While packing up my office for breathwork training, I found an old orange journal.

It's from a trip I took to Israel, 21 years ago, celebrating my return to health after finishing chemotherapy. 

The journal contains a daily account of where we traveled and what we learned each day. 

And it also contains one underlined sentence, that comes with a memory that never left me.

At the end of our three week stay, our tour group hosted a Melava Malka and invited our tour guide Yaakov to attend.

He walked in, pointed me out to his wife and said, "That's the one. She's the one I keep telling you about. The one with the amazing questions. She's going to be a Morah. She's going to change the world."

I was so taken aback.

Three weeks of travel, and he had never let on.

I had been asking questions - He answered them.

He never shut me down - Never made me feel stupid

And behind the scenes, he was celebrating every who, what why, and how I threw his way. 

It might have been the first time in my life someone celebrated my asking questions, who thought they were going to be the keys to my success rather than just a nuisance.

I never thought I was going to be any kind of morah - But he seemed to know. I was the kid who really didn't do school...or systems - I thought I wasn't cut out for it. 

I didn't dream it was because there was a better way,

And that I could be a part of making it that way.

And here I am 21 years later

Celebrating so much this week

•  21 years in remission (having cancer a second time doesn't reset the board, right?)
• My fourth big siyum since I reignited my love for asking questions and began learning with a daily shiur exactly one year ago.
• And packing up to run and wrap this year long breathwork training

21 years ago in Israel, I was celebrating a new lease on life - Today, I get to celebrate what I'm actually doing with that life.

What started with one person who celebrated my insatiable curiosity and never ending list of questions has evolved into a passion for learning, teaching, and empowering others to ask theirs. 

My students can tell you, the line that I'm best known for is

 Yeah, and also!

I wasn't aware of it until they pointed it out, and then Chaya sent me this fantastic rendering of me in a hoodie (totally my love language).

And when I unboxed this hoodie I couldn't stop laughing, because it brought me so much joy. 

"Yeah and/but also," is my way of celebrating a question, and then taking the seed of a thought down a road of discovery no one expected to go on.

Questions are the generator, the fuel, the drive, for every adventure waiting to happen, every door wanting to be opened. 

I've spent all month putting together content for this upcoming training module that I suspect I'm going to throw out the window the minute I step into the space next week and Bruchy or Chana or Ezra asks their first question.

Then we're going to go where the breath leads us

We'll follow our curiosity, incorporate a good dose of play, tons of humor, and that's the way we grow. 

There's such joy in my face in this pic. (Yes, we've established in prior emails that I am a vampire.)

I don't know who took it, what I was thinking, or where we were going. 

All I know is that I had just finished hiking Masada, and my journal says I felt lit up and how history felt alive for the first time. 

I was celebrating life.

I was celebrating learning that felt like joy.

I was celebrating questions that actually led me to amazing places.

And the best part?

I was also being celebrated for all of the above and more, by people who wanted to see me at my best.

It's 21 years later. 

And I'm still celebrating.

I'm celebrating my graduating facilitators and having shared my passion and joy for questions to a cohort of amazing students who may have waited their whole lives for permission to ask. 

Life is a question 

How we live it is the answer. 

And I'm living it. The struggles, and the celebrations.

One why at a time. 

What are the questions that you're asking? Or afraid to be asking? Or need to be asking? 

Or wish you could. 

Ask someone.... I dare you. 

Fally

---------

Yeah, and also -

I'm skipping my email drop next Wednesday. Because I'll be way too busy breathing and graduating students into your worlds. 

And also, I know you have questions about how you can join our next cohort. Applications and interviews open after Purim. Join the waitlist here.