No Shit!
Lama lo?
Let’s dive in.

A few years ago, I took my three kids to Israel—a place vibrant with life so palpable that it can only come from years of yearning for a homeland and the constant existential threat that looms over it—something real that defies words. The second I step foot in Israel, an internal key turns, and I don’t know, I become a bit more… I have no idea, but for one thing, I remember why I have elbows… I wanted to show Israel to my three kids—two teenagers and my youngest, who still kinda liked me back then.

The morning after we landed, I took them to the supermarket to share with them my childhood love, Shoko Besakit. It’s this chocolate milk packaged in a cheap plastic pouch, you bite off a piece of it with your teeth, and suck on its delicious nectar.

As we were in the supermarket, I got so excited—I wanted to show them how fun Israelis are. So, despite or maybe even because of the half-judgmental, “Mom, don’t embarrass us” look in their eyes, I asked random people if they’d take a picture with us. We went to the butcher, who was busy cutting all sorts of pieces for early morning customers, and I asked, “Hey, do you want to take a picture with us?” Without blinking an eye, he gave us a full smile, one that pulls you in right away, and said, “Lama lo?”—Why not?—as he stepped from behind the counter and put his arms around us.

“Lama Lo” is not a question—it’s a trusting, lighthearted embrace of life that honors the unknown with such playfulness. It’s become a ‘thing’ for me and my kids, the “Lama Lo” mentality, with the butcher’s full smile always coming to mind whenever I say it.

Last fall, after coming back from Yosemite—another magical place on earth—I started to wonder if I should try this thing I’d heard about: “listening to my body.” Do you know what that means? I had no clue. But I figured, Lama Lo—it sounds convincing enough. What if there’s truth to mind, body, and soul (some throw in the heart for good measure)? Lama Lo—what do I have to lose?

I’ve been living in my head for so long—my thoughts, answering my thoughts, arguing with my thoughts, processing my thoughts, and then circling back again. Wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air to listen to my body—whatever that means? I didn’t even know how to do it. All I did was set an intention. What the fuck does that mean? Just saying it to myself. That’s it.

I had absolutely no idea what it meant to listen to my body or what my body even knew how to say. Or shall I admit it, that all I knew how to listen to were very basic things: “Feed me. Feed me. Chocolate. Feed me. Bread. Pasta. Feed me. Yumm. More. Yum. Give me more.” About sex, my body and mind were in cahoots, all be it leaving my heart and soul out in the cold.

My body sometimes said, “I have to go to the bathroom,” to which I often replied, “Not now. I’m too busy.”

“I’m thirsty.”  – “No, you’re fine.”

“I’m tired.”- “No, you’re not. You only think you are.”

Lucky for my body, I’ve always loved the outdoors, so I took it with me and my endless thoughts on a hike at least once a week.

So, imagine my surprise when I finally dialed into my body, asking, “What do you have to say?” And the answer was: “OUCH”—really? That’s what my body had to say as I opened the conversation? It yelled at me: “Fuck you—my ass hurts!”

I don’t suggest declaring on your journey, “I’m ready to listen to my body,” unless you actually want to hear what your body has to say. Because you cannot unhear it—or at least, once I opened the floodgates, they were there. All of a sudden, it was hard for me to sit. Was it hard to sit because I was noticing? Because I was paying attention? Had it always been there, a dull pain that I was now more aware of? Or was it just a coincidence?

I used to wonder this to myself as my body started giving me clues.

I remembered another coincidence—tell me if this happens to you. You know when you work like a crazy person? That so-called pride of “being like a machine” – you can do so much! Do you know what I’m talking about?  Or do you have this thing, the illusive, empty joke of our modern life, the concept called “work-life balance”? Do you have that in your life? Hahaha… if only.

When I looked back at times I was especially busy with work—those days that stretch from 5 AM until 10 or midnight, giving up your weekend, because you must work…and then into weeks, even months, with no rest for your body or your mind—did you have periods like that? Where there are just a few deadlines, and if you just run and get to them, you can finally sit back, relax, and take a breath?

