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In This Episode
Season 2 had a variety of high-level women who shared their gifts, expertise, and talents with our listeners. It was a season filled with wisdom to align marriage, business, and God. Season 3 and 4 are already planned out! Find out what Rebbetzin Bat-Chen has in store.
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REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
Welcome to the Connected For Real Podcast! I’m Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman, a marriage coach for women in business, and my mission is to bring God’s presence into your life, into your marriage, and into your business. Let’s get started. The following is one of the many conversations I had with experts and professionals about real life and how it affects marriage. Let me know your takeaways on Instagram or Facebook, @connectedforreal. Enjoy.
And we are live. Welcome to the Season two wrap up. I’m going to talk to you today about all of what’s happened in Season 2. I’m also gonna spill some beans about Season three and Season four that are coming up and are going to be absolutely amazing, and I want to start by telling you how grateful I am that we’re done with Season two and each one of my seasons is 18 episodes because 18 represents life and I could pick whatever I want because podcasting is very arbitrary and there’s no rules so that is how I decided to break up my podcast.
First season was, if you remember, all of the lives that I had before I had a baby and the podcast was born with my baby. I cannot believe that my baby is almost eight months old, and that’s how old the podcast is so that’s very exciting. Congratulations to all of us for doing this far and I want to talk to you a little bit about what was in season two.
So, let’s begin by Episode 19, which was the first episode in season two and it was with Leanne Wakabayashi and she is so much fun. I love saying her name. It is so exciting. She wrote an amazing book about her process of living in Tokyo, and marrying a guy from Tokyo and really being part of that experience for all these years a little bit more about her spirituality and connecting to the rabbis there and the Chabad house and how she ended up living in Israel and her book is just fascinating. Now, the thing I love about her book and why I brought her on was because of how she talks about her husband and as uncomfortable as it is to end a marriage because she felt that she couldn’t stay in that marriage. I guess because he’s not Jewish. She gives so much respect to him and so much gratitude to everything that he has given her for all those years and also the fact that she has two kids so amazing and so wonderful, so it just was such a fun conversation definitely a highly recommended episode to go back and what and listen or watch listen to. Leanne is also an artist and we got together a little bit a while ago after we did the podcast. We actually had a date and she came over here we had so much fun. We made lunch together and the kids got to meet her. She’s just so awesome. Just such a beautiful soul an amazing person and I love her and her understanding of art and way in the way that it really relates to life and how we express ourselves and how we can manifest through art it’s just so fascinating so I didn’t talk to her about all of that in the Episode but a ton of amazing, amazing content came out in this episode and I highly recommend it. it really is it was such a pleasure having her.
Okay. Episode 20 was with Marisa and she is all about time management and she teaches moms and wives and women who want to have it all how to fit it all into their schedule by prioritizing by creating different sections in their life and finding little pockets of time. I thought it was just so much fun to talk to her. she knows so much. she has two books out. it was such a pleasure after this Episode. [A] woman actually reached out to me and asked how can I get more of her because she was just that awesome and a lot of what we talked about was the mom guilt and all of the behind of how living the life that you want and maybe isn’t what you were told or maybe isn’t and what you think comes into play, so we got rid of all that guilt and overwhelm and stress and we really just talked, had this amazing, honest conversation. Go back and listen if you haven’t heard Marisa and that Episode. Episode 20. It’s called Mom Life, Wife Life, Whatever Life and it really gives you the permission to choose and to love what you’re choosing.
Now, there are four Hot Topic Bonuses that I put here as a bonus, so I’m gonna just tell you about them because even though they’re not full episodes. There are many shows that are so, so powerful one of them is called Release and Surrender. it is so good and that in this Episode or Mini Episode about—I was thinking that I am not enough as a wife. I am a marriage coach. I’m always helping other people but you’re always hard on yourself and you’re like, “Ah, I could be better. I have to do more,” and I just felt like I wasn’t enough and I went to a retreat and at the retreat, I did this meditation and I tell you more about this in the mini-sode, so go back and listen. the funniest thing was that I realized that being enough is actually not the ideal because I’m like, “Yeah, she’s enough.” That’s not actually a good thing so that made me realize that trying to be enough and striving to be enough and telling myself I am enough, and putting it on the mirror and all the things that people are saying to do is not necessarily the goal, and I am done with trying to be enough. I am who I am. I just am. so that is all about that and it’s a beautiful episode.
Another Hot Topic Bonus was the Technical and Robotic Marriage, and I talk about that really in depth because I think that that is the biggest danger in marriage, especially when we speak about so much of the divorce rate and what’s going on and how difficult it is and now with Covid and how marriages have suffered and all those different things really. When you are in a weak marriage and you realize that something isn’t right, you have more of the awareness that you need to do something about it but when you’re in a technical marriage and everything works like a robot, there are systems in place, people are being picked up, humans are being fed, everything is working but there isn’t that intimacy. There isn’t that emotional connection. That’s when things can really pile up and bottle up and explode because we don’t have the awareness that we want better. We just think it’s fine and fine and okay and whatever. It’s just mediocre. It’s not where you want to be and that’s really my target audiences, those people who are okay in their marriage, things are fine but they want better. They want more. Okay, so I talk about that here because it’s really, really important. Awareness is most of the work and if you could just want something better, you are on the right track. And by the way, women have said to me that they have an amazing marriage and they come and join my retreat or join my programs and it goes even better. So, I believe that there is no cap to how amazing your marriage is and I want to help you get there, so that is what I talk about in that Hot Topic Bonus.
