Shalom All!

Well, today marks 20 weeks pregnant. That means, we’re halfway to meeting this baby! The gender reveal is just 6 days away, and I’m finally feeling anxious to know a bit more about who we are preparing to meet.

This week’s parsha, Sh’lach, points out a moment that we seem to be reliving again and again in different ways. We, the people seeking the promised land, look out into the scary world ahead and compare ourselves to others. In our Torah, we looked at the people of Canaan and said (in a matter of words), “They are giants and we are mere grasshoppers in comparison.”

One can’t deny that this mindset is both toxic and relevant today. In this moment, I’m comparing it to the “dreaded” scale where we continue to step on and measure our worth in numbers. No doubt, watching the scale creep up these past 20 weeks has been hard… it’s a mentality I’ve struggled to ditch. Honestly, I had thrown away my scale last year. Being pregnant, however, I just wanted to monitor it between the weeks I saw the doctor in case anything drastic happened. When I had hit 9lbs gained last week, I felt that sick feeling in my gut that I used to get when I was deep in diet culture. Then I realized, “Hello! You’re making a new life in you! This isn’t failure weight, it’s weight of hope and success.”

You see, it’s never failure weight. The number does not define us as humans. It is simply a measurement of what we physically carry the world, and there is no wrong number.

This morning, I stepped onto my usual treadmill at the gym, which happens to be in line sight of the faces of people stepping on this high tech scale that measures their fat, muscle, etc. 80-90% of the people who step up respond with a facial expression of disappointment or disgust. It makes me sad, every time. I want to shout to them, “Get off that scale, smile because you’re here at the gym, working to live a life of good health. You are amazing. You are beautiful and that number does not define your worth.” In a moment of seeing a number, we are so prone to feeling like grasshoppers… mere insects of what we actually are.

This Shabbat, be a giant… proud of who you are, where you are and what you’ve accomplished this week. You are not a number.

Shabbat Shalom!