Why am I still crying over my registry?

I thought I could be everything that other people needed me to be, but I can’t. There’s no way I can.

So why am I still crying over my wedding registry?
a) Because I didn’t originally want to make a registry at all
b) Because I worked so hard to make my registry look right to others that I didn’t make it right for me
c) Because I feel it’s my responsibility, even though it’s really our responsibility
d) Because I had assumed I could make the right decisions in the right moments, and then I didn’t
e) All of the above

In my series analyzing the role of capitalism, patriarchy, and materialism in the process of wedding planning, how could I overlook this one ever-so-obvious element: the wedding registry? Well, when I was blogging in the month leading up to our wedding, I actually wasn’t thinking about the registry at all. Sure, I was enjoying our beautiful gifts—some of which I certainly remembered choosing myself—but I wasn’t facing head-on my experience with the registry process. No, the registry process began far earlier, more than a year before the wedding itself.
And now that we’re approaching our first anniversary, I’m learning that the registry is also an element of wedding planning that lasts long after the event itself. (At some point I’ll also share my thoughts on the wedding photos…)

What is the registry really about? No, scratch that, what is a wedding present really about? Is it about the couple and their wants and needs? Is it about the friends and family and what they want to get for the couple? Is it about the wedding-industrial-complex playing off the insecurity of couple and guests alike, creating and exaggerating need and want on all sides?
And what about the narrative of “you may not think you need it now but you will love having it later”? In all fairness, I don’t know that this narrative is definitely false, but it seems suspect. It seems all about creating need where there is none. If I have something that I’m not using, I will return it, give it away, or create a need for it so that I can start using it. But that doesn’t mean I actually needed it—or wanted it—in the first place.

I hesitate to rant and rave too much because I am so grateful for the loving, generous support of the many people who helped me put together my registry. After all, they were truly trying to help. And I am so grateful for the loving, generous gifts I received from friends and family, both gifts from my registry and off-registry surprises. And while I am nitpicking a few specific decisions that I probably would do differently if I had another chance, I totally understand the practical nature of producing a registry during a year when you expect lots of people to want to buy things for you. However, the nature of the market is not simply practical. In my first round of registry-producing, I tried to really focus on things we needed (e.g., pots and pans, plates and bowls, cutlery) and things we wanted (e.g., games, electronics). But then people told me that it wasn’t enough. I simply didn’t have enough items on the registry, enough things for people to choose from, enough nice things. The registry wasn’t fancy enough, apparently, and people would want to buy us “nice” things whether we wanted them or not. Things we really needed, like an iron and ironing board, we still don’t have. And a lot of people went off registry—maybe that would have happened anyway, or maybe indeed they were not satisfied with the range of items on our registry. I don’t know. There seem to be many different forces at play in these dynamics, but too many of these forces feel like they are working against me/us and what we really want.

A note on gender dynamics. As I’ve written about, I am a female who married a male, and while in our partnership we commit ourselves to addressing structures of power both at home and in the world, we certainly got to experience some of the workings of the patriarchy first-hand through the process of wedding planning. When it came to the registry, he had the privilege of not having an opinion. Not wanting to decide. What made this even more complicated at the beginning is that he is the one that does all the cooking. So when I made the first pass at registering for pots and pans, it seriously made no sense. He did come to Crate and Barrel with me one day to use the zapper, and we sat down together to create our Amazon registry. But when it came to the border-line calls, the hardest elements, and the pressure from friends and family—those decisions felt like they fell on me, because he would look at me with “BORED” written all over his face, honestly not knowing even how to try to have an opinion, and let me make the decision on my own.

And you know what? I LET HIM. He was actually the one to point this out in a recent conversation: “Mimi,” he said, “Sometimes, you need to tell me that I need to have an opinion. Just shake me until I engage.” He recognized the ways in which male privilege gave him the space to back away, leaving me with the burden of decision and diplomacy. And he honored me with this invitation to call him out in such future occasions—to say no to his boredom, to tell him that I need him as a full partner. I needed to tell him to go figure out how to have an opinion, how to think with me. I wonder what was going on in my psyche when I didn’t do this last year: was I protecting him? Did I so dislike the task of registry management that I thought I might as well deal with it on my own, leaving him free of that one source of stress? Of the many things I learned from wedding planning, I think one of the lessons I learned is not to “put up with” stress that seems unfair. I had the right to ask for him to be a partner on my side; I had the right to say “no” to tasks I didn’t want and didn’t value; we have the right to try to do our life our way, even when it means we can’t be what other people think they need us to be.