And the last one is the Too Good in Marriage, when I spoke to one of my friends who has an amazing marriage and both her and her husband are succeeding at their businesses and he’s making a million dollars a year and she’s making multiple six figures and they’re just really happy and their kids are happy. Everything is great and so what and she said, “I feel guilty or embarrassed to ask for more because it’s so good. It’s just—I don’t want to be too good,” and that’s when it really caught my attention to talk about this part too because, as we said about the Technical Marriage, the Too Good in Marriage is also a trap that we fall into. It’s almost like we’re not letting ourselves have it better because it’s so good already. Stop stopping yourself. Just stop getting yourself into those tricks and mind games of, “Oh, if I ask for anything more, then I don’t know. Something will break.” Nothing will break. Your husband loves you and he wants to do more and he wants to be more with you, and so she actually realized she is—her love language is quality time and she’s going to ask her husband for more time together because as much as they’re enjoying each other’s company and having an amazing life, she feels like she wants to find more ways of connecting and more things to do together and have more fun. So, just having that conversation with her and opening up that window to how can it be even better was so much fun especially since their marriage was already.
That’s just the four Hot Topic Bonuses. They’re my gift to you. Go back and listen. If you are on YouTube, you can go and watch them and actually see me in in the middle of holding my newborn baby. It was very cute.
Let’s get back to the episodes.
Episode number 21 is called Skills for Connection with Miriam Campbell, and she wrote a book and she is teaching teachers and parents how to teach skills that will actually stick with children and she was a teacher and she found it so challenging to address the kids that needed the extra social emotional skills because she realized that she’s running a class and the class is all over the place and it’s really, really difficult to do all at once. I might be messing this up but I think that she teaches both parents and teachers how to make it super easy for the teacher to know exactly what’s needed of her and give the kid the things that they need so that everybody wins. Basically, she is that win-win person who makes sure that your kid is getting the skills and the emotional connections that they need without burdening the teachers and telling them that they need to do more charts and more things and more whatevers. So, go back and listen. She came out with her book and I’m really, really happy to have been a part of her launch. It’s just such a pleasure. She’s also so, so sweet and as I said, super honest, so I love that about her.
Episode number 22 was Building God-Centered Homes with Daniela Rudoff and Daniela is a dating and marriage coach, and I really had her on—when I invited her, I thought she was only a dating coach. I wanted her on in order to talk about really her experience with helping singles build that God-centered home because it really is a priority, and once you make a priority and you find someone else who has that as a priority, it really sets you up for success and then while we were having our conversation, it was so much fun to find out that she also does marriage coaching and that a lot of her dating coaching clients end up continuing with her because they see how powerful coaching is and she really is that great. So, it was such a pleasure having her on the podcast. She’s also [inaudible], which is really fun and I highly recommend you go and listen to that because really, there is so many layers to building a God-centered home and if this is a priority, which in my opinion, it is, and if you’re listening, it probably is on YouTube.
Now, Episode 23 was with Leslie and it was Being Present at Meal Time and really, Leslie is this awesome, awesome—I don’t know if she calls herself—a nutrition coach or a food person or something or maybe wholeness and wellness or something. I don’t know what she calls herself but I do know that she is amazing at connecting the dots between what our children see are our habits and the patterns that they create for themselves, and this was such an eye-opening conversation. It was so beautiful to see how normal she is about eating what you want to eat and teaching your kids that you can enjoy whatever it is you’re enjoying and there isn’t something—that, “Oh, I’m on a diet so I can’t have that but you guys can have it.” The kids stand it. Children are geniuses and we really had an amazing conversation about food and kids and wellness in general and how that affects marriage and we got into some really great stuff. So—oh, she is a dietitian and a personal trainer. I just looked through my notes. Okay, that’s what she calls herself. Sorry, Leslie, but yeah Leslie is awesome. I also had a really fun conversation with her a couple months ago outside of the podcast. It was—she’s just really fun. She’s awesome.
Episode 24 was with Prue in Australia it was so awesome to have a friend in Australia. That is so, so cool. It’s ask—and it was exactly what we talked about. How do you get to the point where your business is aligned so much with the work that your soul is here to do? And I loved it . loved how we got to talk really deep stuff and really we connected on such a beautiful level. There were some really, really authentic and deep conversation that went on here, and I highly recommend if you like that type of stuff—really going deep and hearing about how business and women and marriage and soul purpose and all of that stuff. So, so beautiful. So, so beautiful. This was a transformational podcast episode for me and for her, and also for all the listeners, so go back and listen to that if you are into that. I also feel really excited that I ended up having her from Australia because there’s something really special about Australia for me. When my sister was in college, I pretty much lived my dream through her by telling her to go do a student exchange program in Australia and she listened to me so she had a whole—she sent me a bunch and she had I ended up basically living my dream through her. So, a little secret that I don’t think she knows but maybe she does, I really, really have this amazing connection with Australia and I have no idea why but I just love the people there. I love everything about just that side of the world and I’ve personally never been but my sister has, so I get to say that.