And then did you notice that, so often, when that happens, all of a sudden, you get sick? What? Did your body betray you? Is it really a coincidence?

There was a time in my previous job when I got promoted from director of education to executive director, but I only got the job if I agreed to do both for a while. I didn’t know I was allowed to have boundaries. Nobody told me that. So I told myself, “Sure, I’ll do it. I’ll just work that much harder.”

Why did I say that? No, that’s a totally valid question. Why did I put myself in a position of being so clearly taken advantage of? Why try to do better than my best?

I’ll tell you why. Because I have three kids.

Because at the time, I was making just enough to buy groceries. But I saw the writing on the wall. I was freshly separated, and my ex was spending money he didn’t have like it was growing on trees. He was following his passion: being a comedian. That’s the biggest joke of his comedy routine – just ask my friends who burst out laughing at this tragedy when I first shared it with them – all of us in tears but not for the same reason.

Work? Nah, that cramped his lifestyle. Of what? I don’t know… watching TV… getting high? I have no idea. All I know is that he hasn’t held a job for more than a few months at a time in 6 years, and those gaps just kept growing. It was like I was watching him shrink, watching him disappear, leaving me with everything. The kids were with me the vast majority of the time, and I was losing sleep, trying to figure out how to stand on my own two feet.

When I did manage to close my eyes, I fell into haunting nightmares of huge tidal waves approaching me and my kids, of dark waters threatening to swallow us, me trying to get them to shore, to safety. That is terror that grips you at the throat, my friends, that you cannot run away from. Not with your eyes open. Not with your eyes shut. Not even  Lala land is a refuge from that. The promised escape that sleep should offer. I saw it. The heavy responsibility coming my way. I saw him, my ex, shrinking again, trusting that, without a choice, I would have to hold it all, take care of everything.

And it’s true. I had no choice. I had to. Because if I didn’t, who would? I had to hold it together. I had to do what at the time felt like the impossilbe. So yes, I had to do the hard work it took to get my kids onto shore. And as I happily took this crazy job, another huge project fell into my lap—the annual gala.

Don’t even get me started on the evils of a gala. I fucking hate it. Here’s what we do: give me your money, and I’ll waste it on throwing a fancy party that no one wants to attend—sorry, that’s inaccurate. One person at least wants to attend—the honoree, who gets to tell us all how great they are. I’ll give you food that’s just okay, for which you’ll pay top price. You’ll give me time you don’t have, and I’ll sit you down and demand that you pretend to have fun, all while shaming you in front of your peers to give more. Hooray, and Lechaim to that – we all win! Put on your smile for this fucking circus.

So, as the gala landed in my lap, and I was running a school while figuring out this new position I had never really had before, it felt like every direction I looked, there was a mess I had to clean up.

I’d come home to my kids, to a house that was once alive, and now felt haunted. We were all ghosts of ourselves. Each of us trapped in our own reality—my ex moved out, they didn’t see him much, and I was absent in my own home. My little one, was only 7, ripped my heart open with questions like: “why can’t we still be a family”. And where was I? I was gone. Not just the physical space we shared because I was working long hours, but in my own body too. I had so little to give. I was running so fast at work, working so many hours just to be able to feed them, that I’d come home, make dinner, and they would talk to me, but I would hear nothing. NOTHING.

I went from being super present with them to fitting into this role of “the lights are on, but no one’s home.” Not a damn thing. My mind was consumed by the running list of tasks at work. After they went to sleep, I’d come here, to this computer (well, I’ve since upgraded it, but you get the point), and work some more. If only I ran on this treadmill faster, surely I wouldn’t be running in place, right? I’d go to bed so exhausted, and my last thought would be: fuck, I don’t remember what my kids told me at dinner. Then I’d shut my eyes, and I’d be out—not because I was listening to my body, but because I couldn’t help but listen to the exhaustion.

Wake up. Hop on that hamster wheel again. Run. Add more. Run faster.