I thought I could be everything that other people needed me to be, but I can’t. There’s no way I can. So now, I’m trying to be what I need me to be. And that’s hard enough as it is.

To my support network

I wrote this piece to share with several wedding guests who came to spend time with me in the hour before the ceremony, in a tradition called a tisch, which means "table."


I have been experiencing this wedding in three layers, three perspectives, three ways in which I understand and express my own story. The initial layer is the personal relationship I share with Matt. Hopefully, you will hear the meanings of this deep layer as you witness our marriage ceremony, right after this tisch. The second layer of my experience of this wedding is political. Throughout the last month, I have expressed many of these thoughts and feelings on my blog, so I will not repeat them here.

The third layer of my experience of this wedding was actually the key motivating factor in my decision to have a wedding and reception to celebrate the marriage that Matt and I are undertaking. This layer is what I would like to focus on now, because it is about you. It is you. To my family, my friends, my loved ones, and those who love Matt and are here because they are open to loving me, too… welcome. Thank you for being with us today and throughout our lives. We have put all this thought and energy into preparing for today because we wanted to share it with you. It was because of you that I wanted to have this wedding today.

I once had an assigned reading for a gender studies class in college that addressed the Wedding Industrial Complex and analyzed many problematic and patriarchal aspects of modern weddings. One part of the critique that really struck me was he role of the guests in the wedding process. The couple and their parents plan the wedding, then everyone rushes in to celebrate for a day or for the weekend, and then the couple is left alone. Sealed off and isolated as they begin their marriage. Where the struggles happen, where the hard stuff comes up.

I don’t want to do it that way. First of all, we haven’t done it that way so far. We have been so blessed to have the effusive love and collaboration of each other and our parents in planning this wedding, but it didn’t stop there. Our best friends, our new friends, our parents friends, our cousins, they all helped us in planning this wedding. And each offer of help, each volunteering to take on a task, meant so much to be. Because not only was it extremely helpful in terms of getting this thing to happen, but it also, to me, implied a willingness and perhaps eagerness to help us in the times that will follow this wedding, whatever those times might entail.

We need you. I need you.

Our relationship cannot thrive in isolation. We need your support, in times of struggle and in times of joy, to help us thrive and reach our potential as a couple. I want to take this opportunity to ask you for this support, and for your patience, compassion, and wisdom as we navigate the joint and individual challenges ahead of us and cope with what that means for our relationship with each other and for our relationships with each of you.

And in addition to your support, I want to offer you mine. In the theme of approaching my wedding day as a personal Yom Kippur, I will start with an apology. I am sorry for all the times I have hurt or offended you or others that you care about. I have been distracted, I have been careless, too fast to speak, too soon to leave, and I have been selfish. Please forgive me. Know on this day, as I renew my dedication to living a life in which my words, actions and relationships reflect my values and passions, I am committing to you as well as committing to Matt. I want to be there for you, and I will be renewed because of this day and because of the strength I gain from my relationship with Matt. Please know that as we solidify our relationship to each other, as we invite you here to celebrate our commitment and rejoice with us, we hope that you will find joy and comfort in welcoming us into your lives, as well. As I set many important intentions today, I take this moment to set the intention to be your friend, to deepen our relationship, and to support you with love and caring. And, I will need your love and care to nourish me as Matt and I pursue a partnership thriving with health, happiness, and the pursuit of justice.

“I promise we will not get in a huge fight over your wedding”

I have great friends. The wedding-planning process has made me realize lots of things, including this fact.