Let’s go to episode 26. Twenty-six was all about young moms and how that affects your marriage. It affects your business. It was so amazing to find out about something called matrices—matrescence. That’s how you say it. Matrescence, which is the process of a woman becoming a mother, and the most beautiful thing was that not only do you have the biological changes and your brain connections change. There’s just so many things that change when you become a mother but Bayla goes into this really beautiful way of how we become. We really become different and we have all these things that happen to us that have nothing to do with—well, obviously it has everything to do with how to be, but you just turn into a mother and you get this mother brain and you think a different way and you connect a different way and it’s so beautiful. You have to become okay with that. You have to come to peace with [that] and I think that was one of the beautifulest—beautifulest. I just made up a word again. One of the most beautiful things about the conversation with Bayla that when we try to go back to our old self and we’re fighting reality, it’s like, “Oh, I became a mom and now I’m feeling overwhelmed and I have all these things and the baby needs me and all this stuff.” There’s this weight and so what do we want to do? We’ll right away run to I just want to be back to myself. I want to lose the weight. I want to get in shape. I want to go back to how I fel.t I want to be that person I was, and she says, “No. You’ve become a different person. Stop trying to go backwards and really focus and lean into who you’ve become,” because she’s so right and it’s so true and this is what it’s all about. It’s just loving what is right now and being able to lean into it and use it as your strength and really embrace it, so I love that. It was an awesome episode.
All of my episodes are awesome. We just like get that out of the way. It’s just so fun. I love having these amazing people in my podcast and somebody wants to ask me like how do you get all these people. It’s partially I do go out there and pitch the podcast and say, “”Hey, I think you’d be an amazing person to be on my podcast,” and I really get some high level people to say yes, which is really cool but also God sends me these amazing people into my life. I find out about someone who I really like—her authenticity and her message and how completely aligned she is and then I say, “Oh my gosh. I think we have a similar message.”
Let’s go talk and it really works—it works so if you need [anything], let me know. [It’s] such a blessing to be surrounded by amazing people and I think that for me, if we’re going to go into this conversation a tiny bit deeper, for me believing that I am that person that I upleveled my mindset about who I am and therefore who I attract so that was also a fun little thing that happened—that I had to I had to do in order to open the podcast. I think that I told you but it was something like two years in the making, where I was like, “Yeah! I’m gonna have a podcast but I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough energy. I don’t have enough whatever,” and it was really me feeling like I can’t do it, I’m not that person whatever but with time, I became that person and I realized, “Yeah, this just has to happen,” so it happened and crazy enough, it happened exactly when I gave birth to my baby. You would think it’s a podcast, but really because it freed me, I feel like I birthed myself as I birthed my baby. It freed me from being that old me and just sort of allowed me to be me the full me, so that’s just a little about that behind the scenes.
Okay. Episode 27 is called the Eyes of Love with Karen Baker, and Karen Baker is amazing. She is such a professional at what she does. she’s so good. she is an author she is a coach she is amazing. Her clarity and her ability to express herself and explain things about high consciousness and the place of a woman and how we treat ourselves in the workplace and in the business world as women is so awesome. Now, let me tell you something about this. This episode—I had so much fun. I had so much fun. If you want to hear me laughing and telling jokes and being myself, this is it this is the place to go. Episode 27—it was so comfortable with Karen that I just totally put down my guard and had a good time. I was like, “Hey listen, I’m doing this. We’re gonna have fun,” and it was the funnest episode to record. I could have gone on forever but as you hear in the episode she had to go eat lunch and so we cut it, but it’s really, really wonderful. I highly recommend going and listening. We talk about really changing your perspective on the eyes of love, meaning you already have the ability to see love and not put on some pink glasses and see some fake reality but really use your eyes what you already have in order to focus on the right things. That was the gist of that amazing podcast episode, and really, if you want to see some jokes, just thinking back to them I started laughing because I had so much fun.
Okay, take a deep breath. Let’s go on. Episode 28 was about stress eating and marriage with Melissa and I realized that sometimes there are a lot of overlapping episodes and I make sure that we come at it from a different angle. So, Melissa is a holistic life coach. I remember we had Leslie and she’s really coming from a different angle. She was talking about parenting and here, Melissa and I were talking about stress eating and how that affects your marriage and how your marriage affects your eating and we really got the two-way street thing going—and interesting—she, Melissa, helps people women. I think she only helps women. She helps women break free from that sugar addiction and going to the pantry and just constantly looking for food in order to mask the feelings and we talked about that a lot about how when the marriage isn’t working, when things aren’t really aligning, when things aren’t the best, how do we deal with it without having to turn to food or other ways of coping. [For] some people, it’s not food. For some people, it’s your food, and for some people, it’s other things like going and helping other people instead of focusing on their own life. Even good things can turn into addictions when you run away from your feelings, so pay attention to that and be okay with being aware of it. Don’t make it anything. No judgment. We’re talking about Melissa. Yeah, so processing your emotions is super important and it’s important to do it in the right way, and here, I want to tell you something about emotions.
