Episode 5: Discovering the True Will | With Esti Wasserman, owner of "Wasserman Productions" and a mother after years of waiting

00:00 Speaker 1 Come along on a journey into the world of fertility challenges and the world of business. How do they unfold side by side? What realizations come along the way, and how do we grow from them? Moving insights and tips for life. Welcome to a conversation with Esti Wasserman, owner of Wasserman Productions, about business and the fertility journey. How can we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In this podcast, we’ll meet different women who will share their shlichus in a variety of fields and, through it, help each of us find and define our own shlichus in the world. Because living the lives we were created to live is the best thing there is. Shlichus as a way of life. Let’s begin. Today we’re with Esti Wasserman, a cousin who’s a friend, a friend who’s a cousin, and... For anyone who doesn’t know you, tell us who you are, what you do, and how you got here.

01:02 Speaker 2 Okay, so I’m Esti. I’m twenty-nine. I own a business, a fairly large production company in the chareidi community. I have a daughter who’s a year and ten months old.

01:14 Speaker 1 What does your company do?

01:16 Speaker 2 All kinds of film production. Anything that moves on a screen. From the simplest graphics to commercials for lots of companies, including some very, very big ones—more for businesses that have other businesses under them. I employ seven women, and it’s been a very long road to get there.

01:36 Speaker 1 Okay, so we’re going to hear about that. And part of what we want to hear is the whole story with Adina. You said her name is Adina? Or did I just—

01:45 Speaker 2 My daughter, yes.

01:46 Speaker 1 I added that. You went through a journey before you were able to bring her into the world, as they say.

01:53 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

01:55 Speaker 1 And you share that story; you talk about it. So tell us, first of all, when did you realize that something wasn’t quite right? You get married, and at some point, when it isn’t happening, everyone reaches that realization at a different stage. How did you even begin the whole...?

02:12 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you. Even before I tell you how I realized it, it’s important for me to say this before I tell the story: I don’t know how it is for other people; every woman experiences it differently. But for me, the process I went through—and only today can I really put my finger on this—was a process of trying to have children, but it was also a process of finding myself. I really found myself again, got to know myself all over again. It was a journey of... how can I put it? A journey of strengthening my inner self. So a lot of what I talk about is this particular aspect: sometimes it’s through these experiences that you discover yourself. And why am I saying this as an introduction? Because there was a period when I came to understand the difference between waiting for something to happen to me because it happens to everyone, and actually waiting for a child. As for when I realized something was a little strange: I got married at twenty-one, as usual. Everything was fine, nice. I also got married around the same time as two good friends, so it was very noticeable when they suddenly had children.

03:16 Speaker 1 It was easy to compare.

03:17 Speaker 2 Yes. I’m a little embarrassed to say that at first I was really, really afraid of having children. I thought it would... I’d started doing well professionally even before I got married, and suddenly I was afraid that having children would disrupt that. Or I’d see mothers with several children, and it looked so hard, and I really didn’t want that for myself. So every month that went by without my getting pregnant, I was even a little happy. Then about five or six months passed, and I wanted it so, so badly. I couldn’t understand how I’d gone from not wanting it at all to wanting it so much. Today I understand that it was partly a desire to know everything was okay, that there wasn’t a problem. That went on for almost a year. Then, when I flew with my husband for Pesach, something about being on the plane—I don’t know why—made me feel removed from everything around me. Suddenly I started crying and told him I was really worried. Until then, it hadn’t even come up much between us, because life was so busy with productions. At the time I was producing events, so things were incredibly dynamic. It wasn’t a routine where you get up in the morning and do the same thing all day, and I enjoyed it. He reassured me, and then he said, “You know, where we’re going in Venice”—one of his sisters lives there—“there’s a store with overstock from some really good brands. Let’s make a vessel for the blessing.” Like the story people tell about the Lubavitcher Rebbe: a woman came to him, and the Rebbe told her to buy a stroller. There were two women, and one of them bought a stroller. Anyway, we went and bought a stroller. It was a purple Stokke stroller, I remember. I also remember that we really didn’t have the money

04:58 Speaker 2 to buy it. We spent several thousand on it, bought it, and brought it back home. We hauled it around, carrying it as though we had a baby inside. And then another six months passed. It was terribly disappointing; it felt as though the segulah hadn’t worked. Then came the time to process that we were one of those couples who—

05:22 Speaker 3 Were in that story.

