TORAH AS MIRROR — WEEK TEN
A Bird of Many Colors
(handmade paper, oil pastel, and colored pencil)
This week’s Torah as Mirror is about identity after trauma —
what it means to stop explaining and begin living from what you know.
TORAH AS MIRROR — WEEK TEN
Come Closer to Me
(Torah Portion: Vayigash — “Drawing Near”)
I am no longer using Torah primarily to understand what happened to me.
I am using it to keep something open.
To keep the connection between truth and relationship from closing.
Between knowing and living.
Between who I am and how I move through the world.
Understanding has never been my struggle.
Like many people shaped by early rupture, I learned to see clearly long before I learned how to live from what I saw. I could name what was true, explain why it mattered, and still organize myself around other people’s comfort or readiness. Insight came early. Permission came late.
We become ourselves through mirroring. Someone sees us, responds to us, reflects us back as real. When that process is interrupted — by neglect, distortion, fear, or harm — we don’t stop developing. But something stays unfinished. We exist without a settled sense that we are allowed to take up the space our lives actually require.
Trauma doesn’t erase knowing. It reorganizes it. The nervous system learns to prioritize safety over integration. We get good at explaining, anticipating, accommodating.
We learn how to be close without being safe. Closeness becomes something to manage rather than something to rest inside.
That’s the psychological ground beneath Joseph’s story.
Joseph’s early life is marked by fractured attachment — favoritism, envy, betrayal, sudden loss. Over and over, his identity is shaped by how others see him, need him, or reject him. He survives by adapting: dreamer, servant, prisoner, interpreter, ruler. Each role effective. None fully his.
Until this moment.
When Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, he doesn’t recount the harm. He doesn’t ask for recognition. He doesn’t check whether they understand.
He says only:
“I am Joseph. Come closer to me.”
Not please.
Not do you recognize me now.
Not after everything that happened.
Come closer.
From an attachment perspective, this is what earned security looks like. He isn’t chasing closeness or guarding against it. His identity no longer depends on how proximity turns out.
This isn’t forgiveness as moral achievement.
It’s integration.
Joseph doesn’t chase reconciliation.
He doesn’t prove his worth.
He names himself — and allows proximity only where it can be real.
Joseph has moved from a self shaped by reaction to a self grounded in knowing. He invites closeness not to complete himself, but because he no longer has to disappear to be met.
The Bird, the Soul, and the Colors That Remain
There is an image that has stayed with me in this portion: a bird at the threshold.
In many traditions, the bird is a symbol of the soul — not because it escapes the world, but because it knows when to land. It does not beg the sky to receive it. It trusts its own wings, and it trusts the ground enough to approach it.
The bird does not ask permission to be what it is.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Joseph’s coat — the one that marked him early on, the one that made him visible, the one that could be taken from him.
The bird carries its colors differently.
They are not something it wears.
They are not something that can be stripped away.
They belong to it.
Joseph, here, feels like that bird to me. No longer circling the wound. No longer hovering outside himself. His identity is no longer granted or revoked by others. It lives in his voice, his presence, his knowing.
That is what makes the invitation safe — for him, and for those who come near.
I recognize this moment because I’ve lived a version of it myself.
On Yom Kippur, I offered a blessing to the community.
The door was still broken.
The access needs that had been named for years were still unmet.
That isn’t incidental. Access is never just logistics. It tells the truth about whose presence is anticipated, whose bodies are planned for, whose belonging is assumed rather than negotiated.
I didn’t speak about any of that.
I spoke from who I am.
Not to smooth things over.
Not to perform resilience.
Not because repair had happened.
I offered the blessing because I was no longer organizing myself around waiting.
And these were the words I spoke:
I know what it is to arrive at a darkened room, (on Rosh Hashanah)
to find the door unlocked when it should have been open.
And yet — Hineini. Here I am.
(Fully present. Not hiding.)
Here to offer blessing, not bitterness.
In Jewish mystical language, this is gevurah — not harshness, but boundary. The capacity to remain present without erasing yourself. To offer care without collapsing into appeasement.
Keeping the Connection Clear
This is also why this practice matters to me.
I experience Torah as Mirror as a way of keeping the connection clear.
Trauma has a way of narrowing us slowly. We protect what’s been hurt by tightening around it. Over time, clarity can harden. Conviction can become brittle. Survival can start to look like identity.
In Kabbalah, this is described as klipot — protective shells that form around something tender to keep it safe. They begin as mercy. But when they harden, they obscure the spark they were meant to guard.
Bitterness is one such shell.
So is resignation.
So is the belief that clarity must always be lonely.
This practice is my refusal to let those shells decide who I become.
Not by denying harm.
Not by rushing toward forgiveness.
But by returning, again and again, to the place where the connection is still open — where truth can be named without turning into armor.
Joseph’s declaration isn’t just a reunion scene. It’s maintenance.
He doesn’t let the past congeal into fate.
He doesn’t allow survival to become his personality.
He clears the husks by naming himself.
I am Joseph.
The Mirror
As I sit with this moment, I wonder about the quiet places in our own lives where something similar might be waiting.
Where did you learn to hide parts of yourself in order to stay connected?
Where were you valued for what you could offer, while something essential stayed concealed?
Where did knowing yourself come earlier than knowing you were allowed to live from that knowing?
And what would it sound like to name yourself — not in defense, not in longing — but simply as fact?
What would need to be true inside you to invite closeness without bargaining?
These aren’t questions to answer quickly.
They’re questions to live with.
This is what tikkun looks like to me — repair not through perfection, but through truth.
Not repair through self-erasure.
Not belonging through endurance.
But connection that becomes possible when the self is no longer split.
Joseph doesn’t chase reconciliation.
He doesn’t prove his worth.
He names himself — and allows proximity only where it can be real.
I am learning that this is what it means
to stop explaining
and begin living from what I know.
A Blessing
May you come to know yourself
without waiting for attunement that never arrives.
May your nervous system learn the difference
between proximity and safety.
May you invite closeness
only where your dignity does not require translation.
And may the repair that matters most —
the one that clears the connection within you —
make possible the kind of relationship
that does not ask you to disappear.
Call to Action
If this reflected something you’ve lived —
a place where you learned to hide, adapt, or wait for permission —
you’re welcome to sit with it, share it, or pass it along to someone who might need a mirror more than advice.
This isn’t about religion.
It’s about truth that knows how to travel.
May it find whoever is ready.
I see you. I bless you.
Love,
Jenny