This is a total side note and I’m going off on a tangent but this is something that’s really close to my heart and something that I really strive in changing—is there is a lot of emotion processing that feels heavy and shadow work and deep dark places where you go and you in order to process and as powerful as it is and as helpful as it is, there is also something really heavy about it—and oh, it’s your personality it has to do with how intense you like things. It has to do with where you are in your journey but I really feel like it can be done in a delicate, easy, not with ease, not heavy refreshing—it’s hard you have to go in you have to face your fears. You have to face your sadness. You have to face your emotions. You have to be okay with them and you have to find what they’re teaching you but then being able and willing to move on to let go, to feel refreshed, to feel lighter, to feel like you’re putting down that weight—and this is where it’s really important for me—to stress here—is that if you’ve done emotional processing things before and they felt overwhelming and they felt heavy and they felt like they moved you to a place of darkness and not lightness or if they created more work for you later on—like when you open up a can of worms and you’re like, “Okay. Now I can’t go on with my day. Now I have to go and deal with this in a—” When it comes from heaviness, then it’s not unless you’re that type of person who really loves that and then it’s ideal for you. My style is very positive, very refreshing, very light and upbeat, and so the way that I like to process emotions is—yes, going in and feeling the feelings and being okay with them and processing them but then making sure that we wrap it up and finish up and move on and feel lighter and happier at the end of it and the most important thing is to learn the lesson because the emotion is here to remind you of a lesson. So do not ever walk away from an emotional processing—that I’d be learning from it because if not, then you’re just gonna have to learn it again. What’s the point? Okay, that tangent—lots of fun but let’s go back to Episode 29 with the Deneen.
And Deneen is a Christian coach and she coaches business—she’s a Christian business women’s coach. She coaches christian women how to grow their business and really, we do very similar things, except I really focus on marriage and business and making that holistic, and her focus is really just growing the business and helping Christian women make their business align with God, so we really got to talk about God-centered business and then we got to really discuss how her work meets my work and how everything affects marriage. We had a really fun time talking about God and talking about how amazing He is and how He gave us the personality and the strength and the values and the experiences and the skills and our work in this world and that we get to actually lean into that. So, she has a program that helps women lean into their purpose in an aligned way and also because she has so much experience as a teacher, she really breaks down ways that are easier to digest and implement and so, I really enjoyed talking to her. She has 10 years of experience or something—so much so much fun to talk to people who are in the industry for so long ,who already know what they’re doing, who have their systems in place—[it] was a beautiful conversation and I think she’s just also an amazing person. Oh, and what else we talk here—I remember now something that I really appreciated about her was how honest she was about taking sabbath—to just stop and disconnect and realign and we talked about that a little bit because as I am Jewish and I do take sabbath every single week. No phone, no electricity, no computer, no social media, no nothing and I just fully focus on my family and my spiritual life and just really being present and it was just fun to hear that she does that too and in the way that she does whatever every person is different—[she] finds what’s right for them and obviously, all the Jews have sabbath so I don’t expect her to go all out and have like a full full-blown sabbath experience, but I think that it was really just fun and refreshing to hear that people are being very intentional about their present—being present, being intentional and getting realigned every week. It’s a really beautiful thing to do. If you can find even just 10 minutes to realign, it is a gift that you give yourself. So that was Deneen. It was so fun having her.
Episode 30 is that it was—sorry, Episode 30 was with Meredith and it was all about optimizing your lifestyle, and what I love about Meredith is that here, we got to really talk about holistic life and integrated life—something that is a very high value for me and something that I really strive to help my clients with is instead of focusing on one thing and ending up with a lopsided life, you focus on everything and make sure that everything is always working so you can’t focus on everything all at once. You focus on one thing at a time but you create rhythms and systems and harmony with the things that are important to you—to create that holistic life, to create that wheel that actually turned that wheel that can sustain all of the different parts of you. It’s just so beautiful. It was such an amazing conversation and I think it was just really fascinating to talk to Meredith about all the different aspects of how she helps people, and ironically, I have a thing called the One Thing that I teach in my retreat on day four in case you go back and listen to the retreat. On day four, I teach about the one thing and then told her that. She’s like, “Oh my gosh. I have the one thing too,” and we teach—Meredith was at my retreat and enjoyed hearing how I teach things and really we ended up having a fun conversation about that, but I enjoy when I find other coaches who focus on making things work all together and not just one thing because you can focus on your business and then leave everything behind. You can focus on your health and then leave everything behind. You can focus on your marriage and then leave everything behind or you can focus on all the things and the way to focus on all the things is really to start with [you], because you are the container of all these things and so when you focus on yourself and you find the things that fill you up and you focus on that one thing that’s going to move the needle for you, as a container for you, as that vessel of all that goodness then you can have all the other parts fall into place and I think that’s really the secret. So we talked about that in Episode 30 and that was a lot of fun.