Before getting engaged, I also knew that my friends are great. But planning this wedding has made me feel so vulnerable in so many ways, and this vulnerability has really allowed me to new explore aspects of my friendships. Maybe it’s that my fears and anxieties feel so strong and so urgent that I am voicing them more often. Maybe it’s that my communication skills are getting both strained and strengthened in many ways on a regular basis. Maybe it’s that my friends are kind, insightful, generous, loving people. (Yes, you!) Whatever it is, I have really benefited from all kinds of support from my friends during this process.

The “promise” at the title of this post is just one example of such support. As I told a friend about my anxieties regarding the “social politics” of the wedding process, she stopped the conversation and firmly committed to me that she would not fight with me through the process of wedding planning or over something occurring at the wedding itself. She just said it. She took responsibility. And it made so much sense to me. It was such a comfort. She wasn’t saying it descriptively—it was not a guess or a hope. This particular friend and I certainly conflict on occasion, so it was not unimaginable that we might fight over the next several months (it was March at the time). She was assuring me that she would actively take steps to not get into a fight with me. Of course, that does not mean I am being careless with our friendship. On the contrary, I feel a heightened commitment to enhancing the positive aspects of our friendship and enjoying the positive roles she is taking in the wedding process.

Living free from the fear that those closest to me might put our friendship on the line at any moment has been incredibly empowering. I could describe many other examples of the ways in which my friends have expressed forgiveness, understanding, and genuine support for my personal decisions even when they disagree, even if they disagree avidly. All in all what it comes down to is this: I can throw myself into wedding planning (and, in thirty days, the wedding itself) with the freedom to embrace vulnerability, explore anxiety, respect fear, and feel empowered that whatever goes right or wrong, those who love me will continue to love me, and I will continue to have their support.

And they, I can assure you, will continue to have mine.

Sex Ed for Young Adults, Take Two: It’s Time for Outreach!

A summary of Sex Ed, Take One:
The Sex Ed class for young adults that I was teaching ended in May. I loved and learned from each one of our 14 sessions, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to facilitate these sessions and for the time and energy of each one of the participants. We achieved a lot: 14 evenings together reveling in the Our Whole Lives curriculum; 4 community members trained in facilitating both the Adult and Young Adult versions of this curriculum; and 1 community-wide Sex Ed Shabbat, including prayer services themed on the four Our Whole Lives values and four break-out sessions on various sex ed topics. To wrap up our semester, we joined Keshet in a celebration of Boston Queer Pride. Special shout-outs go to our community leaders at the Moishe/ Kavod House for supporting and participating in this project, to the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ for their fabulous sex ed curricula and trainings, and to the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel (BYFI) grant program for a grant that provided the funds for our work.

An introduction to Sex Ed, Take Two:
Literally the day after our closing session for the class, I started writing a second grant to fund the next stage of our project. And I’m happy to announce that we got the grant! The BYFI Alumni Venture Fund has provided us with a grant to do local outreach around issues of human sexuality. As we continue to provide sex education and community-building programming at the Moishe/ Kavod House, we will also reach out to leaders at local synagogues, university Hillels, and other Jewish community organizations. We will engage them in conversation about the needs of their own communities and the interest in their in experiencing and supporting comprehensive sex education. We will develop materials to serve as the foundation for building these relationships, particularly in the form of workshops we can offer in these other communities. The materials will cover topics such as consent, relationships and communication, gender identity, sexual orientation, family, sexual violence, body image, sexual health, and advocacy. We will explore these topics both on their own terms and as Jews, in conversation with our own Jewish experiences and with Jewish texts.

How you can get involved in this next stage:
We need leaders, and we need doers! Whether you were a participant in the first sex ed class or not, I encourage you to find a way to get involved with our Outreach project. Since this rendition of Sex Ed will combine community education with organizing and outreach, we will need many people to bring a wide variety of skills to the table. Do you want to be involved? What might you be interested in doing? Please be in touch with me to let me know if you’re interested in:
• Joining us over dinner (ie, meetings) to deepen our vision of this work and start planning
• Connecting us with people you know in other local Jewish communities
• Contacting and meeting with leaders in other local Jewish communities
• Finding an analyzing Jewish sources, commentary, and other writings on sexuality
• Helping us develop various workshops that can meet the different needs of our partner communities, including college students, adults and parents
• Researching and producing fact sheets with up-to-date information about local and national sexuality education policies and other policies related to sexual health and justice
• Attending an Our Whole Lives facilitation training (one weekend)
• Bringing any of your favorite skills to the table! Think: cooking, making posters, event planning, writing articles, event turnout, you name it...