05:23 Speaker 2 Yes, who were facing a fertility challenge. That was it. So a year and a half in, that was the moment it hit me: this wasn’t some story, this was real. This was our life right now, and we had to see what came next and what to do with it.

05:40 Speaker 3 Wow. That moment when it hits you—it sounds so simple, “it hit me.” But it changes your whole life.

05:48 Speaker 2 Yes.

05:49 Speaker 3 It’s overwhelming. What strengthens you in the hard moments? Because since then you’ve been through so many ups and downs, hopes and disappointments.

05:59 Speaker 2 What strengthened me then, or what strengthens me today?

06:01 Speaker 3 In general. The hard moments back then, the hard moments today.

06:04 Speaker 2 What strengthens me today is remembering that there were moments when I felt that... everything was black, black, black, black, and you have no... You feel so much throughout this whole process, too. It’s a very wide range of emotions. We can get into that if you want, but it’s very, very... But today I know that in the end, something good comes out of everything. Even if you’re suffering terribly in that moment, something good comes out of that very difficulty. So even as I tell you this, it strengthens me when I think about something I’m facing now that I find difficult. I tell myself that Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t do anything for no reason. He sees a complete picture that we can’t see. I used to think about that all the time. I remember something my father once told me, using a drone as an example. I work in production, so I send drones up a lot. At first, all you can see on the screen is the road. As the drone rises, you gradually see the road from above, then you see yourself, then the houses and cars, until everything gets smaller and smaller and smaller. In a moment, you can see an entire city. That’s how I see difficulties, too. In the moment, the difficulty seems like everything. So now I always tell myself: have a little patience. It’s hard; you can cry, you can break down. But alongside that, hold on to the patience and the understanding that afterward, you’ll see a bigger picture.

07:23 Speaker 3 And then you see what came of it, and suddenly you can look back on it that way.

07:28 Speaker 2 Yes, and also understanding that something comes out of it. Look, you can’t always expect to see what will come out of every hardship. Here too, I think I went through a very, very big process within myself, and that’s mainly what I’m talking about. I’m not necessarily talking about the miracle that happened in the end, or what will happen from now on. I’m talking more about the profound process of refining your inner self that you can go through when you experience something like this. I can also tell you that during the year and a half when I was coming to terms with being a woman facing fertility difficulties—waiting to see what would happen—even then, I don’t think I understood what it meant to be a mother or to bring a child into the world. I wanted with all my heart to do something whose meaning I understand today. I kept seeing how my understanding of what I wanted developed from one half-year to the next, from one year to the next. And as it developed, the pain grew much greater too. Because you had to work at it and invest in it, so little by little you came to understand what you were doing it for. Yes. There was a point when I understood that it wasn’t even a physical desire. It was a desire to know that when you leave this world, you’ve done something here. I had to convince myself very, very strongly that there were other things I could leave in the world besides children. That’s a very, very difficult thing for a person to accept. I got to the point where I wanted to go to a lawyer and sign some kind of document so that when I left this world, they could take something from me and I could leave a child behind. Today, as a mother, I know—who would want to leave a child without parents? But you want it so badly that you’re no longer thinking about anything else. You’re in the middle of a battle, really in the middle of a battle. Wow. Do you want to tell us briefly

09:06 Speaker 2 how, after a few years, it finally happened, and... Ah, yes. I had three hard years and then three harder years that were also better, which is very interesting. The first three years were full of frustration. And doctors kept saying things to me about—when I first came for treatment, and this is something important for me to talk about because I don’t think it gets enough attention, I had never been thin, but when I first went to the doctors, I wasn’t all that overweight either. Every doctor who saw me—I went to very prominent doctors who wanted very high success rates—every doctor who saw me was very... I can’t say they put me down, but they spoke about my weight in a very unpleasant way. Every time I tried and failed, I felt so, so, so much guilt. So much. In the three years that followed, I decided I wasn’t going to deal with it alone. I decided that if people could talk about their struggles, if someone—again, not everyone can. It’s something you learn over time: your struggle is also part of who you are. It doesn’t diminish you that something happened to you in life. So just as I talked about any difficulty at work, I talked about this. When people met me, I spoke freely. Suddenly I was writing Facebook posts that weren’t appeals for pity, but posts about art or faith, and I simply drew strength from that. So in this process, when you discovered strengths within yourself and gained this kind of clarity about yourself, give me one example of something that... Okay, I’ll tell you. It had been about four and a half years without children, and I’d become a little discouraged with all the doctors who kept sending