Next is actually not an episode [but] is a bonus episode and it was the testimonial with Regina Cox and Regina is in my program. Actually, she was in my program. She graduated. She gave this testimonial before she graduated. She is a star student. She’s so awesome, so amazing and because she is God-centered—she’s Christian. She lives in America. She and her husband were working together and she wanted it to work with her marriage as well. She wanted to feel like she’s getting to the next level in her marriage, just like in her business and the transformation that happened is so amazing and makes me so motivated to keep going because I see women like Regina and the other women in the program and they’re fine. They have—everything’s pretty good and then taking that to the next level and seeing how amazing it could be and how much more it can grow is so powerful, and just seeing Regina shine and transform has been amazing, and here she gives a testimonial for the Marriage Breakthrough Retreat, which is the free retreat and she also ended up joining the program and being in the mastermind, so she gave a little bit of that as well, but it’s just such a fun listen you can go back and listen to that if you like testimonials and if you like hearing actual people’s lives and how they transform. This is a real amazing example of that. That was just a bonus that we threw in there because I like listening to people’s testimonials. When I’m working with someone or when I’m following someone, when I hear what they’re doing—I’m saying if they say it but it’s another thing to hear the actual results or the actual things that shift and I find that always is fascinating, so when I can and not everybody is willing to go live with me who’s in the program, not everyone is willing to open up, about what’s going on with them but when somebody is—it’s really, really beautiful.
Episode 31 was a dream come true. I had Rivka Malka Perlman, who is one of those leaders that I have been following for years and any time I see her and any time I see that she’s doing some event or she’s doing some webinar or some workshop or something, I try to sign up because she has so much to give and especially, in her creativity with creating experiences. She is so good and a couple of—I don’t know was it already two, three years ago. Maybe three years ago, she posted that she [was] in Israel and she [was] having an event in Jerusalem and I went out of my way—was I pregnant or I left a baby or something—maybe it was four years ago even. Whatever it was, I remember, I was like—I went out of my way, I got on the bus, I went and I looked for the place and I had to walk a lot and somebody had to show me because [it] was hard to find and I got there and I just felt like, “Wow.” I got [t]here and the room was full to the brim. It was. I actually sat down by the door. I sat myself down on the floor because there was nothing else, no other seats, no other floor room. Everything was packed and the people who came out after me just had to stand in the outside room, like the lobby area, and listen and watch from the little opening but she’s just so awesome and that’s just one of those things that makes you feel good—when you can get one of those leaders and coaches who you look up to to come and talk to you. It makes me feel like, “Yay! I made it,” and if you’re in the beginning of your journey, just remember, it actually happens. You grow and you grow and you grow eventually. You have to look back and be like, “Oh, look. I grew,” and these are one of those milestones where I tell myself, “Wow. It’s cool. It’s cool that I got to the point where people like with Rivka Malka Perlman can talk to me and have a podcast episode where we are discussing really high level things and getting really, really deep,” so if you’re into that, go and listen. We talk about healing your marriage because Rivka Malka is really into healing and she uses a lot of different approaches. So obviously, she is Jewish and she uses all of everything—is aligned to Judaism but she does bring in a lot of different things that help heal, so I really enjoyed talking to her. For me, it was a dream come true. As I said, and it was a pleasure, and I think also by the time that episode came out, she was opening up her school for coaching—her—the Rivka Malka coaching school or something, and it’s one of those great things that I’ve heard people say is really an experience and, I never did it but I hear it’s highly recommend. Yeah, it was a pleasure. It really was. I felt very high after speaking with her. I felt like I ran out of the room and I was like, “Do you know who I just had on my show?” So, yeah that is Episode 31.
