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It was a very short meeting. But he invited me to go to synagogue. He said he would not be there the next two Fridays, but said I was welcome to come before he was back anyways.

And being the weirdo I am, I decided to take full advantage of that. I don't do well with being seen by people especially in situations where I am doing something I have never done before, and especially if it is something I am doing alone. So I decided that since I would be unrecognizable to anyone else, it would somehow be easier to do the thing.

And it was. I almost almost didn't go in though because my anxiety decided to kick it into high gear after I arrived.

But ya girl ain't a chicken. So I got out of my car and found a total stranger to kind of make sure I was there at the right time. She was a very nice lady who ultimately sat next to me during the all the things and showed me where to go in the prayer book when they didnt call out the pages.

I was introduced to several people right off the bat. The first guy was like "Welcome, youre considering converting? Great a lot of us are converts. I'm a convert."

The second guy I actually remember his name because its my middle name. He was also very welcoming.

Everyone was welcoming. Not a single person made me feel weird. It was great.

The service itself was nice. In contrast to what I grew up with, it felt very much non-performative. And that was kind of the first thing I registered. Like grew up in a church and around people who seemed to be openly christian for the sake of being seen as chirstian and therefore judged morally superior. Not a lot of people were like that, but enough that it is one the strongest impressions left over for Christianity for me.

Then there was the whole trying to follow along with the prayers while trying to also catch the English so that I knew what I was attempting to say. I probably didn't need to try to read along in the Hebrew, but i wanted to, and it felt right, mostly, when I wasn't suddenly nervous that the nice lady next to me might think I was weird for trying to read a language I absolutely cannot yet pronounce or understand. Which was dumb bc im oretty sure she wasnt paying attention to me THAT much. But anxiety be a rude one and tries to find any reason it can to shut you down soooo, to be expected.

The songs were nice. I really enjoyed those. They were moving in a different way than the religious music I am used to. It wasnt so much the kind of more intense emotional pull like a lot of more modern christian music, especially christian rock. Nor was it whatever weird experience happens when you listen to the droning chants of monks, which I have an unnecessary amount of experience with because my husband has several playlists of monks chanting that he periodically listens to.

I felt, and I am embarrassed to say this because it feels very vulnerable to say even to strangers on the internet... I felt very much more connected to God than I have in a long time. And not in some like over powering, lift your hands to Jesus like a Baptist, and proclaim loudly for all to see that you are feeling god kind of way. It was a much quieter kind of thing. And almost, really, maybe I would say actually, felt like relief.

And I am a sap so I did still cry. I tried real hard not to bc i did not want anyone to be like whats up with that. But luckily I had decided to sit in the very back of the room, so it was real easy to remain anonymously tearful and stupidly emotional. But i cried because I did something physically related to somwthing I have considered or at least entertained as a vague notion for like ten years.

And then near the end, the lady who had kind of ked it all, basically was like, were gonna do one more prayer and then song and then everybody go enjoy oneg when we're done.

And I'll be honest with you, I was not expecting there to be food, and i was delighted that there was. There were like 3 different salads. The one with candied walnuts, strawberries, and spinach was to die for when I added Bleu cheese to it. Excellent. The other one i ate was some kind of broccoli craisin thing with a dressing on it. That was also really good. I did tske a tiny piece of the challah, wasnt sure if it was expected or not, but i did bc everyone else seemed to. Had some chicken salad with like pita chip loke things.

And then got invited to sit with a group of people well within my own age group who were all incredibly welcoming, unnecessarily funny, and all around a good time.

I got added to a group chat, recommended some books, urged to come back again next Friday.

Yeah, a wholly good time.

10/10 experience for me.

The meeting with the Rabbi is Scheduled!!!!!!!!

I am getting a little sad about it.

I know there was a holiday at the end of the week last week. So I wasn't too bummed about it at first. But I am an emotional person, and I do tend towards sadness or depression very easily. It has been the path of my life.

So that's kind of starting to take over my brain. I did go ahead and send a follow up email on Monday, but that was memorial day so I was not realistically expecting a response.

In other news, I had off work yesterday and spent several hours doing a pretty deep amount of self-analysis. And I feel a lot better about the culture shark feeling I was having. I really dont think thats accurate. The feelings I have towards the idea of converting to judaism run much much deeper than a mere fascination with the culture side of things, and I really figured that out yesterday.

It may seem kind of silly or ridiculous that I would not already know that to some, but i am really really bad at processing my own emotions and thoughts properly. Primarily bc i spend a lot of time doubting myself and what I think. I will literally question every possibility I can think of and deny myself what seems to be the obvious truth of how I feel bc of a "what if".

I should probably bring that up in therapy.

But right now im just still waiting for the rabbi to get back to me with times and dates to do the meeting.

