I request forgiveness for anything misleading or confusing.
I want to apologize if anything written in this blog caused harm to anyone.
Part of the official Jewish Vidui/Confession is ya’atznu aitzot ra’ot—we’ve counseled bad advice.
In an effort to avoid this sin, I base my recommendations either on people much greater than I could imagine being or on my own regrettable experience, hoping to help others avoid suffering the same pain and flops that I’ve suffered, plus benefiting from chizuk I either wish I’d had or have indeed received and found helpful.
Having said that, I know I messed up at times.
For example, sometimes I let my emotions get the best of me. I really try not to write or post in certain moods, but occasionally, it happened.
In such situations, I went back & adjusted the post.
For example, this post: Happy Update on Rachel Naomi bat Esther Chana, Plus a Very Disturbing COVID-19 Case.
There, I came down very hard on doctors & hospitals after my husband told me about a head doctor of a hospital ward telling a nurse to simply turn off the life support of 4 elderly covid patients.
Appalled at this doctor's attitude & also his psychopathic certainty that he could request this crime from his staff with no repercussions & expect full obedience, I was still on fire when I wrote the post requesting donations for Rabbi Sofer.
But when a comment came in noting that many hospital staff work with devotion for their patients, I realized I needed to acknowledge the moral & dedicated doctors & nurses too.
So I went back & toned down the original post.
Likewise, when writing about the problems of modern pop psychology, I later realized I was too hard on therapists.
Furthermore, I came across lectures by Rav Avigdor Miller (who was not a fan of therapy), which noted that discouraging people from going to therapy affects the parnasa of frum therapists.
He also noted that some therapists DO guide people according to Torah, but use the language of psychology so people will both understand them & take them seriously as professionals.
So I went back & adjusted several posts, emphasizing the good many frum therapists do. (Those same posts already acknowledged the helpful aspects of some therapists, but not as much as required.)
Posts written on the topic since then also acknowledge this broader realization.
So while I continue to discuss the superiority of Torah over pop psychology (because that's what I honestly believe & find helpful), these discussions also include this broader realization.
So those are things for which I'm sorry & made amends as best I could by going back to correct things, writing more responsibly since then, and apologizing now.
Included in this is how maybe I misunderstood or miscommunicated an important idea, which messed you up.
Or, despite my best efforts, maybe a post contains lashon hara or something wrong or useless or misleading.
Maybe a comment or email to you was tactless or insensitive in some way.
(I aim for compassion and sensitivity, but because I usually have no idea to whom I'm emailing/commenting, I can totally flub up. Actually, I can totally flub up even if I know exactly to whom I'm speaking. But I try not to flub up.)
For all the above, I’m truly sorry.
May we all enjoy a sweet new year full of sweetened dinim/judgments.
May Hashem forgive us, may we forgive each other, and may we forgive ourselves.
And may each of us merit to fulfill our unique soul-potential.
B'ezrat Hashem, may you all be inscribed for a year of revealed good & sweetness...
...and may the light of the Geula shine b'rachamim on us all.