Hope Will Find You

Rabbi Naomi Levy's book To Begin Again has been my go-to book when comforting someone after the death of a loved one. Her new book Hope Will Find You is surely to become one of my go-to books when supporting someone after the death of hopes and dreams.

Rabbi Levy offers an intimate view of her struggle to find and nourish hope after her 5-year-old daughter is diagnosed with a rare, fatal, degenerative neurological disease called ataxia-talangiectasia.

In an interview for the Winter 2010 issue of Jewish Woman, Rabbi Levy was asked "[W]hat did you learn from your daughter, Noa?"

"I was frightened to teach Noa [in preparation for Noa's Bat Mitzvah]...because I knew she had learning disabilities.... I asked her what the words [of a Biblical reading] meant to her.... 'Mom, I think what it means to me is, if you don't like your life and things are not going well, if you try very hard you can find hope.' Then she stopped and corrected herself. She said, 'No...hope will find you.'"

"Noa was saying...that hope would find me, that hope was searching for us and that goodness and mercy and all these lessons are actually seeking us, tracking us down, and too often we are running away from them. We're thinking it's a struggle, but in reality what we can do is relax a bit and let all these blessings in, because they are all around us."

Comments

[Lor]

Thank you for the resource, Wendy. Sounds like a beautiful and important book.
Lori

[Jeanne M. Hannah]

These books sound as though they could be important resources for people grieving other losses in their lives. I think, for example, of a friend grieving the loss of a 51-year marriage, dissolved by divorce after betrayal by her ex-husband and ex-best friend. I think of the client grieving the loss of a kidnapped child taken to a country that hasn't become a signatory to the Hague Convention, making recovery difficult if not impossible.

Thank you so much for the resources. Jeanne

[Jonnie Hickman]

Thank you so much Dr Wendy!