Now, Episode 32 is all about Parenting and Marriage with Chagit Zelcer and let me tell you, Chagit is teaching a method—not a method. I know, I made that mistake also in the live. She’s teaching an approach called the Sheffer Approach and this is something that I learned when I had four kids. Now I have seven, okay. So, it was at least seven years ago I signed up for this course. I heard it was a really good course. Somebody highly recommended that I sign up. I didn’t have any major issues but your parents of four kids. You have something to work on. That is why you’re here, so I took that course. I ended up loving. It changed my life completely in so many ways but mostly while I was in the course, I was pregnant and my little belly was growing and I had four girls at home, so the baby I had was a boy and I didn’t know that at the time, but it prepared me for having a boy. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you, but being a mom of girls and everybody always saying, “Oh, you have girls? Wait ‘til you have a boy. Boys are this, that, and the other, and you just wait and you just see your whole house upside down and things are going to be broken,” and there’s just so much noise about boys and when I was in that course and I heard the Sheffer Approach—is of all that junk and believe in your kids and just be a parent because God made you a parent and not because you have this to-do list of what a mother is supposed to do, it’s just so freeing. It’s an amazing approach and it changed my life because then when I had a boy and people said, “Oh, you just wait,” I just smiled and knew it was like Teflon. It didn’t stick and I think that was the primer for that. Having the experience of being in the Sheffer course with Shlomit Aqua, who is a different teacher, who teaches the same approach, was so powerful but Aqua does not speak English enough for me to and for me to interview her, and also she’s in the digital world and I didn’t think it would be helpful [to] you if I introduce someone who is really not available for you to work with, so I eventually connected with Chagit, and when we talked—when we spoke, it was so much fun because turns out, I think we actually went to the same school except she’s older than me in Brooklyn. So, that was a lot of fun and no, actually no, that wasn’t true. [I don’t] remember anymore. I think I’m making that up but we did have some sort of connection that I can’t come up with right now. Maybe we should edit that out except I am live, so that’s funny. but anyway so talking to Chagit was so much fun because she lives up north in the Golan and that is just an amazing place to go and she learned the Sheffer course became a Sheffer Certified Teacher and then started teaching it and realized there’s nothing in English because the Sheffer course was created in Israel and was created in Hebrew and has been really super successful here in Israel but has never been translated and never been really approachable for those who do not live in Israel or who do not speak Hebrew. So, what I love about Chagit is that she created an online course called the Sheffer Course and she teaches parents in English. Everything that I learned in Hebrew in my course when I had four kids, so I wanted to highlight her first of all, because I think it’s one of the most powerful parenting courses. The approach is just so amazing. The approach of the Sheffer method—of Sheffer course. I keep saying method. I’m sorry. I apologize the approach of Sheffer is so aligned with everything that I do now and I think it’s because they were a little bit of my basis. They’re my foundation because as I was growing as a person and as a parent, I realized that this has everything to do with everything else in your life and every aspect of everything you do, so it is definitely part of my foundation. It’s the things that I teach my students, my clients, when anything comes up—parenting. I always point to this direction because it really is one of those things that changes everything. You can’t see it any other way once you see it this way because it’s so freeing, because it’s so powerful. So, I highly recommend checking her out. I recommend watching our fun conversation about parenting and about how parenting affects marriage, and one of the things I love about her is she actually brings up the way that helping parents now today is creating better marriages in the future because their children are going to have the skills they need in order to be amazing partners and I thought that was really deep and I never really thought about that in that way but I think that it is so profound that Chagit put her finger on that because the whole approach sets the kid up for success and then once the kid can be successful and once the kid has the skills and has the belief and has all the things he needs, he just gets to grow and grow and grow and keep going and becoming more awesome. So, I think that she has such a good point there and you should go back and listen.
Okay, I’m done ranting about that. Let’s get to Episode 33. It’s called Midlife and Marriage with Brenda [Hewlko]. Brenda is so sweet. I cannot tell you how delicious this woman is. There’s something so beautiful about her soul—so delicious .tTat’s the only words that are coming up for me. So magnificent how loving she is, how beautiful she is, how sweet—and her entire business is built on that midlife crisis of women, when they suddenly find themselves in this shift where suddenly they’re not taking care of little kids. Suddenly they’re not doing the things that they did. Their identity is changing and they’re finding their gifts and they’re realizing that things are changing. She helps them through the process and it was just so beautiful to listen to her speak about how lovingly she takes you through that midlife journey without making a crisis and without having it to mean anything. It is so, so, so like—listen to my voice. I melt to talk about Brenda because she’s just so beautiful and I highly recommend listening to this, especially if you’re a woman in midlife, especially if you’re feeling that. I also love the name of her program. I don’t remember what was called but it was something with menopause—oh something pause woman. Woman at Pause. That’s what it was called. I think. I hope. I just loved that she was able to use the word pause to stop and think and create and be intentional and also just the movement that she creates with that Woman at Pause, where she creates that collective energy of all the women who are going through this and how they can help each other. It’s just so beautiful. So beautiful. I don’t cry. Go check out Brenda. Go check out all of the information about the midlife transfer—transition and how to make it amazing how to lean into your passion, how to do your thing without having to get through the crisis.
And by the waym I’m gonna go on another tangent here because I know you guys love my tangents and I think that they’re really powerful when I was going through my transition from graphic design to becoming a coach. One of the things that happened was that I was coming at it from a place of curiosity, from connection, from prayer and really my whole transition started because I started praying every day and I started asking what do you want and if I don’t know what you want them how do I know what I want and that transition was smooth because I was so connected and I was listening and I was asking and I was praying and I was attentive and I was willing to take the steps that I was being shown to take I was. At the park a couple weeks after that, I told a lady about how I’m transitioning from graphic design and I’m becoming a coach and I’m focusing on marriage and whatever. It was really early on in the beginning of my journey. It was when we were still going out to parks and she said, “That’s crazy. I had a transition too, but mine had to come from a crisis. How is it that you were able to get a transition without a crisis?” and anytime I have to transition, it has to come with a crisis and it made me think that some people find this the norm because that’s just how they experience growth. There’s always something bad that has to happen and then when you look back. You’re like, “Oh, I’m so glad I had cancer. Oh, I’m so glad we were kicked out of our house. Oh, I’m so glad that this happened or that happened—whatever.” You have all these people telling you that the bad things that happened to them in life were the catalyst to growing but it doesn’t have to be that way and that’s one of the things that I really push for—is let’s transition, let’s transform, let’s see what can come out of me without having to be broken, without having to crash, without having to completely re-find myself, and you do that by bringing God into it. You do that by being willing to listen and by asking and by praying and by staying aligned and by putting yourself in a container of people who are like-minded. That’s a really important thing because I could not have done what I’m doing if I didn’t have other people telling me that this is possible, if I didn’t see other women doing what I want to be doing, if I didn’t have that ability to really see the example. So, that is a tangent for about that about transitions and crisis as opposed to smoothly becoming your next best self.
