A Different Kind of Purim

For Mindy, simcha felt out of reach on Purim.

The chaos demanded her full attention. 

Kids running on too much sugar and not enough sleep,
endless traffic, relentless noise, sticky floors and fingers, garbage piling higher by the hour.

Everyone else seems to have this together… except me.

Despite all her planning, her kids’ costumes felt nebby.  Her shaloch manos looked embarrassing. The seudah at her in-laws, not just a meal, but a whole emotional marathon she already felt too tired to run.

And underneath it all?
A huge, burning resentment she tried not to look at too closely.

Her husband was unavailable.
Shacharis. Megillah reading. Yeshivas Mordechai. Mincha.  Then he started drinking.
Everything was on her.

The kids and their meltdowns; their needs coming from every direction at once.
The logistics of who needed to be where and when, who still hadn’t eaten normal food, whose shaloch manos was forgotten at home.

And somehow… she was taking care of him on top of it all.
Monitoring how much he’d had to drink, how he was feeling.
Running interference so the kids wouldn’t get scared or embarrassed.
Carrying the quiet weight of making sure nothing tipped too far, while no one noticed how close she was to the edge.

And then came the final twist of the knife: She felt like she had wasted the spiritual opportunity. It’s hard enough not being able to go to shul on Yom Kippur but does Purim also have to blur by with no real davening? 

It was just survival.

What changed wasn’t Purim.

It was Mindy’s approach.  Instead of bracing herself and silently tallying resentments, Mindy learned one powerful skill:

Expressing desires clearly, calmly, and ahead of time.

Not whiny complaints or accusations. 
Not emotional explosions at the end of the day.

A plan. For herself.

We mapped out what she wanted Purim to feel like… not perfect, not spiritual-superhero level, just happy and peaceful.

Here’s what that looked like:

• She strategized which Megillah reading she wanted to go to, factoring in time to stay for davening.  Then she expressed a desire to her husband for childcare during the entire time she would be gone, instead of just working around whenever he got home. 
• She scheduled a 20-minute power nap for after her husband came home from mincha, non-negotiable.
• She booked a cleaning lady for the next day and left the bulk of the mess as is.
• On Ta’anis Esther, she prepared her kids’ clothes and snacks for the day after Purim.
• She planned and prepared healthy breakfasts and lunches for Purim, so sugar wasn’t running the show.  She made time to sit down and eat like a mentsch.

It wasn’t about making Purim “Pinterest-worthy.”
It was about owning her needs before resentment took over.

Purim still wasn’t perfect.
There was a lot of unpredictability.

Once she stopped fighting the day and started tuning into her desires, she noticed something shift.

There was space for simcha.

She felt lighter, less resentful of her husband, more present with her kids, and more connected to herself and to Hashem.

Because peace doesn’t come from doing more.
It comes from expressing and honoring what you want.

If you’re secretly dreading Purim, you’re not a bad person.
You’re just overdue for support.

Let’s talk about creating a plan that actually works for you.
Schedule a free call with me here