This blog is a place to honor my Mother and all mothers. Through this blog, I will try to continue my mother’s life mission by:

• Helping and Supporting my community;
• Cooking and Sharing our mothers’ recipes;
• Sharing our mothers’ stories and journeys;
• Listening to each other and providing guidance and wisdom through Torah classes for women;
• Hosting events;
• Enjoying and Celebrating life;
• Fighting cancer;
• Transmitting our traditions to our children;

My name is Meytal. I am a mother of 4 children, a wife, a daughter and a sister. I also work full-time in an Investment Bank. I live in Long Island, New York. I am French and I am also what they call a “Modern Orthodox” Jew. Sometimes, it feels overwhelming just to be all of this at the same time. I often ask myself why am I here, what is my mission, what is Hashem (G-d) expecting from me and how am I suppose to manage being a good mother, a loving wife, a caring daughter and a successful Investment Banker at the same time. Short of clear answers, I just do it, or at least I try to do it and I hope I’ll figure it out one day maybe.

In 2016, my mother was diagnosed with an advanced and aggressive uterine cancer at the young age of 60. After 4 years of fighting and going through various treatments and surgeries, my mother passed in 2020, just before the whole COVID pandemic started. During the years when my mother was sick, I had a clear purpose. I needed to travel as much as possible between New York (where I lived) and France (where she was treated) to be with her. I was constantly looking for the best possible care and I kept trying to optimize the little time we had left with my Mother.

Right after we came back from the Shiva, the remote work and remote school started and I started this weird new pace where I could work and be a mom 24/7 and simultaneously. I drowned myself into work as a form of mourning and eventhough i was physically close to my family and my friends i grew farther and farther away from them emotionally. After the year of mourning, I couldn’t travel to my mother’s grave because of traveling restriction so I couldn’t gather with my family to properly commemorate my Mother at her grave.

From one day to the other, without transition,I was simply supposed to come out of my “Evel” status and start to feel joy, to listen to music, to laugh, to celebrate and to try to go back to a “normal” life. It was very difficult for me to do because I kept feeling that 1 year of mourning was not enough and I kept wondering why was I so lucky and healthy and wealthy while my mother wasn’t here anymore. Why did she have to go through so much suffering? Why wasn’t she able to realize so many of her dreams? Why won’t she be there for my children bar and bat mitzvahs and weddings? I often found myself not being able to enjoy simple things. It was as if i was not allowing myself to be happy because she wasn’t here anymore and I didn’t know how to live happily in a world without my mother.

I decided to take a break and booked a couple of days away from everything to be by myself and try to figure it all out. That’s when i realized that during all this period,I had grown away from Hashem and His Torah. I went to Torah Box for women website and I watched this video from Esther Sitbon which made me realize that all the answers to my questions are in the Torah and that I needed to make time in my life for the Torah. https://www.torah-box.com/femmes/torah-feminine/tehilim-n-111-1-2-faire-de-la-place-a-la-torah-dans-ma-vie_31783.html. This simple life lesson on Torah-Box reminded me that I can’t understand everything, but I just need to trust Hashem. All that He has given me – a beautiful and healthy family, a successful career, a magnificent house and so much more – can be used to make mitzvoth, let the Shechina in my life and distribute the messages of the Torah. I want to use all the resources that Hashem gave me to give back. By doing this, or at least trying to, I will honor the life mission of my own Mother who would always give everything she had for everyone and anyone who ever crossed her path. Her generosity had no limit, and with Hashem’s help, I will try to continue her mitzvoth and her traditions. She will continue to live through myself and hopefully through my children as well.

The goal of ImaSheli is to bring us all together around simple and traditional values, to live generously and to share. Sharing our stories, our recipes, our time, our experience, our values, our advices and our hearts.

I hope this resonates for some of you and I hope to see you all very soon at our next ImaSheli gathering.