Rabbi Yali

One of the hardest parts of parenting is learning that loving your child deeply does not mean removing every hard feeling from their path.

Sometimes love sounds like:
“I know this is hard.”
And also:
“The answer is still no.”

This week’s Wednesday Wisdom is about boundaries, nervous systems, frustration tolerance, and the kind of steady love that teaches children discomfort is survivable.

If one of these slides resonates, share it with someone who needs it. The full post is on Running Commentary by Rabbi Yali.

Hear ye, Hear ye! We have an incredible lineup of teachers this year for Shavuot! Featuring a meat BBQ with , learning with Clergy, framing and a trivia style game show (with prizes!) with Rabbi Yali, and expressive art with ! Don’t miss this innovative and meaningful way to spend the holiday. Sign up at www.thebayit.org/ttl

There are some emotions we are taught to hide even from ourselves.

Envy is one of them.

This week I found myself sitting in a candlelit room listening to a published author read from her spiritual memoir while a quiet ache rose in my chest:
Why not me?

What happened next became a reflection on longing, recovery, Torah, Korach, Yehoshua, and what it means to stand near another person’s becoming without losing yourself inside it.

The full essay is now up on Running Commentary.

Read here: yalisw.substack.com

Twice I’ve been in a space where someone stood up and said: I really hope you enter this space with generosity of spirit.

Both times, I was in a room that felt hard.

The first time, my reaction was ugh. I don’t have anything left to give.

The second time, I accepted the invitation.

Generosity of spirit is staying in the room. Naming the discomfort. Asking what someone actually needs — a colleague, a stranger, or your kid melting down at the end of a long day.

New piece is up on Running Commentary. Link in bio.

Save the card that lands for you. Share it with someone who needs it today.

For Mother’s Day.
A poem about the little girl still waiting in the room you left behind.

And underneath all of it, she is there too. The girl in the room with the stuck window. Pressing her face into the same shoulder. Waiting for the same hands.

Re-Mothering — link in bio.

There is a specific kind of dread that has nothing to do with fear of the unknown. It is the dread of the very known — of something you have done before, and now have to do all over again.

This week’s Wednesday Wisdom is about what actually moves you through it. Nametags, running journals, 140 kids, and the one thing that changes your relationship to any hard thing.

Link in bio to read. 🔗

Five things worth saying out loud this week.
Scroll through slowly. One of these might be exactly what you needed to hear — or what someone in your life needs to hear from you.

The full piece is on the blog — link in bio. It goes deeper on the difference between friction that builds you and friction that erases you, and how to tell which one you’re in.

Save this. Share it with someone who’s in a hard moment.

Running Commentary — thoughts on life, parenting, and what really matters

There’s something I’ve been thinking about lately.

So much of what our children learn happens in the background, at the kitchen table, in the car, in the way we move through a hard day, in the way we speak about ourselves and the people we love.

They’re listening. They’re watching. They’re absorbing.

It unfolds quietly, steadily, over time.

More is caught than taught.

If this resonates, the full piece is up on Substack

There are things we try to teach our children.

And there are things that seem to arrive fully formed.

This week, I watched my children at the table, each of them absorbed in a book, and later listened to my son describe a game that felt deeply familiar.

It left me wondering what is learned, and what is carried.

What we pass on is not only what we say, but what has already been moving through us.

Full reflection on Substack. With a nod to and Emotional Inheritance