help a child grow up to be the best person they can be.
I have been so lucky to have you as a partner, as a friend, as a lover and as the person I chose to spend my time with. Losing you is so fucking painful. I can barely breathe as I write this because the waves of grief are pounding on me so hard.
So before i drown, I need to get out of the ocean. And find some dry land. And warm up on the beach in the sunshine. And I need to have a baby.
And maybe, just maybe, we will find ourselves on the same beach one day, holding our infants, and we will let the intoxication of babies and beaches lower our protections and we will find each other again.
Because life is long, and love is eternal and because I don’t ever stop loving anyone. And I may be inconsistent and unpredictable when you focus on the microcosms of days weeks months...but if you look at the arc of the last forty years as a prediction for the next forty years, I think you’ll find yourself getting to know me better.
And when I look at the arc of the last forty years, and I think about the people who I want to keep in my circle of friends for the next forty, you absolutely make the inner circle.
But it takes a lot to get into my innermost circle. And none of my lovers have ever entered that place. That innermost circle is the core of my soul. And if you can make it to the inner circle, you have a shot at getting into the innermost circle. But only for a visit. And sometimes for a sojourn. You had a few years of regular visits. But I need to close that door right now. And I can’t promise you that it will open again. And I can’t tell you with certainty that you won’t be able to open the door. I can promise that there are no locks on the doors to the innermost circle. And I can promise that the only way in is to walk through an open door, or to try the knob on a door that appears closed and locked.
I have learned so much from you. Mary told me that we know when relationships are over because we realize there’s nothing left for us to learn here. From that perspective, I can’t leave you.
But the sound of slamming doors is rattling my inner peace. And I need some quiet. And I think that’s something we can agree on.
I’d like to spend the rest of my summer doing the things that will make my heart happier.
I regret telling you that I was enacting our prenup. I don’t want to be that person. It’s there for protection but taking it out and waving it around was as dangerous as torches to an angry mob. One spark and the whole fucking town is raised to the ground forever.
I need to take the summer “off” from our marriage. I need to find a place to go and I need to spend some time with my kids by myself. I want to work with you to make that happen. I don’t know what you need. But no one in this family has the right to kick anyone out of our home. It belongs to all 6 of us. But we all need some space sometimes. And we all need a door that we can go behind and regroup. And we can’t tie anyone down or force anyone to do anything. We can ask. We can process. But in this family, we don’t believe in power over. We have strong influences on each other because of our bonds.
Ok, this time I’ll really end with a quote:
We don’t get to choose whether or not we get hurt in this world but we do have some say over who hurts us.
And I like my choices.
Love,
Dr. Rabbi Nehama Rose Benmosche, daughter of the late Robert Benmosche, and Emama to Elie, Eliyashu, Ezra, Sima, Mandela, Isaiah, Aubrey, Julian, Nolan and Raziel.
I am deeply ambivalent about our marriage. And I know that I am not alone in that ambivalence. I stayed and talked to Mary until 1:57pm after you left and we agreed that you would see her on Saturday and I would take the double session on Tuesday and that we would take this one day at a time. Actually, we were barely at taking it one hour at a time in my session. My family is so central to my life and I am so deeply distraught about the state of our union.
I spoke to Elie before we left for New York. She told me that David told her that you were looking at houses. On the phone, you told me that you told our children that I was giving them 60 days to leave their home and I said, Terry, that isn't true. Despite the volatility, the brokenness and the seemly inevitable dissolution of our marriage, I am fiercely loyal to my family. It is a quality I inherited from my father and I am very proud of it. I will protect my family from outside attack and do whatever it takes to make sure my children are safe, including putting myself in harms way to save them...and more importantly, giving up pieces of my selfish desires for the sake of their well-being and their physical and emotional safety. Elie's phone was in my hand when you texted her this afternoon and I asked her to let me read your text exchange. It hurt my feelings to read your text to her, but when I thought about what was in Elie's best interests, I could justify and support your decision to warn her that you didn't completely trust me to keep her safe and that you were doing your job as her parent and making sure she was prepared in case I wasn't able to care for her or in case another emergency arose. David and I talked to her when I dropped her off about why it is important to have some cash with you at all times, but I had not made the $20 safety pinned or in a shoe suggestion. It was a good idea. Thank you.