This brings up something else and I guess I have to tell you because it came up into my mind. I was once in a conference and this beautiful story this rabbi spoke about how he says this if I told you this is not the same hand like 20 years ago then it could be one of two things either I lost my hand in a crazy accident I had to go into the hospital they had to give me a new hand and whatever—connect it, and now this hand is not the same hand or I could say this is not the same hand from 20 years ago because it’s not. All the cells have replenished themselves. I have completely new blood. Everything about my hand is not the same hand. If you were to test my hand 20 years ago and my hand now, there’s different cells, different blood, different bones, different everything. Yes, it’s the same hand, technically but it’s not and it made so much sense. He says if you have a person who has to chop off themselves and get their new self and connect it to their old self and really just like the patchwork of starting something new and just dropping everything and deciding this is who I am now and he was talking about people who find Judaism and suddenly leave everything and become something that isn’t very natural to them to use, it’s not smooth. It’s not natural and that’s what he was saying also. When a person goes through a transition that doesn’t feel right for them but it’s just sort of like this is what I have to be and this is who I have to become and he pushes himself to become something that isn’t coming naturally to him or he’s not doing it in a natural progression, it’s like he cut and pasted, and then everything that he’s going to be doing in that new life is not going to feel natural and it’s going to look to outside people. It’s very robotic or non-natural, not smooth, as opposed to the first person who has the same hand because I grew because 20 years ago. I was younger and my hand was smaller and the cells and the blood and all of that stuff. It’s just that it’s not the same hand but it’s obviously, naturally my hand and so I can do everything. I can vary my new detail things and I can open and close, and I can just flow with it. When you have a transition that flows, when you transition and become the next version of yourself in a way that feels really aligned and guided and straight, you become you so naturally that sometimes you don’t realize you became something until you look back and you realize who you were. I don’t sit around thinking about my hand being a different hand until I think, “Hey, 20 years ago my hand was way smaller because I was younger, because I was not a full-grown adult.” I had to think about that for a second but yeah, 20 years ago I was 17. So, I definitely was not a full-grown adult. I was close to it but not fully. So anyway, total tangent.
Let’s wrap this up. We have two more episodes before I can tell you about the next two seasons.
Episode 34 was Shifting a Heavy Marriage with Lily Aronin and Lily is a holistic nutritionist and again, that is why I love our—actually we’re virtual friends. We never met in person but we are in a lot of groups together. We like the same things, we find each other, and every other thing that we’re doing. Whenever you join something, you’re like, “Oh, I’m probably not gonna know anyone,” and there she is so, it’s so fun that I just kept saying her name. I’m like, “That’s it. We gotta be friends,” and we are. We’re in classes together. We’re in certain groups together. It’s just really fun—bound to happen. She wanted to get on and tell her people about my program because it was so powerful. Now, a little bit behind the scenes remember that in my retreat, I opened up two masterminds? One was called FLOW and it was a business mastermind for women who are married and want to have an integrated life and so it’s marriage and business and God and how do I create all of that and really contain it within me, and then FLY, which was the brand was born from your request of women who were saying, “Yeah, but I’m not in business and I still want to join you,” so we opened up a mastermind of women who are not in business and want to focus on their marriage and want to focus on themselves and want to focus on God and getting rid of the God-baggage and really connecting in a beautiful way and in a good way, in an abundant way. So, lily really loved FLY. She felt like all of her people should be on FLY. Hands down, everyone who is coming to my ideal weight Shabbat Blueprint should be in your program so we went and had such a fun conversation where Lily really basically told everybody what she does but also we got to talk about my FLY mastermind and what it’s all about and you could go listen to that and it’s really, really fun, and Lily even offered a 50% discount to anybody who joins both of our programs, which was really beautiful because she really believes that it goes hand-in-hand. You cannot be at your ideal weight. You cannot be present with your food. You cannot be the person you want to be when you’re carrying the weight of a marriage that is not ideal. Okay, and the FLY Mastermind, unlike the FLOW Mastermind which was for business, the FLY Mastermind is for women who are struggling in their marriage, who aren’t super happy, who are feeling that there is a strain. Okay, so usually my ideal client is the one who is like the one up, and FLY was okay and down and now that we’re a couple weeks into the mastermind and by the way the doors are still open. You’re welcome to get in touch with me have your interview. See if you’re a good fit and then join our program, but the women who are in the program, and the things that I’m seeing is really beautiful because we’re able to shift so quickly—so, so quickly, and there’s something so beautiful about that. So, really thank God I have so much so much to be grateful for.