I’m really thrilled and excited about moving on to this next stage alongside three other trained facilitators, talented community organizers, and passionate sex education participants. I welcome and encourage any and all feedback, questions or other thoughts and feelings that you may have as you read this news.

Week Six: Strength and Weakness

Sunday: took a walk to enjoy the outdoors
Monday: attended a Pilates class
Tuesday: chose to write in my journal instead of a trip to the gym
Wednesday: purchased new exercise sneakers
Thursday: wore comfortable, casual clothes to work
Friday: cared for my foot injury
Saturday: received a lower back massage from a friend

I want to get stronger. I want to build strength in my core muscles because I believe it will lessen my back pain and because I believe it is important to be strong. I've read several feminist books that encourage women to build up their physical strength as an expression of personal power and ability. Valuing our capacity for strength is a feminist move.

Valuing our capacity for weakness is a feminist move as well. Although excited by my return to yoga and Pilates classes, I had quite a busy week last week in which my eagerness to attend extra classes dissipated in my concern over getting things done and the raw fact that I felt I needed to put off exercise until the weekend.

Then, I woke up Friday morning as my right foot pounded in pain. I could barely walk, let alone exercise, and I had to cope with my body's propensity for pain and inflammation as I figured out how to be body positive in this unexpected period of weakness.

Pause for a story about a person I dated briefly my sophomore year of college. This person said that he liked me for my strength: my independence, my confidence, my ability to take care of myself.

But I didn't feel so strong all the time. I especially didn't feel strong that spring as Take Back the Night approached, an event on my college campus which includes a speak out by survivors of sexual violence. I had been to the event the year before, and I anticipated a flood of so-called weak feelings including fear and vulnerability. I tried to picture what it would mean to let this guy who liked me for my strength see me in such weakness.

In looking at this tension between strength and weakness, I learned to see strength more as a skill set than as a state of being. The feelings of fear and vulnerability didn't disprove my confidence and ability to care for myself. In fact, my ability to express those negative emotions and participate actively in a caring community came from that very place of strength that my dating partner so admired.

To bring it back to the topic at hand: physical strength would be great, but taking on the challenge of building physical strength will be most holistically effective and healthy if I simultaneously prioritize that other kind of strength, strength that comes from a body positive attitude, strength that comes from confidence and self-awareness, strength that comes from a balanced perspective.

I'm not there yet. I still have my weakness, and I'm trying to face that weakness in talking about it and writing about it. Holding that weakness, carrying it, accepting it is the process of training my emotional muscles. I want to get stronger.

Teenagers Need Attention -- from You, Even

My sixth-grade students need more attention. And I don't just mean they need a better attention span or that they need to pay more attention in general, which are both true. I mean that my students need more adults in their lives who can listen to them, help them, and relate to them.

Here's the good news: you can help. You can be one of those adults. I'm looking for volunteers to tutor my students for maybe just one hour per week. Mostly they need help in English, but also in math. I started looking for volunteer tutors because their homework and classwork are really hard for them and many of my students might not pass without extra help. However, I believe that tutoring also holds value beyond the academic.

When we get a chance to sit down with teenagers and pre-teens one-on- one, we get to teach them valuable skills about building relationships. A simple conversation about how their day went or how they're feeling about class allows them to practice expressing themselves. By sharing examples of our own highs and lows, we can model tenacity and healthy coping.

I have seen my students work with tutors a couple times before, and it really makes their day. They're proud of their accomplishments, they're a little more calm and a little more comfortable in their own skin. And they're even more ready to get to work and persevere on their own.

Try it! And spread the word if you know others who might be interested in volunteering. E-mail me at Mimi (dot) Arbeit (at) Gmail (dot) com for more information.