When you’re experiencing infertility, it can be all too easy to feel like you’re completely alone. As the world moves around you, bustling with adorable children and pregnant friends, you may feel like you’re the only person who wants to be a parent and has yet to see it happen.

When we began writing this piece, we realized just how similar our experiences were as women who became first-time mothers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We gave birth a week apart, both via C-section, and both of our sons were premature.

The reality is, one never knows whether someone else is suffering from an acute illness. A broken leg is obvious; a broken spirit, not so much. Many of us contend with invisible illnesses, whether physical, such as Multiple Sclerosis or chronic migraines; or mental, like anxiety or schizophrenia.

As a mother of a one-year-old, I’ve watched Encanto more times than I can count. Around my second time watching it, I realized that “surface pressure” is an amazing metaphor for the struggles I face as a parent. Especially as a parent preparing for both my and my son’s first Passover, the preparation of cooking and cleaning before the first seder is certainly stressful.

But I need your help to ensure that every student can access mental health care, no matter where they live.

In the weeks preceding her passing, her children and grandchildren continued to visit her, either in person or remotely via technology. She was surrounded by her children until the very end.

Everyone has an opinion on what we should have done – but as this crisis has exposed weaknesses in social solidarity, in leadership, in democratic processes here, it has also demonstrated clearly the strength of the Israeli health care system.

Shavuot offers a glimpse at how others in our tradition faced unimaginable and unremitting losses – and were sometimes helped to prevail. There are powerful lessons for us within the story of Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth.

Jewish tradition comes down decidedly on the side of science. One of the primary values in Jewish legal thought: Pikuach nefesh, saving a life, overrides almost every other religious mitzvah.