I dont understand why EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Every single time I try to openly, literally outloud, acknowledge progress away from my eating disorder, that things are getting better, suddenly the thoughts, the emotional distress, the hating of my body gets so intensely worse again for a long time. Like every time. Im fine. I will have been fine for months. But the MOMENT I say something aloud... boom, shes back and now I am unable to get away from the absolute horror of how much I suddenly hate myself again.

Why cant it just go AWAY! I am sick of waking up in the middle of the night unable to go back to sleep bc im thinking about how disgusting I am. I am sick of not being able to think about something else. Bc I literally cant. I have been sitting here trying to think about something else, to focus on something else, and you know what I cannot do? That, specifically.

She wont shut up, and I am so so so so so so so over it.

The rabbi emailed me back this morning at the literal exact same time I clocked into work!!!!!

We are going to set up a zoom meeting to meet and discuss further.

So now, I hope someone answers this for me:

Should I come prepared with a list of questions? Bc i do have a lot, none of which ive really written down

Also, for anyone who has converted, is there something you wish you had asked at the outset that you realized later would have been better to know sooner?

Here's how this is has gone so far for me (please forgive the second person. For whatever reason, I found it easier to talk about this as if I was retelling my life to myself. Hate on it if you want to, thats fair):

Late Winter/Early Spring 2014: in senior year of high school read a book that sparks a weirdly heavy interest in learning more about Judaism but do nothing with it bc you dont even know if you believe in God at this point bc your mental health is so horrendous and you are so detached from feeling anything except depression that God cannot possibly be real, but you've been raised in Christianity, and so he must be?

Spring semester 2015: befriend some weird and fun people in college, among whom are several Jewish people who ultimately regularly invite you to their holidays bc theyre far from home and can't have their family with them (you feel super honored by this)

2015-2017: allow that to cause more mental turmoil over whether youre just interested in Judaism bc its different and youre some kind of cultural shark or that you are *actually* interested in Judaism. But also you still dont know what you believe about God and bc youre finally on your own, youre trying to mesh the beliefs you grew up with and what your moral view on the world is together into one cohesive thing.

Summer 2017: get married to a man you ultimately realize you dont love and periodically continue to think about Judaism but in a really background sense bc you have concluded that it is unfair to think of just one religion when so many people in the world feel spiritual. (You've come up with a belief system for yourself that allows you to judge people the least and allow them their peace and happiness and access to what you've dubbed "the universe")

Fall 2017-early summer 2018: wrestle intensely with your own sexuality, feel intense despair about your marriage and how unhappy you are (bc at this point you still wont acknowledge you dont love this man), and still occasionally wonder about Judaism, although much less intensely at present.

(This background interest was a theme for a while)

Midsummer 2018-2019: get divorced and on the same day that is finalized match with the man you marry and have a child with. This feels right and you feel as if you have known this man always when you finally meet in person. It is insane how much you can *feel* that you have always been. Judaism considerations take a backseat for a long while here bc you feel stupid for considering such a thing and maybe it was all just some weird obsession in the first place (and also youre embarrassed to admit to your significant other that you, unlike him, are still seriously confused and conflicted by the idea of religion, especially when it comes to the, you kind of feel, silly strong desire toward Judaism you have)

Pandemic: tiktok enters the chat, you realize youre Autistic and actually go through the effort of getting that confirmed via diagnosis, and via tiktok start following a lot of Jewish content creators. Interest and desire to convert becomes very intense, but you still feel stupid and maybe its just you being easily influenced by the internet. BUT you make the first moves in reality towards truly considering conversion. You try to reach out to the local Synagogue. You never receive an answer, but you try again, and still nothing. So you give up and move on.

August 2022: Great Grandpa dies and you are devastated bc that man was such an influence on your life, and you are super sad for a long time that he is gone. But also intense guilt bc your whole family is Christian (except oddly enough almost the entire generation of you, your siblings, and your cousins) and you at this point have determined God is not real, no religion is real, "the universe" concept you had formed is BS and you just want people to treat each other well. Youre still on tiktok though and regularly consuming Jewish and Muslim content bc I guess you have a deep need to still be connected to religion despite not feeling like any of it is real.