There was a time when I started my job, I worked six months without taking a single day off. One time—shit, that was bad. I had to write a message to the community. I couldn’t sit at my desk anymore. I must’ve been four months in, trying to juggle all three jobs, and being a single mom, working from 5 AM to midnight, and having my sleep overtaken by nightmares. So, I made the “wise” decision to write in bed. I’d write a sentence, drift off, wake up, and think to myself, mind over matter. I will win the war with my body. I wrote like that for maybe an hour—writing, dozing, writing, dozing. Finally, I hit send, not having reread the message, because frankly, that wasn’t an option. I just couldn’t.

Shit. Big mistake. What went out to the community was so ridiculous, so nonsensical, that people didn’t even believe it was from me. They asked if there had been some sort of computer glitch. Yes, that’s how bad it was. I took away the small lesson—don’t write half-asleep, and always read it before sending. But the bigger lesson? The hamster wheel and how running that fast isn’t conducive to anything? That I didn’t get yet. I kept pushing through—one more hour, one more day, one more week, one more month… almost to the finish line.

And what was the finish line, you ask? It was the day after the gala. The moment I could finally rest. I’d prove my worth at work. Look at me, look at me now. Yes, I could stand on one foot, balance the school, see the smiling faces of our kids, make the parents happy, balance the budget, grow membership, build a team… oh, and I could also make money at the gala. Look at me! What a big girl am I? Then, after I did that, could I finally rest? Could I close my eyes and really rest?

Please, can I?

And that moment I allowed my body to rest? Yep, you guessed it—I got sick. Was it a coincidence that my body chose this exact moment to break down? Would I have gotten sick if I hadn’t let go of the crazy wheel?

So, as I sat here last fall, with my ass hurting, I had to ask myself: Did my ass hurt because I wanted to listen to my body? Or was it hurting all along?

So as my butt, tosh, ass—whatever the hell you want to call that thing I sit on most of the day—started to say, ouch, all these questions came to mind. Is it a coincidence? And another question: how the hell do I stop it from hurting?

No, the answer didn’t come soon. I hate to tell you that. But now that I was listening, I was hearing. I was feeling. Yes, I felt alive in my body—albeit my aging body—sitting in traffic for a 64-mile commute three days a week.

I did yoga. Stretching. Yes, it helped tremendously. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my butt was always holding me. I can’t explain it. If you don’t know what I mean—bless you. And say thank you to your butt for knowing how to let itself be supported by the furniture you choose to sit on.

Mine always resists.

As my spiritual journey unfolded—both independent of and completely intertwined with my aching ass—I started to realize that our mind and body are connected. That maybe our bodies are maps to something deeper. Our soul?

Have you ever noticed that people with a stick up their ass actually look like they have a stick up their ass? When they smile, their lips are still tight, you want to say: “Open big and say ah,” because you’re just dying to finally see that stick peeking out? When they laugh, it is this tiny little thing because shit, what will happen if they release, will that stick drop a tiny bit?

Or the ones who carry the world on their shoulders—not the ones who talk about it constantly, but the ones who actually do it – and don’t have time to talk about it because they’re too busy doing,  —their shoulders are always raised. Tense. Bracing.

And the stubborn ones? The truly unyielding ones? Look at their necks. They move their whole upper body just to look sideways because their necks are so stiff.

Do you really think those are just linguistic coincidences?

So why did my ass hurt so much?

Am I actually anal? One look at my house and you’ll know—I don’t exactly fit the Freudian definition.

Do I have a stick up my ass? You tell me—does it sound like it?

So why? What am I missing?

As I sat (uncomfortably) with these real questions, I had to ask: Could it be that I am, as my literal pain in the ass might suggest, controlling? Could my ex-husband have been right…
(I am resisting every urge not to go on a long rant here—please, say thank you.)

It’s easy to ask good questions. To make sharp observations about everyone else. To see with incredible clarity what’s wrong with all of you.

