Dr. Jenny Holland, PsyD

There are moments that split a life open.

One of mine happened in the NICU,

when my daughter turned her head toward my voice

before she could breathe.

In that single movement, decades of my story gathered themselves—

the child under the table,

the twin with a disability carrying her brother forward,

the girl shaped by isolation, surgeries, and pain,

the woman told her baby will most likely die.

And in my daughter’s turning, I understood something unmistakable:

The whole thing is alchemy.

Trauma becoming wisdom.

Difference becoming orientation.

Recognition becoming destiny remembered.

Wherever you come from, whatever you carry,

may this help you see the places in your life

where you feel both special and alone…

and where a turning might already be stirring.

This was mine.

I offer it in case you are nearing your own.

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Torah as Mirror is my way of reading ancient text the way we read ourselves —

as psychology, lineage, and pattern.

Each week I place Torah beside lived experience so the two can illuminate one another.

This cycle is about struggle, blessing, estrangement, return,

and the quiet places where teshuvah — turning back toward what is true — becomes possible.

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I am a sacred psychologist, a blesser, a writer,

and a disability advocate shaped by an extraordinary beginning.

My work stands at the crossroads of:

• trauma theory

• depth psychology

• disability wisdom

• and spiritual traditions that teach us how to return to ourselves.

I write as someone once underestimated and scapegoated,

as someone who rebuilt her life through clarity, boundaries, and compassion,

and as someone who believes every story — no matter its beginning — carries a blessing waiting to be recognized.

⸻

Before she opened her eyes,

before breath,

before certainty—

she heard me.

And she turned.

She could not breathe.

She had severe bilateral hearing loss.

She was functionally blind.

And still — when I said her name, she turned toward me.

Recognition arrived from a place deeper than the senses.

Older than instinct.

Older than attachment.

Older even than trauma.

In Hebrew, returning is called teshuvah —

coming home before understanding, before breath.

That is what happened in that room.

⸻

I was twin “A” born two months, premature and weighing less than a pound, not the kind celebrated.

I was the twin with a disability — and also, a girl-misunderstood, underestimated, projected onto.

In clinical language, I became the family’s scapegoat —

the one who absorbs what others refuse to face.

People assumed I would need to be carried.

They never saw that I was already carrying.

I was born first.

And when my brother wouldn’t move,

I dragged him across the floor on a blanket sewn in the shape of an elephant —

a small disabled child pulling the “stronger” twin forward

with her teeth and an unrelenting insistence on connection.

That image became the blueprint of my life:

unseen strength,

unexpected leadership,

the reversal of expectation.

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Because of the trauma surrounding our births,

my daughter and I both have cerebral palsy —

a neurologic orientation that affects movement, coordination,

and the way we inhabit space and gravity.

Mother–daughter pairs with CP are extraordinarily rare.

In pregnancy, this was my greatest fear.

I never imagined it could happen.

I did not want my daughter to carry what I had carried.

Growing up, adults weaponized my disability against me:

“If you act that way, someday your own child will be a spaz.”

The cruelty of it settled deep in my body.

It taught me that my existence was not simply misunderstood;

it was treated as a warning.

So when Amelia was born with cerebral palsy — my very condition —

it was not just a medical reality.

It was the breaking of a curse,

the reclamation of a story once used to silence me.

And in the moment she turned toward my voice before breath, I understood:

she was not the fulfillment of their warning.

She was the undoing of it.

I searched for data on mother–daughter CP pairs.

There was nothing.

We were not common enough to be counted.

And yet here we are —

two lives shaped by neurologic injury at birth,

two bodies learning the world through precision and creative adaptation,

two souls whose movements echo each other across time.

What could have been repetition became rare lineage —

a sacred orientation,

a recognition that arrived before breath itself.

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Much of my childhood was spent under tables —

studying adults, bracing for danger.

I hid there soiled and terrified of being found,

scanning every breath and footstep for signs of violence.

The tension between longing for rescue

and fearing the punishment rescue might bring

shaped a psychology no child should ever have to live inside.

But even then, I was learning:

the breath before a lie,

the eyelid flicker of shame,

the curl of contempt at a lip’s edge,

the shift when tenderness enters a room,

the way care — or the absence of it — alters the air.

They thought I was hiding.

I was becoming attuned.

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And in that long, lonely stretch of childhood, there was Grover.

Gentle.

Anxious.

Brave in the exact way children need.

Soft and strong at the same time.