Early 2023: consider converting to Islam (I know seemingly out of the blue there bc not something even remotely considered before, but you have a Muslim coworker who you really respect and also your eating disorder is trying to convince you that you could really make use of that month of fasting, even though thats supppppper messed up.) NB eating disorder, though not mentioned previously, has been a factor in so much of your life since 2010 and ACTUALLY is a big part of why you have never made more than a couple nominal attempts at even inquiring about conversion bc how can you do that and truly worship God (again still not sure if God is real at this point)? Especially, if you are still worshipping at the altar of your own torment and have no intention of letting that go? You were raised a Christian. You DO KNOW it is supposed to be no other gods before him, and in a way your eating disorder is a god to you (as truly messed up as that is)and that, you do in fact put first

March 2023-December 09, 2023: get pregnant with your daughter. Absolutely EVERYTHING takes a back seat to this. Nothing is on the table for consideration of any sort anymore bc we are focused on having a baby and working through all the emotional turmoil that comes with that

December 10, 2023: give birth to your daughter and hold her in your arms and do the most ridiculous thing ever bc at this point you have determined yourself to be an atheist. You believe in nothing, no God, no after life, no spirit/soul/rebirth. NOTHING. And yet, when you hold her in your arms for the first time, the very first thing you do is send out a prayer to the most Godly man you ever knew, and tell your Great Grandafther that you will raise her to be like him and in a way dedicate her to his memory.

This was a weird moment for you bc you then proceeded to deny for yourself for a really long time that you hold any belief in God. And just kept trying to ignore that

December 11 2023-May/June 2025: slog through post partum, become more and more and more depressed to the point you actually think you might kill yourself. If God is real, why is he letting you suffer like this? And why after so many years is it suddenly getting as bad as it was in 2013 when you did in fact try to kill yourself? Agonize over that for a long time. Listen to all the people in your life telling you to pray and give it to God and Jesus but completely ignoring them bc you are still refusing to believe that you DO believe in God in any way. (During this time you are sporadically consuming jewish content on FB and Instagram, you quit tiktok pretty close to when you got pregnant. And so it is an occasionally present thought but in the midst of all the emotional turmoil its just content to distract you, nothing more)

October 2025: the day after your 30th birthday, things hit a breaking point for your mental health. You cannot function anymore. In desperation, you quit your job. You have begun trying to pray, to beg God to help you out of this, but feel completely abandoned just like you did senior year of HS.

Rest of 2025-most of March 2026: deal with the aftermath of suddenly quitting your job and your meds, trying to do a real fast turn around career change into Insurance sales, find out that making money at that is so difficult and will take so much time that you cannot sustain it bc youre a 1 income household. Rely on your husband's father and your mother for rent in January and February, despite taking a different job (which you hate), finally see the withdrawal from the antidepressants stop, and miraculously there is a light. The deep-seated, horrific depression is gone. Its wild. You feel like you can breathe again. You've also been engaging way more heavily with the Jewish creators you follow on Instagram and see on FB, but in your mind as a respect and interest thing. At this point there is peace with the fact that you *think* you believe nothing, but you love seeing how others love and engage with their religions and you are actually awed by their devotion. You wish you were capable of that.

End of March 2026: you've been watching TV shows to pass the time, nothing super intense or anything. You see House of David trending on Prime. You've recently rewatched Prince of Egypt bc you think your daughter deserves to know that cinematic masterpiece exists, and youre like "eh, why not? If I dont like it and its too religious, I'll just stop watching it." But is GOOD and you blast through it in a few days.

April 2026: Now left with a desire to consume more religious-esque content bc well it is a part of history and after all, you do love history, you decide to watch The Chosen, initially thinking it will be about Jesus' disciples' lives after his death. Its not, but it was still a fun watch. Now this all happens around Easter, and you are seeing a side of Christianity you did not grow up with: people literally jumping and shouting for joy that 'christ is risen' and you kind of realize that the passion you have so often appreciated in the way others interact with religion mattered in how you ultimately came away from religion. Had it been there, you probably would have never walked away from it... you were raised methodist and after a conversation with your therapist about this are informed thats why the jubilation aspect was never really present; this is tabled for a couple of weeks and is of little interest bc you are talking about other things in therapy. Also you decided to rewatch House of David repeatedly (seriously I am on the 5th rewatch rn) bc the 'tism has been triggered and this now a minor obsession. (Still watching a LOT of Jewish content on the internet, in fact more and more is showing up)

First half of May 2026: for some reason you cannot stop thinking about religion and what you believe. What you want to believe, really. YOU almost break down about this in therapy bc who are you, what do you believe? And bc of all the content you are seeing, which, yes you know is bc the algorithms are reading you, but whose to say that ISNT God's way of trying to bring you back to him. So you do what feels to you like a thoroughly ridiculous thing and straight up ask him. And you receive an answer.

Of course the logic kicks in and you start questioning how you can even know that God was the one answering and it was not just some stupid autoresponse from your brain of the answer you want to hear. You bring this up in therapy, and your therapist ultimately tells you what you've known all along: sitting in the turmoil of not knowing and never DOING anything about it is never going to give you the answer. You tell her you've considered and wanted to convert to Judaism off and on for years, but never really did anything with that. She tells you, again, you gotta explore it, ask questions, learn more about Judaism. Do the work to find the answer.

You sit with that for a couple of days, actually upset yourself intensely bc you imagine how much your life *could* change if you convert and how terrifying that might be. But also you gotta deal with this thing where you dont like sharing the deep things about yourself with people in your life, and if this is a path you want to take, you CANNOT keep that to yourself.