10:46 Speaker 2 me from one to another. I went to a doctor who told me I needed a test that was very, very expensive in Israel. I have an aunt—our aunt—who is a Chabad shlucha in Russia, and she suggested I do the test there, where it was very cheap. When I got to her, I told her about everything I’d been through with the whole issue of my weight, and she introduced me to a doctor there. I know it sounds completely bizarre—Israel is practically the capital of fertility treatments—but at that moment I felt I needed to take care of my emotional well-being. When I went to this doctor, she welcomed me so warmly. She also spoke to me about my weight as another issue, one of the issues, not as something that was my fault. I even lost seventeen kilos there within a few months, without going on some extreme diet. I felt I’d entered a good process, and I flew there many, many times. Everything I earned from my productions went toward those flights and the many tests I had done there privately, which I couldn’t do here. I understood that, for now, I could go through a process of extensive testing there, and maybe even a minor treatment. If it didn’t work, I’d be losing weight in the meantime, and then I’d come back to Israel. And that’s what happened. With the last treatment I had there, it really looked as though it was going to succeed and everything, so the disappointment was very, very hard. Just before I finished that last treatment there, they told me to take some pills. I took them, and one day I had very, very bad stomach pains. It had been about six months since my husband and I had spent a Shabbos at home together, just the two of us, and I said, “This Shabbos, we’re staying here.” Sorry.

12:26 Speaker 2 The pains started after I began getting ready for Shabbos, and I kept ignoring them. In a way, I had also learned something that isn’t right: to ignore what you’re feeling, because you have no choice but to keep going. I ignored the pain, and it got stronger and stronger. Then it stopped and came back. We had our Shabbos meal, everything was fine, and we went to sleep. I woke up at around three in the morning with very, very, very, very severe pain. Anyone who has given birth knows how you forget the pain of labor—it was pain like that, so intense that I can’t even recall how much it hurt. I just remember knowing, when I listened to my intuition, that something dangerous was happening to me. The pain would stop every so often, and then you say to yourself, “Wait, it’s stopping, so maybe...” But something in my heart told me I couldn’t stay home. We called an ambulance at three in the morning on Shabbos. I remember them carrying me out on a stretcher. Even though I was suffering so much and so worried, I said, “Good thing it’s three in the morning and people can’t see.” They put me in the ambulance. Suddenly a neighbor who didn’t know us came running over. He was new to the building, and he said, “What happened? Do you need help?” My husband was very, very anxious. He told him, “Everything’s okay.” Then the neighbor said, “Where are your children? I’ll take care of your children.” I wasn’t even thinking about that. Maybe for a moment I even felt sorry for him for saying it, but my husband was so shaken. He told him, “We don’t have children. We don’t have children.” He almost shouted at him that we didn’t have children. I remember it like a scene in a movie: the doors closing, and those words echoing in my mind. That same day, the days after that were very

13:50 Speaker 2 Significant. We don’t have children. We got there, and they told me everything looked fine. At some point I said to myself, “What a hysterical person I am. As if it weren’t enough that I keep going to the emergency room for nothing, now I’ve come to the hospital on Shabbos too.” Anyway, Shabbos went on, and toward the end of Shabbos I suddenly started having pain so bad I couldn’t straighten my body. It’s impossible to describe. I was screaming—not because I couldn’t bear it, but because the pain was so frightening. They kept examining me and examining me, and they couldn’t find what was wrong. Then they said they were calling in their top specialist, who was at home for Shabbos. He came in about two hours before Shabbos ended to see what was going on. I’m trying to make this brief. Anyway, the doctor came and started explaining things, and I said, “Wait, why surgery if you don’t know what’s wrong?” He said, “We need to open you up and see.” I asked, “Could something irreversible happen?” He told me, “If we do something irreversible during the surgery, it means something irreversible has already happened.” I understood that there was probably something wrong with my uterus. For a woman who hasn’t been able to have children, the word “uterus” is very, very painful. It’s such a sad place: you can’t bring life into the world, and you think, “I might go into this surgery without knowing what things will be like afterward.” The realization that they might remove my uterus, that the hopes I still had—because, with Hashem’s help, everything still seemed possible—might be gone. Before that surgery, I hadn’t thought I might never have children. I thought it was hard, but eventually it would happen. I remember looking at my husband at that moment and saying—

