Hedy’s Blog
The Man With a Heart
In our life together, there have been many challenging times. One of the most difficult for me occurred when Yumi and I faced together the adventure of Yumi’s heart attack and quadruple bypass operation. Each time destiny gave us a life and death challenge, we have seized the opportunity to learn to say a bigger YES! to life…
A Time for Creative Incubation
The year is 1942. The place is Nice in the South of France. These words were spoken by my mother. She and my father were in hiding in a cellar with 5 other Jewish people. They found out that the Nazis were coming into Nice. My mother engineered a plan. She would get out of hiding and go see a doctor. She told the doctor the following: “I have come to ask for your help. Could you sign a certificate that my husband is gravely ill, and needs to be transported to a hospital in Cannes. Give us an ambulance, a driver, nurse’s uniforms so that we can escape.”
The doctor was a good man. He listened compassionately. And then he said: “I cannot give you the certificate you are asking for. I signed the Hippocratic Oath and cannot lie about a patient. Your husband isn’t ill.”
And that is when my mother told him: “You are right, My husband isn’t ill. Humanity is ill. Seven people, me included, will die of the illness of humanity.”
The Turtle and the Hail Storm
Couples universally dance a classic “survival dance”. You may identify when you read this fable of the “turtle and the hailstorm.” However, with steady and regular crossing of the bridge, looking into each other’s faces with new eyes, the reactive survival dance dissolves, and makes room for what relational neurobiologist Daniel Siegel calls “the flow of FACES”, a system that is Flexible, Adaptive, Coherent, Energized and Stable…
The Gratitude Factor
A life in connection is a life of appreciation. Gratitude is a very important relationship skill that must be strengthened daily. Make a practice of saying a deep inner “thank you” every hour of the day. And carve out a sacred moment of gratitude with your partner. Say: “What I am most grateful for in having you in my life is …..”
Is Marriage a Noun or a Verb?
On April 13, 1965, Yumi and I got married.
In this picture, we are on our way to our honeymoon in Hong Kong.
We are now in our 55th year of marriage, and what have we learned?…
Coping Versus Living
I learned the distinction between Coping and Living from my mother Miri Muszkal (may her memory be a blessing). Someone in our weekly Club Memory poetry group (now done on the phone) said to me: “Hedy, you are so positive.” And I said: “I am thanking my mother for it. She taught me to live instead of cope.”