May 14-18 2026: You've been trying to ignore it for a few days that you really do want to explore Judaism and that maybe you should. Youre getting frustrated though bc you CANT ignore that you are now daily thinking about whether you believe in God and whether it even makes sense to believe in God. At some point in these few days you come to the conclusion that you want to believe in something, but arent sure that means you should/can. Again, you try to ignore this bc its getting real complicated in your brain and youre just trying to survive the sudden increased anxiety you've had for the last two weeks at work, specifically. And of course all the religious content flooding your feed ain't helping you to ignore the feelings and thoughts. Its just making it worse (or better, maybe?) So you decided to reach out to the local synagogue again by email, and if you receive no response by Wednesday, you'll call them. On Monday, you decide that is ridiculous, and if they dont respond, its just the universe telling you it ain't to be.

May 19 2026: you wake up and realize the depression has hit and you take a second day off of work bc absolutely not. You spend most of the day switching between reading a book about ancient israelite religion (primarily before judaism kind of really developed) that you had in your amazon list for like 6 years hoping a family member would buy and that you finally bought on a whim for yourself a few days ago and also scrolling on Instagram watching lots of videos about Judaism. Some are people talking about the religious aspects, some times its comedic takes on culture. It is somehow making you feel better.

Then, you come across a video of a rabbi explaining how a convert receives a Jewish soul (apparently there are two ways this can happen. And he talks about both) but as he describes how someone converting might really embrace the receiving of said soul, by essentially breathing out when going into the mikvah and when coming up breathing in the jewish soul (at least this is my understanding of what he meant) and you immediately cry at the thought of leaving behind something that does not feel right and the mere possibility that you could one day have that moment, maybe. Really just the thought of it as a mere possibility is what made you cry.

That makes you stop and think.

May 20 2026: youre still thinking about yesterday, and also had a rough therapy session completely unrelated to the spiritual struggles you've been dealing with although your original intent had been to discuss that specifically. So when youre done with therapy, youre really really upset. Cant even focus on being distracted by TV. And so even though you thought you had decided yesterday, for sure this time, that religion does not make sense, you decide to try one last time to get in touch with someone who you can talk to about possibly looking into converting to Judaism. So you pull up the local synagogue's number and dial.

You are genuinely expecting nothing. And the phone rings for a long time, so when you hear someone say hello on the other end, it takes you a second to realize it wasn't an answering machine. So you ask them how to go about even beginning to inquire, and they tell you to email the rabbi to set up an appointment to talk to him, they give you his email, and you hang up.

You immediately cry from a sense of joy and almost relief(?) that you are now embarrassed by bc youre always embarrassed by your own strong emotional reactions (thus as mentioned above feeling really silly).

You shoot off the email.

It was a whole thing tho. I tried to do it sans pain meds because I am... tbh... just crazy...

I managed about 21/22 hours without meds... but then I had to get that epidural. And I don't know if I could have made it without it. Cuz by the time I even asked for it, i was certain that if things kept going I was just going to pass out. I wanted to just give up and pass out too. It wasn't just that I thought it would happen, I was praying for it.

And because she took so long to get here even after that, I dont know how well I'd have been able to push when it came time had I not asked for it. Cuz I would nooooot have been able to sleep and rest like I could with that epidural.

Speaking of pushing, thankfully I only had to push through 5 contractions in total to get her here. On that fifth set, her head popped out on that 3rd push. And then I was like oh thank God I can rest for a second and there's relief, hallelujah. But then the doctor said come on come on keep going, and I didn't even take a breath, I just went for it and then she was here.

It keeps making me actually feel like my period is going to start, and I literally subconsciously sit there waiting for that little pop/gush that lets me know it's started. And then, I remember I'm pregnant so that's not gonna happen.

It feels like a super weird state of existence. Just constantly primed for my period to come, but that shit ain't coming, and it's been like 2 weeks of this. So my brain is also getting reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaal irritated that I'm still getting cramps because it expects the relief of the period starting.

And the ones I get ARE painful. So who tf is lying to these mfers?

For real, for the first time in my entire life, the day before I got the medicine I had s migraine so bad it c9mpletely restructured my understand of pain. I could not imagine pain worse than what I was feeling. Thats the first time I've ever been at a 10. Ever.

Everything else seems so minor now.

But other than that, things are nice. I'm no longer horrendously nauseous. I have still thrown up a couple of times, but its rare and usually seems to be that I have a migraine and didn't take the medicine soon enough.

I'm pretty sure I felt my baby move the other night which was sooooo cool

And man have I been reading like a fiend this year. I've already read 7 books and I'm quite happy with them! There was only one that I did not enjoy as much as the others but it was still pretty good.