In my search for healing I arrived at a point where I admitted to myself that I feel broken.
For years I felt as if I am torn between everything that I am: performing artist vs. producer, domestic person vs. career oriented person, introvert vs. extrovert, village girl vs. city girl, Clown vs. singer. I have completely exhausted myself trying to choose.
I had to go back in time to find the moment it all broke, and to my surprise, I arrived at my parents’ divorce and especially at the fact that I had to choose sides.
I had to find a way to build a bridge and a relationship with my father and to accept in myself the qualities I always hated in him/me.
My parents are extremely contrasting personalities and their families are very different in character and temperament. Those two powerful families had broken contact after two divorces between them.
The two families that my brothers and I were made of did not have anything in common, but we who were made from both, are complete people, we could not abandon any part of what we are.
When my partner and I decided to marry, the preparation included an enormous emotional effort to bring the families together, to give my father the respect he deserves without being labeled as a traitor by my mother and her family, to renew contact with all of my aunts (I have ten!) and to bring together neglected parts of my family.
I was not aware of it at the time, but I wanted to bring some union into my family and to do that I had to cut the cord from my mother’s way of doing things and to bring more forgiveness and collaboration into it. I can tell you it was not easy because my mother didn’t let me go without an emotional fight. She already felt that she was losing me to a non-Jewish man and to a life in Europe. On top of it, an official meeting had taken place with the Dutch family on the week of our marriage. All of those unions happened on our traditional Yemenite wedding (it is my tribal origin) and it was a great success.
Back in Holland, however, I collapsed and cried for three months every time the wedding was mentioned.
As I am the first child, grandchild and great-grandchild in my family I am proud I opened the door to more healthy unions. Since then 9 weddings and 17 babies have followed.
For years I tried to fix my family, but only when I concentrated on healing myself, some healing in the family happened by itself. It is the hardest work, but eventually, it is the most rewarding.
Being aware of the moment we are captured by fear and doubt is the only way to change it into empowerment and into love (state of being that is the opposite of fear).
In my tale of Sheba, the demon Amout is the force that makes situations deformed, breaks the balance and delays progress. We all carry Amout in ourselves.
I believe that all ugliness, obsession, hate, and violence is stemmed in fear. I believe of making fear recognizable in our life through play and I do it with what I love the most in the world: stories, music, colors, song & dance.
I believe that we all possess the capacity to have a rich, satisfying and meaningful life and that the only thing standing between us and a full life, is fear. So because fear comes with the territory of life on earth, the only way to overcome it is to go through it, to heal it.
The journey included many faces of learning from my own mistakes, there were many issued that even I was surprised about. How come I worked for years without enjoying the fruit of my labor? Why do I let this type of people eat me alive, every time again? Why every time I start to have success, I myself, unconsciously, do something to destroy it?
Why doesn’t entertainment fulfill me? What is it I really want to do? What is my calling? How do I fulfill my wish to serve? Why am I afraid to ask for help?
I believe that our capacity as people and therefore as artists depends on our spiritual growth. I believe that the quality of the message deepen if we are able and willing to face our innermost fears and shadows. Without that, there is no real growth and trying a new dance or acting class doesn’t do it if you are already a professional.
My own most defining moment was with my newborn baby in intensive care.
That period was one of the most challenging in my life because of a few crises that happened at the same time. I look at it now as the time of the ultimate test for everything I have learned.
In that time in the hospital, there was a moment when we believed our baby could be disconnected from the breathing machine. I was with her when the good nurse asked me to leave and to stay in the parent’s room until they would call me when the painful proceeding will be over. So we can see if she did or didn’t make it. I went away with a heavy heart worried for this little 10 days old baby who already endured so many traumas.
I was alone (my husband had to work and all of my family live in Israel). it was one the many procedures we experienced every day. I sat in the parent’s room; a lot depended on this moment.
We faced a lot of opposition.
We just realized that a mistake almost killed her and I decided not to ignore my intuition anymore and to help her also in my own way.
We added additional care, which we believed, would support her, and when we did she almost immediately woke up from her near-coma. This in itself was a very big lesson for all of us, but it made some doctors very uncomfortable.
Now, my people and the nurses believed she could make it and breathe without the breathing machine but the same doctors were very much against it. So I prayed for her strength and success. I stood in the barren room alone and I could not bear the pain and the tension I felt.
I started to sing. I don’t know what I sang but it came from the bottom of me, I sang because that was the only way I could continue breathing, I sang with tears and in prayer and for the first time I became one with my voice. I didn’t think about other people, I sang my heart out to save her and myself until they called to tell me my daughter made it.
Later I realized that singing too, is sacred and it is a pity to human powerful spirit to use it just for entertainment.
Since then I renewed my commitment to my inner truth and I wish that everything I do will be with meaning and honesty. I want to live my daily life and do my work as a performing artist and a writer in sacred.