On the other hand, when I heard that you threatened to leave Sima at the police station as an abandoned child if Natalie couldn't drop everything and pick him up, I was horrified. Once you knew about my plans with Elie, you knew that I made an executive decision that Elie was babysitting and had her phone off but that I knew where she was and that we had a clear safety plan. I wish you would have said, Nehama, I don't like this plan. It doesn't feel safe. I need to leave this therapy session now that I know how to find the children and you need to help David locate the children immediately. And I would have called David with you and told him the 5 places Elie could have been and the best order in which to check the places to pick them...or to at least check on them and make sure they were safe. If we had worked together as coparents, Elie, Ezra, Sima and David would have been at either the Harvest moon nail bar, Wawa, Miles Park, the pizza place or our home within half an hour. We could have told Elie that Dad and Daddy didn't know about the plan for her to have her phone off and it made them very worried. We could have made the decision together that next time there is a change of plans and that she would be out of range on her cell phone, we would like to make sure all the parents knew where she was and what the plan was. From my perspective, when I woke up in the morning with Elie, Ezra and Sima in the house with me, I was the custodial parent until we transferred custody again. We didn't make a plan with each other about physical custody. I assumed that I was responsible for the children. I made a plan with Elie that involved a modification of our original plan. I asked Elie to look up the phone numbers for the absence late lines at PW and WES, so that I could report the children as absent, but I didn't follow through and make the appropriate phone calls because I got distracted and forgot about it. I should have told you and David about my plan, but I don’t think I did anything wrong by not telling you. If David tried to contact Elie and her phone was off when you had custody, he would reach out to you, and if he couldn’t reach you, I imagine that it would be a few hours later when the panic would set in. But I can imagine the thoughts creeping in right away and even the panic feeling starting much faster if there is some anxiety about the stability of the person in charge of the children.I would have told you about the changes in the plan if we were in touch. Now that I think about it, I can totally understand that you would have checked in with Elie at either 8:30 am before she went to school or at 11 am when she was supposed to be dismissed. I can imagine how scary it was to not know where our children were and in the moments when we are scared we think horrible and irrational things. We make wild threats and lash out when we are under attack. That is my best attempt at processing and understanding what happened here. Unfortunately, the feeling that I can't shake is that I don't trust you to be alone with our children right now. And you don't trust me to make good decisions for our children right now. So as devastating as it is, I would like to make a plan to be separated for now. I believe that the best way to do that and maintain the possibility of getting back to renewing our vows of being family to each other one day is for each of us to take everything we brought into this marriage and separate into new households with our children, our worldly belongings, our financial resources and what's left of our broken hearts.
I would like us to accomplish that task amicably and with minimal collateral damage. Today, my plan is to live in our home for the summer and to start looking for a new place so that the kids are set up to start the school year and their new routines with ease. I don't know where we will live but I have 3 good ideas. Time and looking around at options will let me find the right place to land. Today, I hope that by August 1st 2019, we will be able to celebrate our anniversary as a family. I am afraid that since it’s already our anniversary this year, we will be/already are grieving for that family with a scary uncertainty about whether or not things will ever be the same again come August 1st. Today I can tell myself and my children that things are never the same. That time marches on and change is the only guarantee in life. And it is my deepest hope that this change leads us to a stronger and deeper love and bond as a family. Because I believe that I have a forever family. And that you cannot ever lose your family, no matter how fucked up it gets. Because no matter what, once that bond is created, it is permanent. I have bonded to you and Elie and Ezra and David and Shoshie and Ruth and Elijah and Jodi and family and Sarah and family and David's extended family and Shoshie's extended family and your parents and aunts and uncles and your brother. This list isn’t hierarchical...but it is very very long. And I hope that my extended and chosen family continues to see you as family after we separate. That would be the best way for our friends and family to support us. Even if they don't want to be around, even when they don't like us, they will still be in relationship with us. Because "Death ends a life, not a relationship." And though there is a baby out there named Nathaniel J'elijah who is alive and well, for our family it felt like we had a death in the family when our adoption was interrupted. And when we take our children and separate them from each other and when we separate from each other, it will feel like dying. Because our family, our queer, happy, rainbow Brady bunch family will die. And the family tree will have slashes across places where flat lines used to be.
But I'm not in utter despair and I'm not losing everything. Because I see this as an opportunity to mend the relationships I have with all of the members of my immediate family. And instead of trying to hold this together and continuing to feel like I am living on a rig in the ocean attached to an unstable well that could burst at any moment and kill us all, I have decided to release the pressure and kill the well. And just like in that movie I watched, it's going to be a disaster. Because we saw all the signs and we did our due diligence for the most part, but we also know we cut corners and we wanted it to work, and we didn't want to lose the investment so we pushed and patched and ignored the tests because there were other ways to explain the problem. It wasn't a bad well, one side argued. There were other explanations for the data. And there was no oil on the floor. So it couldn't be that the pressure was too high. But the guy looking for the oil on the rig floor thought that was the only place for the pressure to be releasing. And he couldn't see the cracks in the ocean floor that made it so obvious that the well was bad and that they need to close it up and try elsewhere...because it's only with enough distance and perspective that we can see the whole picture and figure out where the problems are and work together to fix them. And that's what couples therapy offers. A chance to step back from looking at the rig floor. A chance to take all of the test results and get an expert opinion on how to move forward. And then, ultimately, each person is responsible for making their own decisions. But as you so wisely pointed out, it takes two people to make a plan together, but one person can cancel that plan without the consent of the other. And that is the power that autonomy has over connection. But I don't want to have power over. I wanted to be the kind of person who has overlapping circles with all of the sentient beings in my life. I am a hippie at heart. Both biological sides of my family have spent the last century in the Catskills. And before that, in the wide open spaces of the shetls of Galitzia, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and in the mountains and red sands of Northern Africa. We need wide open spaces in my family. We need to be free to love and be loved without boundaries and we don't like being tied down to institutions. We rely on each other for support, and we have an inherent distrust of bureaucratic systems and chains of command. We are socialists, with a touch of fiscal conservativism. And we are not pure socialists because we are also fiercely loyal and clan protective and we don't want to be caught being obligated to share and not having enough for ourselves or our families.
