In Jewish mysticism, the Shechinah is the Divine Presence that dwells among us, the feminine expression of the sacred that accompanies humanity through suffering and exile. She does not abandon us when the world becomes dark. She goes into exile with us. As a Jewish woman, mother, psychologist, and someone who has spent much of her life helping others navigate suffering, I have found myself confronting a world that feels increasingly hostile and unfamiliar and I have felt lik

“Free Palestine,” like “Free Tibet” or “Free Mandela,” can be a legitimate call for freedom and self-determination. It can also be a slogan, a protest, or a publicity stunt. That is not my argument. My argument is about what happens around it. Free Tibet did not make Chinese Canadians answer for Beijing. The anti-apartheid movement did not make every South African abroad answer for Pretoria. Ukrainian flags fly across Canada, yet we understand that the Russian man down the st

There is something about this time of year that makes change impossible to ignore. The light shifts, the air cools, leaves begin to turn, and the natural world seems remarkably unconcerned with holding onto what has been. The Jewish calendar meets us in much the same place. We enter the High Holy Days examining what needs repair, what belongs to us and what we may finally need to surrender. But this year, I find myself sitting with a larger question: how do we remain open—to

There is something wonderfully strange about Sukkot. Just days after Yom Kippur, we build a structure that is not supposed to protect us particularly well, move some of ordinary life into it, invite people over, eat, and are told to rejoice. The roof is open. The weather gets in. The whole thing is temporary. And somehow, none of that is considered a problem. The more I think about it, the more psychologically sophisticated this feels. We spend so much of our lives trying to

Sometimes becoming more whole feels remarkably like falling apart. Jewish tradition has long understood that transformation is rarely tidy. Yom Kippur does not ask us to pretend we are finished, certain or unchanged. It brings us into the narrow place of honest accounting, where we face what has been broken, what we have broken and what is still becoming. The day begins with disorientation: we set aside ordinary routines, loosen our usual defenses and enter a space between wh

As I celebrate Rosh Hashanah from the vantage point of renewed interest in my own Jewish faith, I have been thinking about teshuvah. Teshuvah is often translated as repentance, but its meaning is closer to return: turning back, taking account, examining where we have been and how we want to live. The shofar is traditionally understood, in part, as a call to awaken, I think to see what has shattered. For me, that makes this season less about asking, What is wrong and how do I

Sea Glass grew, in part, from streams that once seemed separate. For more than twenty years, psychology has given me a framework for understanding trauma, attachment, avoidance, regulation and change. Mindfulness taught me something complementary: how to remain with experience without immediately reacting to it. Psychedelic work opened another area of inquiry into how rigid patterns of self, meaning and behaviour can sometimes loosen. And my return to Judaism and Jewish mysti

A part of your flock of Great Egrets in Kanata. I keep coming around to what it means to hold pain and love at the same time. In August 2025, Israel’s National Security Council issued a travel warning urging Israelis to exercise increased caution in Canada because of rising antisemitism and anti-Israel hostility. Canada. My country. My home. And I love her. I grew up believing Canada was beloved and feared in that particularly Canadian way—not because we were the biggest or l

Psychedelic care asks us to take context seriously. Who a person is, what they bring into the room, what makes them feel safe, how they understand an experience, and what helps them integrate it afterward can all matter. Our work asks what this means when the person is Jewish. This question has become more visible since October 7, as Jewish clinicians, patients, researchers and communities have described challenges within mental-health and psychedelic spaces alongside renewed