15:25 Speaker 2 I thought, “Wait, could I lose him too?” I love him so much and care about him so much. I couldn’t let him go without children because of me... So if we’re talking about emotional moments, those are moments that, looking back, I can say—baruch Hashem, I haven’t had another moment since when I felt as though I was floating above the pain. It was something so deep. Those are moments you have to close up and keep, because you know they were moments of tremendous inner strength. I remember looking at my husband and telling him, “If I come out of this surgery unable to have children, I probably won’t be able to say this to you then. But I can tell you now: just leave afterward. Don’t stay with me. Don’t.” And it was very, very... No, it’s hard to explain. I remember them wheeling my bed away, and I can still feel what it was like, being moved along and realizing I was alone now. This was my body. Nobody around me would suffer the pain I thought I was about to go through, because I understood that something bad was happening. Nobody could bear that pain with me. Maybe I wouldn’t have children, Hashem forbid, because of this. Everyone could support me and help me, but it was mine. And I clearly remember the moment I fell asleep. I said, “It’s just me and Hashem. Hashem, be with me.” And I remember that just before I went under, I said, “G-d, if this really is real, if this isn’t just some nightmare I’ve got caught up in, take me. Just take me.”

16:58 Speaker 4 Oh my goodness.

16:58 Speaker 2 “Take me with You.” It came from a feeling of inner acceptance. Only later, one day when I was reading, did I suddenly understand the meaning of... How does it go? “And if I have no children, I am dead.” I don’t remember the exact words.

17:15 Speaker 4 Yes.

17:15 Speaker 2 Something like that, yes. And I thought, wow, it takes on meaning, because that really was how I felt. I felt that I had no purpose in the world. G-d forbid that a woman should hear this and think it’s true, because it isn’t. But that was how I felt: that I had no purpose in the world, nothing left to do with my life, and no desire to live it. And I’m a very optimistic person, very happy, very full of life. None of it seemed worth anything if I couldn’t bring children into the world. That’s how I fell asleep. When I woke up from surgery, they told me they had probably saved my life. Nothing had happened to my uterus. I’d had very severe internal bleeding because of something that had gone wrong and the pills I’d taken. If they hadn’t taken me into surgery, if I hadn’t gone to the hospital and all that, a day or two might have passed and I could simply have bled to death. So...

18:05 Speaker 4 Oh.

18:05 Speaker 2 I remember holding on to those moments, and they helped me understand. At that moment I understood that my desire for children was the deepest desire I had. It wasn’t because I wanted to dress them nicely. It wasn’t because I wanted to be like everyone else, or because I felt left out in social situations. It wasn’t just because I wanted a child to hug and kiss. It was a deep, inner desire to fulfill my role in the world. And of course, along with that came the realization that I truly, truly, truly wanted to have children now. Before that, I think there were times when it was very, very hard for me to cooperate with everything they told me to do, because maybe I didn’t want it strongly enough from within. What I wanted more was for everything to be okay.

18:43 Speaker 4 So that incredibly difficult moment was actually what brought you to...

18:47 Speaker 2 Yes.

18:47 Speaker 4 An understanding that...

18:48 Speaker 2 It was distressing afterward too, realizing that I might have died. It’s frightening to think that something can be happening inside your body, Hashem forbid, and you...

18:56 Speaker 4 Yes.