Now, the last one I want to talk to you about, which is the closer of our episodes of season two is Adriane, and Adriane and I spoke about fertility and charting and how fertility affects your marriage and we talked about the different aspects of fertility. When somebody just wants to get to know their body versus when you want to get pregnant and you want to know what’s going on with your body or if you’ve been trying to get pregnant for a long time and how that is affecting your marriage and also how getting along, getting to know your body and charting and really being in that place of discovery and learning more about yourself can be so helpful and so amazing. It was such a powerful conversation about fertility because it came from such a beautiful and kind and loving person and what I love about Adriane is that she’s so passionate about how God created our bodies and how everything is so exact and designed to be so perfect and so—ah so precise. The entire menstrual cycle, which we decided to call ovulatory cycle, because the ovulation is on top and that is the focus and it’s when you feel the best and it is when you are at your best. We just gave room for all the stages and all the parts and all the different cycle phases and being okay with where you are now and knowing how to lean into it by learning what you need to eat and what you need to do and which types of exercises really align better, for which part of the cycle you’re in, just being aware of where you are and I think that the most powerful part of it and, especially in regards to marriage, was that the connection between you and your connection with yourself and then how that translates to your marriage and it’s just so powerful because at the end of the day, your husband does not know what you need if you don’t know what you need and when you start learning about what it is that makes you tick and what it is that affects your body and what it is that is really ticking in the background and creating certain patterns in your body—if you need to rest because now you’re in this phase of the month and you say, “This week, I really need rest, so let’s schedule,” and a lot of like downtime or is it okay if you take over x, y, and z. You have the things you need when you’re aware of what you need and then you have the words to say what I need, what it is I need but he can’t really guess. He has no idea men are 24 hours cycles. They’re not cyclical like we are and it’s very hard for them to even understand what it is we need when we ourselves don’t know and getting in touch with yourself and getting in touch with what it is that you need is step one and the most important step.
Okay. that was a wrap for Season 2. Let me tell you about Season 3 and Season 4 because they are so cool. Season 3 is women who are working with their husband. So, same business. Woman and her husband are both in business. One of them is the CEO, or both of them are the CEO. You’ll find out because I’ve already interviewed some of these amazing women and it’s really fascinating to see how each couple works it out, what they find works for them. I think it’s really important also to validate the fact that we’re not the same and that each couple is going to find what works for them but really, we talk about what are the challenges and working together as a couple, what are the gifts of working together, how do you respect each other’s boundaries, how do we create time that isn’t business to be together and to be present and to just be okay with not talking about your clients. So, that is sSason 3 and I already started recording those. So, you’re going to be really excited about some of these amazing topics and guests and if you are a woman who is in business with her husband, make sure to talk to me because I still have some slots left open for Season 3. That is with Instagram or Facebook or if you go to connectedforreal.com or through here, the podcast. Yeah, so Connected for Real Podcast. On Instagram and on Facebook I’m Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman. connectedforreal.com is where all of the podcast, lives—and stay tuned because that’s gonna be exciting. We’re actually designing a new website and everything’s going to change but until then, that is where you can find more information about the podcast and all the show notes and everything.
I promised you I was going to tell you about Season 4, so I will. Season 4 is all of the other marriage professionals. Why am I doing this? Because I want to speak to other marriage professionals and showcase all of the different options that you have in order to make your marriage great because it’s really, really important to know and raise awareness to the fact that you are not meant to stay in the same place forever. You’re not meant to be in comfort zone forever. I know as uncomfortable as it is, it still is your brain’s go-to place to just stay nice and safe. You’re not meant to be there forever. You’re meant to be growing. You’re meant to constantly be next leveling—next level upping. I know I’m having such a great time today with making up words.
Let me know what you think about the Season 2 wrap up. Let me know what you think about Season 3 and focusing on women and marriage with women in business with their husbands women in marriage with their husbands as well. That’s a funny one and Season 4 about really having all of these amazing and I’m getting some top marriage coaches here. Not only coaches but really professionals—top, top, tops. I’m so excited.
As I said, I have become that person that I thought would be so cool to become and now, I am dreaming up the next level up because I’m like, “Wow. I’m actually here. What do you do when you’re here? You talk to other cool people,” so I have the ability to talk to other cool people. Let me know if you want me to connect to anybody specifically. Let me know if you want to be on the podcast, if you fit one of these two categories, and yeah, I can’t wait to serve you again in Season 3 and then in Season 4 and beyond. I love you all and I look forward to helping you stay connected for real. Keep it real.
REBBETZIN BAT-CHEN GROSSMAN
And that’s it! Thank you for listening to the very end. I would love if you can leave a review and subscribe to the podcast. Those are things that tell the algorithm, this is a good podcast and make sure to suggest it to others. Wouldn’t it be amazing if more people became more connected for real? And now, take a moment and think of someone who might benefit from this episode. Can you share it with them? I am Rebbetzin Bat-Chen Grossman from connectedforreal.com. Thank you so much for listening, and don’t forget, you can be connected for real.