Holding the world
(Artwork by Jenny Holland – paper, gauche)
Vayechi — And He Lived
Some weeks in this series mark a threshold.
This one walks us through it — grounding Torah in lived experience, psychology, and the body.
When healing is no longer the center
There comes a point when healing is no longer the center.
Not because pain has disappeared.
Not because the past has resolved.
But because something else has quietly taken over as the organizing principle.
This week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, arrives at that moment.
Jacob is dying. The family is gathered. The long arc of survival is already behind them. Jacob does not use his final words to repair the family system or explain what happened. He blesses his sons.
And in Torah, blessing is not reassurance.
It is placement.
Each son is named according to what can move through him without distortion. Power is limited where it would harm. Authority is granted where it can be borne. Abundance is given without requiring sameness or reunion.
Blessing here is not kindness.
It is clarity.
Blessing as realignment
When I use the word realignment, I am not talking about ease or spiritual success. I mean a structural shift — a change in what governs us.
Trauma theory helps us understand how survival structures bring coherence. They keep the nervous system intact. Even painful patterns can feel safer than uncertainty. What once ailed us often becomes what organizes us.
This is the counterintuitive truth:
Letting go of what ailed us is difficult not because we are attached to suffering, but because it once held us together.
From a developmental perspective, this is not failure. It is maturity. Identity transitions always involve the loss of a former organizing self. The psyche experiences this not as progress, but as risk.
In Hebrew, this turning is called teshuvah — not repentance, but return. A turning toward what is most true. Teshuvah is not backward-looking. It is directional.
Blessing is what makes that turn survivable.
Attachment, presence, and staying
Attachment theory teaches us that what we need most at moments of transition is not explanation, but presence.
Secure attachment is not built through perfect repair, but through reliable staying.
Jacob does not soothe. He does not reassure. He stays present long enough to bless what is actually there.
At certain thresholds, the most healing thing is not interpretation, but witness.
Turning toward without leaving the body
Spiritual culture often teaches that transcendence requires leaving the body behind.
Vayechi refuses this completely.
After all the blessings are spoken, Torah becomes relentlessly physical. Jacob makes Joseph swear that his bones will not remain in Egypt. Later, Joseph will make the same request.
This is not sentiment.
It is theology.
Egypt is where survival was possible.
It was never where belonging was meant to settle.
Jacob does not ask to be remembered.
He asks to be carried.
His bones know where they belong.
Jacob’s bones are the means of transcendence.
Transcendence is not achieved by leaving the body.
It is what happens when we refuse to abandon it.
Survival teaches us where we can live.
The bones remember where we belong.
When another system goes quiet
I write this as someone whose body has never been neutral.
Spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy shaped my nervous system early.
Scoliosis reshaped my spine.
Osteoarthritis added its own daily negotiations.
These are not abstractions.
They are the ground on which my sense of self formed.
And then, in midlife, something else began to go quiet.
I lost my hearing — profoundly, bilaterally, and without drama. Not as a crisis, but as a fact that required integration.
There is a particular psychological work that comes with losing another major system when you are already disabled.
It is not the work of shock.
It is the work of reorientation.
Attachment and developmental theories help name what happens here: when the body changes again, the self must renegotiate how it belongs — not just to the world, but to itself.
This is not the grief of becoming disabled.
It is the grief of becoming different again.
Disability theory helps us say this plainly: the problem is not the body. The problem is systems that decide which bodies belong without explanation.
Sacred psychology insists that integration is not additive. You do not simply stack losses and move on.
Each change asks a deeper question:
What still organizes me now?
There are days when presence requires more effort — listening differently, asking for repetition, accepting the friction of being misheard or missed. Not because I am difficult, but because layered bodies are rarely what systems imagine.
And still.
There are moments of unmistakable coherence.
When I write something true.
When language moves through my body without distortion.
When meaning reaches others and lands.
In those moments, I do not transcend my body.
I arrive in it.
I know — in my bones — that I belong.
The parting
There comes a moment when what kept us alive can no longer be allowed to decide where we belong.
Not because it failed — but because it succeeded.
Survival did its work.
Adaptation did its work.
The body learned how to remain intact under pressure.
But what is built for endurance cannot also be asked to govern forever.
At some point, orientation must replace vigilance.
This is the moment Torah insists on bones — not as memory, but as direction.
What remains does not argue.
It waits.
And when it is time, it asks to be carried.
A mirror for you
You might notice, as you read:
• What has been organizing your life until now?
• What once held you together, but no longer needs to govern?
• Where has the internal argument already stopped?
• If the story quieted, what in you would still ask to be carried?
These are not questions of improvement.
They are questions of orientation.
Blessings
May what once held you together
be honored for the work it did
and released from the work it no longer needs to do.
May you recognize the moment
when effort gives way to coherence —
not because life has become simple,
but because the argument has ended.
May you trust what is realigning in you
even before you can explain it.
May you turn toward what is ready now
without abandoning your body,
your history,
or your particularity.
May what remains —
what endured every adaptation —
be carried forward intact.
And may you know, deep in your bones,
where you belong —
and where you are going,
and that what remains is enough.
I See You.
I Bless You.
If you’re new here, you’re welcome to begin anywhere — and to take your time.