18:56 Speaker 2 You have to keep a close eye on things. But yes, afterward it gave me a lot of strength. Because I went through more after that. Two months later, they discovered I had a septum inside my uterus. They found something else too, and I had to have another operation to remove it, which carried a very, very great risk. I think I drew all my strength from that earlier experience, and went into the next surgery knowing that I was putting my body through this so that having children could become possible. More things happened after that, until I conceived naturally. I hadn’t had children for five and a half years. Then, six months after the surgery I’ve just been talking about, I suddenly conceived naturally. I remember waking up the morning after I found out and feeling as though the world was glowing. I’d walk down the street and everything was so... It was as though the trees had a scent, and I was a pregnant woman. I can’t even explain it. I remember it so clearly: everything else seemed tiny, and all the plans, and everything was just glowing and bright. Suddenly even the little details I’d always said didn’t matter—the things I’d wanted at first, what clothes and all of that—were in my head. I had a particular baby in mind, a little boy, and I said, “I know. I’ll call him Shmuel.” It felt exactly, exactly, exactly right. And right then my sister had given birth to her fifth child, bli ayin hara. Before I knew I was pregnant, I’d invited her to come stay with me after the birth, and I found out while she was there. So a baby came into our home, our quiet home. Suddenly there was a newborn there, and it made me want to go buy things for him, hold him and care for him. I even told my sister, though it was such an early stage and there was so much happiness around

20:29 Speaker 2 That. Then, on Erev Tisha B’Av, I suddenly saw that something was wrong, and I lost the pregnancy. There were about two days when we waited, and I remember feeling, in that moment, like that was it—like life wasn’t worth anything to me. But being in that situation, I think I understood then that this wasn’t about my body. It was about Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He had given it to me for free, so to speak, without treatment. He let me get pregnant, and He took it away in an instant. I saw it happen, and it paralyzed me. It even paralyzed the pain. At first I screamed and cried, and I really didn’t care who saw or heard. After that, it was like pulling down the shutters, and that was it. Not thinking, not feeling. Then the biggest turning point, I think, was that I went back again and remembered what had given me strength all along. I think that was also the deepest breaking point: the imagining stopped. I no longer imagined a baby, because there had been a baby. In my imagination he was whole; he had a face, he had everything. And I understood, or felt, that Hakadosh Boruch Hu simply didn’t want it. That was how it felt, and I felt like I wasn’t going to keep trying for it, either. Then it was Erev Yom Kippur, about three months later. I walked past a shop that also sold baby clothes, and I looked and said, “Wow, this isn’t happening for me anymore.” I didn’t even have faith that it would happen, because I felt that mine had already died. Even though it was at a very early stage, the imagining had taken up so much space.

22:04 Speaker 5 It was as if that whole dream had been buried along with the miscarriage.

22:08 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. There was also this understanding, as if Hakadosh Boruch Hu simply didn’t want it, so there was no point in trying. I remember thinking that maybe I really needed to do other things, to do something meaningful, and leave it at that. But something pulled me inward, and I told myself, “No, that’s not me. I don’t break. I’m made of something else. And if I don’t have anything to imagine, I’ll bring it back.” So for the first time, after all those years of imagining this Shmuel I had in my head because of Chana and Shmuel, I said, “I’ll get a hat. It could be white, but it’ll be a girl’s hat because it’s white, and I’ll imagine something new. I’ll begin imagining a daughter.” I took the hat, and they asked if I wanted it gift-wrapped. I said yes, and they wrapped it for me. I still have it today. I wrote on it, “Erev Yom Kippur.” I believed that, with Hashem’s help, by the next Yom Kippur I would bring something new into my life. I didn’t want to write “a daughter,” because I felt like I would be limiting Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s options. But in my mind, I pictured a daughter. I photographed my hand holding the hat and wrote a Facebook post about what had happened over the previous few months. With those posts, I never waited for responses. Pressing “share” gave me an enormous sense of release. It was like I was sharing my experience with the whole world. It felt like a kind of experience. It’s strange, because it was a painful experience, but it was still an experience—a strange one.

23:32 Speaker 5 Right, an experience can also be... And when everyone goes through it with you, it’s as though they share a little of it, or...