He was the first presence who mirrored me.

My first safe recognition.

My first turning toward someone who turned toward me.

Grover — with his trembling sweetness and his alter ego, Super Grover — taught me something profound:

fear and courage are not opposites; they are siblings.

Some of us rise not because we feel brave,

but because connection awakens something fear cannot silence.

I used to sing “Somebody Come and Play” under those tables.

No one came.

But I always hoped someone would.

And now I have Amelia.

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This week’s Torah portion gives us Joseph —

a dreamer whose sensitivity isolates him.

A child set apart.

A child misunderstood.

A child whose difference becomes the target of fear.

The pattern is ancient:

Being special often feels like being alone.

Being attuned often feels like being misunderstood.

Being set apart often feels like exile.

This is projection.

This is scapegoating.

This is fear masquerading as judgment.

Doctors once said I would never speak, never think —

that I belonged in an institution, not a family.

Years later, professionals said the same about my daughter.

I call this the earliest attempt at breaking the sacred relationship between mother and child.

Something ancestral rose in me:

They were wrong about me.

And I knew they were wrong about her.

And I wanted her — beyond diagnoses or statistics.

She was mine, and I was hers.

“I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”

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My Aunt Regina met us in the NICU the night my daughter was born.

She had already heard about “baby Holland” on the police radio and raced over.

I was shocked, dazed, trying to hold myself together.

She placed her hands on my shoulders and said, with absolute conviction:

“Don’t worry. This is a time of miracles. Everything is going to be okay.”

She reminded me that I had been a miracle —

a baby who wasn’t expected to live —

who grew into a woman with a mind sharp enough to make sense of suffering

and a heart soft enough to feel everything.

She told me no one was better suited to be Amelia’s mother

than someone who knew what it meant to live in a body like ours.

Living with cerebral palsy means navigating muscles that spasm without warning,

joints that resist, movements that require planning most people never think about.

It means knowing effort at a cellular level.

It also builds a perceptive intelligence —

an awareness of bodies, vulnerability, and space.

And Regina — the woman who once dragged wounded police officers to safety —

stood in the NICU with that same fierce clarity.

Some people run toward duty.

Some open doors others leave broken for years.

She opened a path.

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During the months my daughter fought for her life,

a Rabbi — not even my Rabbi — came to the NICU every day.

He asked nothing of me.

Only that I let him be near.

His congregation delivered meals for weeks,

sustaining me when Adam had to return to work

and I refused to leave the NICU at all.

His presence did not end the crisis.

But it changed its shape.

This is what Joseph did:

showed up, steady and unwavering,

feeding people through famine,

refusing to abandon those the world overlooks.

This Rabbi was Joseph in my story.

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After receiving 157 stitches from her tearing, urgent birth,

I was finally wheeled to the NICU.

I whispered her name.

And she turned.

Not because she could hear me.

Not because she could see me.

Not because breath had entered her body.

She turned toward me anyway.

A recognition deeper than the senses,

a teshuvah that arrived before breath.

And what happened in that moment

was the opposite of my earliest wound:

Where my twin once turned away to survive,

my daughter turned toward me

before she could even breathe.

A soul-level return.

A lineage rewritten in one movement.

She is twenty-three now.

And that turning still lives in her.

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May you feel the truth that your child is not behind,

not broken,

not a mistake.

May you see their orientation as wisdom,

their sensitivity as intelligence,

their way of being as holy.

May comparison fall away

and connection rise in its place.

May your child feel wanted, chosen, cherished.

And may you feel supported by a community worthy of you.

For the neonatologists and nurses,

the respiratory techs and occupational therapists,

the social workers, transport teams, lactation experts,

and the janitorial staff who keep rooms sacred and safe—

may you feel the magnitude of the lives you hold.

Your hands are the scaffolding of survival.

Your work is written in the book of life.

For the ones waiting for invitations that never came,

for the quiet hearts who once sang “Somebody Come and Play,”

hoping someone would notice—

may connection find you.

May recognition rise.

May you feel welcomed at tables

you once believed were closed to you.

I bless the turning in you that hasn’t happened yet.

I bless the turning already unfolding.

I bless the turning that arrives before breath—

quietly, unmistakably yours.

I see you.

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Your comment, your share, your presence

helps this reach someone standing at their own sealed door,

unsure if anyone notices them.

Share this with someone who needs courage,

language, recognition, or a way back to themselves.

I see you.

I bless you.

Love,

Jenny