Dr. Jenny Holland, PsyD

There are moments when nothing improves—and yet returning to who you were before is no longer possible. The outer facts remain stubbornly the same. The structures don’t shift. The relief doesn’t arrive. And still, something essential has begun to reorganize. No announcement. No resolution. Just a knowing that doesn’t ask permission. This reflection begins there.

Torah as Mirror is a weekly reflection practice that treats Torah not as distant text or moral instruction, but as a living psychological and spiritual mirror. I place ancient words alongside lived human experience—developmental, relational, embodied—so that we can see ourselves more clearly inside the text.

This is not Torah as argument or dogma.

It is Torah as orientation: a way of noticing where truth is already moving within us, often before our lives have caught up.

You do not need to be Jewish or religious to be here.

You only need a little curiosity about yourself—and a willingness to notice what is already shifting.

In the Torah, this moment appears in the middle of the Exodus story.

The people have already cried out.

Moses has already confronted power.

God has already promised liberation.

And still—nothing has changed.

The Torah does not rush past this. It slows down. It tells us that the people cannot even take in Moses’ words because their spirits are shortened by exhaustion and crushing labor.

This is not failure.

It is what prolonged strain does to a human nervous system.

Va’eira opens here.

The people are still enslaved.

The labor is still brutal.

Pharaoh has not softened.

The future is still unclear.

And then God says something quietly radical:

I am known differently now.

Not because circumstances have changed—

but because the people are entering a stage that requires a deeper form of presence.

Va’eira means “I appeared.”

It is a strange name for a chapter where nothing looks better yet.

But that is the point.

God is not announcing rescue.

God is announcing presence.

This moment names something many of us experience but often dismiss: the moment when something fundamental begins to settle internally while the external world remains unchanged.

You might recognize this stage if:

• you are no longer confused, but you don’t feel settled yet

• explanations still exist, but they no longer bring relief

• the old strategies technically work, but they feel hollow

• clarity is present, even though comfort is not

I have lived this.

There were times when nothing around me felt reliable—when structures I depended on were strained or failing, when familiar explanations stopped working, when I could feel how exposed I was.

And yet, beneath all of that, something had already quieted.

Not relief.

Not certainty.

Clarity.

I knew what was true, even though knowing it did not protect me yet.

I noticed this when I became aware of how much energy I was spending rehearsing explanations—without yet knowing what I would do with that awareness.

That noticing itself marked a shift.

Once clarity begins to arrive, the inner landscape changes. The familiar strategies—negotiating, minimizing, waiting things out—don’t disappear, but they no longer organize everything.

Not because you’ve become rigid,

but because something has begun to integrate.

Torah names this directly. God speaks in the future tense, again and again:

I will bring you out.

I will free you.

I will redeem you.

I will be with you.

What matters here is not the sequence.

It is the tone.

These are not rewards.

They are orientation.

There is a particular kind of pain that arises when love collides with the realities of care.

I once believed—sincerely—that if you loved someone, you would naturally take responsibility for what made their daily life possible. Not heroically. Not perfectly. Just as part of the shared work of a life together.

I acted on that belief.

I invested what I had.

I trusted that what I could not manage alone would be carried with me.

When that trust strained, it did not strain loudly.

It strained through reframing.

Through stories that made responsibility seem optional, and access look like an unreasonable expectation rather than a necessity.

What was most disorienting was not the strain itself, but the reversal—the way care was recast as burden, and trust as entitlement.

Va’eira speaks directly into this disorientation. It does not promise that others will rise to the moment. It offers something both harder and steadier:

the possibility that your orientation toward truth can consolidate even when relationships cannot yet carry it.

That is not resignation.

It is maturation.

From a sacred psychological perspective, this is a moment of reorganization.

The psyche stops fragmenting itself simply to get through the day.

It becomes more costly to hold one truth privately while performing another publicly.

This is not collapse.

It is consolidation.

And consolidation can feel lonely—not because you are doing something wrong, but because you are no longer abandoning yourself to preserve equilibrium.

Maturity without applause

Development rarely unfolds in clean lines.

Growth often happens in the middle—after insight, before resolution.

You stop waiting to be told you’re right.

You stop organizing yourself around being understood.

That shift does not feel triumphant.

It feels steady.

That is one of the marks of maturity.

From an attachment perspective, something striking happens here.

God does not say, “I will be with you once the danger passes.”

God says, “I am with you now.”

Secure attachment is not the absence of threat.

It is the experience of presence in the midst of threat.

For many of us, this is the moment when external supports feel uncertain—and an internal steadiness begins to take shape.

You remain with yourself.

That can feel like loss.

It is also the beginning of trust.

When clarity arrives before relief

Trauma teaches us that people under sustained strain organize around survival, not clarity.

When clarity begins to arrive, it can feel unsettling—not because it is wrong, but because it interrupts strategies that once made things bearable.

The Torah names this directly: the people cannot hear Moses because their spirits are constricted by exhaustion.

This is not resistance.

It is depletion.

And still—truth arrives.

Not as a demand.

As a presence.

Disability wisdom insists that dignity and belonging are not contingent on improvement, function, or repair.

Va’eira aligns with this moral stance.

God’s presence does not wait for bodies, lives, or systems to become more convenient.

God arrives as accompaniment, not reward.

Presence is not earned.

It is given.

The mirror

Many people recognize themselves here.

After the insight.

Before the resolution.

When something inside has shifted,

and the outer world has not yet caught up.

This is not failure.

It is passage.

A truer way of being has entered the system.

And even if nothing else has changed yet,

that matters.

May you trust the clarity that arrives before relief.

May you stop mistaking exhaustion for failure.

May you recognize integration even when it is quiet.

May you feel accompanied rather than fixed.

May presence meet you before solutions do.

And may you know this:

Clarity that arrives before relief can still orient you.

I see you.

I bless you.

Love, Jenny