23:38 Speaker 2 Yes. I remember how much it hurt to write the words, but I wrote that I had felt an enormous sense of mourning. And then I saw the verse—it somehow appeared when I was scrolling through something on Facebook: “Hashem gave, and Hashem took; may the name of Hashem be blessed.” I felt like it was speaking to me. Hashem gave to me, Hashem took from me. And on the day I bought the hat, even before that, I felt that I forgave Hashem. I forgave Him for what He had done to me. I had been angry with Him for what He had done, and I forgave Him because I understood that He is above me, and that there must be something beyond what I can see. He had caused me pain, and I forgave Him for that pain. I know it sounds strange, but I think He understood those words. And I actually tore my shirt. I felt that no psychological treatment at the time, and no other person, could understand me the way I understood myself. Only I could understand the intensity of the pain. I photographed it and posted it. I made the picture gray. I remember writing, “With Hashem’s help, I do believe that next year...” I didn’t believe it, but I wanted to give it reality.

24:34 Speaker 6 Make it real.

24:35 Speaker 2 I wrote that next year we would be walking with a baby girl on Erev Yom Kippur, and she would be wearing that hat. I wrote “a baby boy or girl,” and I included our names so people would daven for us. People commented that their Yom Kippur had been so different after reading it. People actually came up to me—young men, men, women. It had an incredible impact.

24:53 Speaker 6 It’s important to mention that you write beautifully, for anyone who isn’t familiar with your writing.

24:58 Speaker 2 Yes. I do feel that I’m very good at getting things out in writing. After that, I had another treatment, and it didn’t work. And I said, “Hakadosh Boruch Hu, I’ve shared this with everyone. Now it’s Yours. You have until next year. If You want to sanctify Your name and show that I did the right thing, then take care of it.” By the next treatment, I had no strength left. With fertility treatments, about a day and a half after you find out you’re not pregnant, you already have to begin a new cycle. I went into that one with no strength at all. That month, a lot of people could see how hard things were for me—people close to me—and everyone tried to help. One person took me here, another took me there. I went along with everyone like a robot, so I don’t even know why it happened. Maybe it was in the merit of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, or of that person people visit on Mondays, Thursdays, and Mondays, or any number of other things. We also had the tefillin checked that month. But I actually flew to Russia for the wedding of someone who had helped me a great deal the year before.

25:55 Speaker 6 We met there.

25:56 Speaker 2 Right. And that’s where I found out I was pregnant. And I had a daughter.

26:03 Speaker 6 Before Yom Kippur.

26:04 Speaker 2 Yes. She was born in Menachem Av, and on Yom Kippur I put the hat on her and photographed her. I placed my hand on her with the exact same rings as in the first picture, and I decided that I would sanctify Hashem’s name, just as I had promised Him.

26:17 Speaker 6 Publicizing the miracle.

26:17 Speaker 2 Yes. I put the two pictures side by side in a beautiful design, with the line I’d written at the end about “next year.” I get chills when I say it. This morning I woke her up, and she was running wild. I dressed her and sent her to the caregiver. And I daven to Hashem to give me the strength to enter this journey—I’ve already entered it, but to go into it even more wholeheartedly—to make sure she has brothers and sisters, and to take care of myself. Because I’m allowed to want it for the joy of it now, too. I felt that I’d already done the thing that had such deep meaning for me. When she was born, I remember leaning my head back. I didn’t even cry. I don’t know if I’d processed what was happening. I just leaned my head back, closed my eyes for a moment and thought, “Okay, I did it.” It was like I’d finished a six-and-a-half-year war.

27:10 Speaker 6 Wow.

27:11 Speaker 2 Yes. Afterward, in a way, I also felt as though my crown had come off. I’d had this sort of halo, as one of the women who are on another level. I truly believe that when someone is given this challenge, it isn’t just another challenge. It’s an immense challenge. Today I think about our foremothers, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, and others who dealt with something like this. They’re righteous people. I truly admire every woman dealing with it. It isn’t just something you cope with; you have to work through it, too.

27:43 Speaker 6 It isn’t just one more thing. It takes over your whole...

27:45 Speaker 2 And today I can also appreciate myself for how extraordinarily I progressed in my business and my work throughout those years. I didn’t see it that way then. I felt bad about myself; I didn’t see myself as someone doing something amazing. Today, when I look at myself from the outside, I think, “I made use of every single moment. Every single moment.” Once my daughter was born, my business actually grew. She brings blessing with her too, probably simply by being here, because children are a blessing. And I also learned, as a mother, to set boundaries at work and all kinds of things...

28:19 Speaker 6 Right, it’s a whole new world of...

28:21 Speaker 2 Yes.

