I know.
I know I’ve gone off script recently. This isn’t what you signed up for when you subscribed to a newsletter written by a dating coach. You came here for relationship advice, shidduch wisdom, maybe a few laughs about awkward first dates. And instead, lately, I’ve been taking you somewhere else entirely.
I’ve been told by many people, people I respect, a business coach who knows what she’s talking about, that I need to stay focused. Stick to writing about shidduchim. Dating. Marriage. Keep it tight. Keep it branded. Be strategic.
In the beginning, I listened, and I wrote about all the usual suspects in dating. How to write the perfect resume, clearing first date nerves, and how do I know he’s the one? But my newsletter is called Heartbeats and Footprints. This space was always meant to be about life. All of it. I write what beats in my chest and where my feet have carried me. And right now, they’ve carried me somewhere dark.
So let me just say it.
I am struggling right now.
And I need to ask you, or maybe I need to ask myself, is that allowed?
I am a dating coach. A life coach. A matchmaker. A kallah teacher. A mentor. I sit with people in their hardest moments.
I listen to singles who are exhausted and discouraged, who feel invisible, who wonder if it will ever happen for them.
I listen to couples struggling to find their way back to each other.
And I show up for them. I really do. I say the right things, and I mean every word. I help them find clarity. I build them up. I am their coach, their cheerleader, their listening ear.
So how is it possible that the person who does all of that for others is also the person sitting in her own darkness, struggling to make sense of her own life?
Am I a Fraud?
I’ve turned that question over in my mind so many times it’s worn smooth.
I teach my clients to show up with confidence, with positivity, with faith. And then I sit with this weight that I can’t seem to name or shake.
How can one person be such a contradiction?
I’ve wrestled with that question. A lot. And I have come to understand that I’m not a contradiction.
I’m a human being. A human being whose job is to help other human beings. And human beings are sometimes allowed not to be okay. That is not a contradiction.
I used to think this made me weak. Now I think it’s what makes me good at this. It’s not the certifications or all the training. It’s not the frameworks or the coaching techniques. It’s the fact that when you sit across from me and tell me how dark it feels, when you tell me you’ve lost hope, when you tell me your emunah is shaking, I’m not nodding from some comfortable distance. I feel it with you. Because I know it. I’m in it. Right now. Today. When I say “I understand,” it’s not a line. It’s the truth.
I thought about not writing this. I really did. I worried that my clients would read it and think, how can she help me if she can’t even help herself? I worried it would make people uncomfortable. That someone would hesitate before booking a session. That I’d lose credibility or trust or whatever it is we’re all so afraid of losing.
And then I realized something. That fear? That’s the exact thing I fight against every day in my work. The idea that you have to have it all figured out in order to show up. That you need to be whole, healed, and polished before you’re allowed to hold space for someone else. You don’t. You just have to be honest. And you have to keep showing up.
There is such a stigma around admitting that we are not ok. So we don’t. We sit at home with our dark thoughts, convinced we are the only ones feeling this way. We smile. We push through. We answer “Baruch Hashem” when someone asks how we’re doing, and we move on.
I don’t want to do that anymore.
I’m not writing this so you’ll send me “are you ok?” messages or heart emojis. I’m writing this because someone has to go first. Someone has to say it out loud. So here I am, saying it.
I am struggling.
And if you are too, you are not the only one. You never were. Just saying it, admitting it, and talking about it lifts something. Maybe not everything. But something.
I am not a fraud.
I am human.
I am a helper.
And I am here to help you.
