With Father’s Day arriving this Sunday, I’ve been thinking about how to best honor my own father, Mendek Rubin—the gentle, loving man and brilliant inventor who is the inspiration behind this entire Quest for Eternal Sunshine platform of blog posts, free events and healing resources. I feel immensely grateful to have had a father relentlessly devoted to healing his trauma.
Read MoreMy father, Mendek Rubin, repeated a small handful of phrases quite often. The meaning of some were quite clear (for example, “Be good, but if you can’t be good, be careful!”) while others still remain inscrutable to me (such as, “Don’t do things!”) Today I’m writing about one of his provocative sayings that I could never fully decipher until just a few weeks ago—“The winner is the loser, and the loser is the winner.” It happened when I lost the New York Times’ Wordle game after a long winning streak.
Read MoreMy father, Mendek Rubin, often talked about his ego, which he viewed as an insecure part of himself that continually craved admiration and reassurance from the outside world. In the course of his healing journey, he became increasingly aware of all the ways his ego perennially tried to mold him into the person he believed he should be, which often meant rejecting the person he actually was.
Read MoreWith Father’s Day fast approaching, I’ve been thinking about the fathers in my life, and the different ways they love their children. Reminiscing about my relationship with my father, I am struck by the fact that he never seemed to care about my accomplishments in the outside world.
Read MoreI heard the spiritual teacher Ram Dass speak in person only once. It was one of the first public talks he gave after suffering a severe stroke at age 65, leaving him dependent on caregivers for the rest of his life. Even though I sat in that audience almost a quarter-century ago, I still vividly recall the wisdom he shared that day.
Read MoreLooking back at 2022, one reason it was an extra-special year for me is that I embraced a delightful new hobby: I started playing the guitar! This was a huge leap for me because although I love music, I’ve always been convinced that I had no talent for it whatsoever. For decades, I’ve maintained that I have “the worst voice in the world.”
Read MoreIn last week’s blog about using free-writing to untangle our deepest truths, I shared that I first tried this practice ten years ago, soon after my father passed, and how much it helped me process my grief and reclaim long-forgotten memories. Because people asked for more details, today I’m sharing some of the writing prompts I used back then.
Read MoreToday I want to celebrate my incredible father, Mendek Rubin. Last week was the tenth anniversary of his passing, and tomorrow would have been his 98th birthday. When I think of my dad now, what I remember most vividly is his boundless, unbridled joy.
Read MoreForgiving people who have caused us pain is challenging. When I’m not offered an effusive apology, forgiving rarely comes easily for me. My emotional underbelly is very tender, and old wounds tend to keep their sting. That’s why I’ve recently turned to my father’s teachings about the power of forgiveness.
Read MoreFourth of July makes me think about freedom—what it means, what it promises, and how hard it is to achieve. 246 years after the passage of the Declaration of Independence, we are still far from realizing the ideals of liberty and equality it proudly articulated.
Read MoreToday, in honor of Father’s Day, I’m featuring something special: “Grandpa Says”—a song that shares my father’s philosophy and loving heart in the most delightful way. It’s performed by his talented granddaughter, Nina Harmer, and features footage of my father with my sister and me from the early 1960s, as well with his grandchildren from their birth until the end of his life.
Read MoreThis week marks the second anniversary of the publication of Quest for Eternal Sunshine—A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey from Darkness to Light, the spiritual memoir I posthumously co-authored with my father, Mendek Rubin. Being able to learn and share my father’s remarkable story and deep wisdom has been one of the biggest blessings of my entire life. Since writing the book, I always feel my dad close to me. He continues to be my teacher, sharing important life lessons as I am ready to receive them.
Read More“You don’t see the world as it is—you see the world as you are.” This ancient piece of wisdom from the Talmud is something my father discovered for himself during his healing journey. As he worked through his trauma from childhood and the Holocaust while retraining his mind to let go of suffering and embrace joy, he came to realize that the bleak, indifferent universe he’d lived in for decades was actually the result of his own projections.
Read MoreOne of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from my father is that each of us has a perspective that is totally subjective, and that the world we see is never independent of our individual projections.
Read MoreMy father was fascinated by magic. He mused about it in his writings and often pondered its nature and role in the world. For my father, magic wasn’t focused on sorcery or sleight-of-hand. It was about pushing past the boundaries of our mind’s limiting conditioning with an inner certainty that there is more to the universe—and ourselves—than we can ever fully see or comprehend.
Read MoreI have had two clear “awakening” experiences in my life. The first was as a third grader in Brooklyn when my class took a trip to tour Pete Seeger’s boat. As I lay on the deck with my eyes closed, palms resting against the polished wood, a strong sense of awe and reverence filled me. The sun warmed my face as the boat rocked gently on the water, and I suddenly had the best feeling of my entire life: CONNECTION.
Read MoreMy father believed that shallow breathing was “endemic to our day and age”—an indication of how much tension we hold in our bodies and how often we routinely suppress our feelings. He was convinced that changing how we breathe can lead directly to deep relaxation and profound healing.
Read MoreMy dad once wrote: “Whenever I compare myself or my life against my ideas of perfection, I come out the loser. Nothing is perfect—not my family, not my job, not my body. If I have to wait for perfection to be happy, I will surely be waiting forever. The very belief that life should be a certain way—that I should feel happy—greatly contributes to my unhappiness.”
Read MoreThis week marks the one year anniversary of the publication of Quest for Eternal Sunshine—A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey from Darkness to Light, a book based on an unfinished manuscript my father, Mendek Rubin, left behind when he died in 2012. The four years I spent researching and completing the book transformed my life in significant and unexpected ways.
Read MoreMy father, Mendek Rubin, wasn’t just a wise inventor and philosopher, he was also a man who truly loved to have fun. He frequently shared silly jokes with my sister, Ruthie, and me, but what amused us the most weren’t the actual jokes—it was his delight in telling them.
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