Terry S Lubin, I married you under a huppah in the backyard of our family home and what I remember most is our family ceremony and our Sheva brachot of post-humanist values that we committed to honoring with our lives.
I don't want a divorce. I don't want to take an ax to our beautiful ketubah and each walk away with half of the broken wood, splinters making our hands bleed and we try to soothe ourselves with the memories of good times and the roses and also the splinters and the thorns...they are all parts of us. The honey and the beesting...like the Nomi Shemer song al Kol eleh.
I will end my letter to you with a prayer from that song. (My translation):
For all of this
For all of this
Please guard and protect me
Because i trust that the universe and all of its inhabitants are inherently good .
On the honey and the beesting.
On the bitter and the sweet.
Don’t uproot what is planted
Don’t forget about the hope.
Restore me
And I will return
To that good land.
I will love you forever and you will always be one of the greatest loves of my life, one of my favorite lovers, one of my best healers, one of my role models for the best practices in teaching and parenting, someone who I respect and love and appreciate for the way they teach their children, the way they love their children and the way they shine brightest when they help a child grow up to be the best person they can be.
I have been so lucky to have you as a partner, as a friend, as a lover and as the person I chose to spend my time with. Losing you is so fucking painful. I can barely breathe as I write this because the waves of grief are pounding on me so hard.
So before i drown, I need to get out of the ocean. And find some dry land. And warm up on the beach in the sunshine. And I need to have a baby.
And maybe, just maybe, we will find ourselves on the same beach one day, holding our infants, and we will let the intoxication of babies and beaches lower our protections and we will find each other again.
Because life is long, and love is eternal and because I don’t ever stop loving anyone. And I may be inconsistent and unpredictable when you focus on the microcosms of days weeks months...but if you look at the arc of the last forty years as a prediction for the next forty years, I think you’ll find yourself getting to know me better.
And when I look at the arc of the last forty years, and I think about the people who I want to keep in my circle of friends for the next forty, you absolutely make the inner circle.
But it takes a lot to get into my innermost circle. And none of my lovers have ever entered that place. That innermost circle is the core of my soul. And if you can make it to the inner circle, you have a shot at getting into the innermost circle. But only for a visit. And sometimes for a sojourn. You had a few years of regular visits. But I need to close that door right now. And I can’t promise you that it will open again. And I can’t tell you with certainty that you won’t be able to open the door. I can promise that there are no locks on the doors to the innermost circle. And I can promise that the only way in is to walk through an open door, or to try the knob on a door that appears closed and locked.
I have learned so much from you. Mary told me that we know when relationships are over because we realize there’s nothing left for us to learn here. From that perspective, I can’t leave you.
But the sound of slamming doors is rattling my inner peace. And I need some quiet. And I think that’s something we can agree on.
I’d like to spend the rest of my summer doing the things that will make my heart happier.
I regret telling you that I was enacting our prenup. I don’t want to be that person. It’s there for protection but taking it out and waving it around was as dangerous as torches to an angry mob. One spark and the whole fucking town is raised to the ground forever.
I need to take the summer “off” from our marriage. I need to find a place to go and I need to spend some time with my kids by myself. I want to work with you to make that happen. I don’t know what you need. But no one in this family has the right to kick anyone out of our home. It belongs to all 6 of us. But we all need some space sometimes. And we all need a door that we can go behind and regroup. And we can’t tie anyone down or force anyone to do anything. We can ask. We can process. But in this family, we don’t believe in power over. We have strong influences on each other because of our bonds.
Ok, this time I’ll really end with a quote:
We don’t get to choose whether or not we get hurt in this world but we do have some say over who hurts us.
And I like my choices.
Love,
Dr. Rabbi Nehama Rose Benmosche, daughter of the late Robert Benmosche, and Emama to Elie, Eliyashu, Ezra, Sima, Mandela, Isaiah, Aubrey, Julian, Nolan and Raziel.
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