But somehow, when it comes to us, the rules of reality just… don’t apply. Right?

So what would it mean if I allowed myself to consider that I’m controlling?
Not accept it. Just consider. Just a Lama Lo- of possibility.
What would it mean if I looked in the mirror and entertained—just for a second—that maybe there’s some truth to it?

And if I dare to look…Might my ass finally stop hurting? Because, literally and figuratively, my ass is on the line. So… maybe I should at least consider it. Lama lo…

As I was learning Kabbalah—which, in Hebrew, quite literally means “acceptance”—I started to wonder: What is it that I’m refusing to accept about myself? My body was screaming, and we were finally starting the conversation. Ok, I said to my pain in the ass, what if I’m controlling? What choice do I have?

Ah! Now that’s a different question altogether.

And then… as I was finally willing to come to the table, bow my head, and actually listen, I started to look into the root of the problem—Yes, here comes another pun: my root chakra.
Oy, gevalt—did I lose you? Might I tell you something? If the mere mention of the root chakra lost you… that might be the root of the problem for you, too. Sorry for being cheeky 😉

Each time I did meditations—and fuck, I’ve done so many of them—trying to open my root chakra, or listening to Hz music tuned to that frequency (yes, that’s a thing), thoughts would start flooding in from my childhood. And I’d shove them away. Nah. Not sure why this is coming up—it has nothing to do with what I’m doing.

Ha. Think again.

Eventually, I said to myself: Okay. Lama lo. Lean into those memories. What comes up in my body? In my heart? Just sit with it. Notice. And what came were painful memories.
Memories of feeling unsafe. Of having to hold myself because I was scared. How do I reach back and tell that little girl not to be scared? And will it even help? After so many years of holding myself tight…

Can I fucking let go already?

And here’s the thing that was happening without my knowing: it’s the interplay between control and surrender. Control is the tight lid. Surrender is softening the grip—letting some steam out, letting fresh air in.

As long as I wasn’t even willing to look, to consider what my body was trying to say, I was controlling the narrative so tightly that it started tightening around me. I was closed off to the very change I was seeking.

What shifted wasn’t that one day my body just relaxed. Far from it. I did everything: yoga nidra (which, by the way, is total body relaxation from heaven), breathwork, meditation—you name it. My body would melt into the ground… except my ass. My ass would not relent. Not even when I begged it to.

The answer wasn’t going to come from the body alone. I had to step in. I had to say, okay, I’m willing to listen. Willing to hear what this part of me—this ache I had folded into my identity—was trying to say. I had to trust that I was strong enough to survive the truth of it.

Lama Lo became that safe crack in the door. “Shit, this room is dark. But maybe I can just open it… a little.” That crack was enough to start releasing the pressure. It was a shift in direction.

Imagine your relationship with your body. Your body stands at the center, still and waiting. You are the horse, tethered to it by a rope. The more you run—trying to escape, outpace, or ignore it—the more the rope tightens around your neck. You’re not really getting away. You’re just running in circles, getting choked by your own resistance.

But if you slow down, change direction, and start walking—not running—something shifts. Your body doesn’t need to hold the rope so tight. There’s no need to fight. You can approach it gently. You can meet it in the middle. And maybe, just maybe, become one.

Now, riddle me that?  What is an entry point to your body that is in a shape of a circle and you grip so tight when you are uncomfortable. Bingo – your ass. Or in this case, mine.

As I sit here, a bit more comfortable – breathing just a bit more softly, I wonder about you. I actually wonder about you quite a bit. Thank you to you – who ever you are, my curious partner across the screen. Thank you for landing me your eyes. Thank you for stepping in, into my journey, into my mess, into my humor and my pain. Thank you for just being here as I say, hineni – here I am, even if it is through me being a bit of an asshole

And I wonder if you wonder — what is your body trying to tell you?
Is it whispering? Screaming?
Are you ready for the conversation?
Because the real question isn’t why now —
It’s why not.

Lama Lo?

To my Swedish friends: Hoppas din röv mår bra.