28:21 Speaker 6 Balance. Do you now wake up every morning and start the day like any mother with her first child, or do you remember every morning?

28:34 Speaker 2 I don’t know if I remember it every morning, but I think I do when things get a little hard. Let’s say my daughter is very, very mischievous. It’s cute and everything, but sometimes it’s exhausting.

28:43 Speaker 6 Sounds familiar.

28:43 Speaker 2 There are moments when it feels like it crosses a line. I think that if I hadn’t been through what I went through, I’d get really, really upset. But right away, I get these flashes of other, very difficult moments. I really remember them. That was enormous pain. So what’s a bit of frustration now, or discomfort, or not being able to do something I want to do, compared with the pain of one huge emptiness? So yes, I think it really helps me not to— I’m someone who knows how to complain, and I never find myself complaining about my daughter. And any mother can complain.

29:16 Speaker 6 It’s always there, in a way.

29:17 Speaker 2 Yes, it’s there. It’s absolutely there.

29:19 Speaker 6 Wow.

29:20 Speaker 2 I don’t know if I feel “thank you, thank you, thank you” every moment of my life, but I certainly don’t feel the opposite.

29:27 Speaker 6 Right. So do you think you built the business precisely because it gave you something to occupy yourself with? Because you went through something incredibly difficult while building an amazing business.

29:37 Speaker 2 I think I built the business despite it. Maybe I had more time, but today I understand that, especially in my business, it isn’t a matter of time. It’s a matter of inspiration. I can tell you, two days ago I was at a hotel. I saw lots of people, all sorts of things going on, and it inspired me. I watched people doing business, and I looked on and said, “Great, I have an idea. I’ll do something else with this.” If anything, it’s the opposite. I think it’s easier to run a business when you’re in a better place. It’s not like writing a beautiful piece of text. A business isn’t just about my talent; you need to feel settled in life to think ahead. When you’re living with uncertainty, it makes it very, very hard.

30:12 Speaker 6 So how did you do it?

30:13 Speaker 2 I think the business came from a different difficulty in my life. I was a gi— a girl who didn’t learn anything. I had, and still have, very severe attention difficulties. Even now, I’m still moving my legs while I talk. Um, how did I do it? My desire to succeed was very, very strong, regardless of everything I went through. It’s important to understand that I have a life beyond that hardship. Even though it takes over your whole life, you’re still a person with things you carry from the past, and with past successes. You’re still someone’s wife. You’re still a person with dreams. Yes. As a teenager, I really didn’t do well in high school, and at first I desperately wanted to prove to myself and to the people around me that I could do it. I had a huge dream of producing events. As I moved forward with that dream and fulfilled it, I understood that a dream also needs refining. And it succeeded without my doing a whole lot. Things just kept coming to me, again and again. Only today am I shaping it into a business that’s becoming very profitable, or that employs people to do work I could do myself, making it a way of life that I can earn a living from. But it came from this fierce drive to succeed. I don’t think it was connected to that hardship. I could say, “Wow, that’s what did it,” but it wasn’t.

31:31 Speaker 6 Separate things, happening at the same time.

31:32 Speaker 2 Yes.

31:34 Speaker 6 Wow, Esti. And through the business, you also have practical tools, so to speak, and you use them to raise awareness.

31:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

31:42 Speaker 6 That turns out to be very, very important, because people face this struggle alone. People—especially women. And you take all the media you put out through your office, and some of it is devoted to this. What do you do? Tell us.

31:57 Speaker 2 The thing is... before I tell you what I do, I had so many dreams about raising awareness of different aspects of this. Back then I didn’t have enough tools. Today, now that my business has grown and I’m on the other side of that experience, I can put those things out there. Back then, all I could do was write posts. So what do I do? First of all, baruch Hashem, I have an Instagram page that I see a lot of people are interested in, and the things I post get a lot of responses. So I constantly feel a need not to forget what happened, and not to forget the people who are still there. And to raise awareness—not just general awareness that fertility treatments exist, but awareness of the courage of the people going through them. To understand that these are people whose souls have been refined, and how we should treat them, how we should make room for what they’re going through. And simply to keep it part of the conversation, because with fertility treatments there’s a sense that it’s something you keep quiet about and just carry on with life. The people going through it deserve better than that.

32:56 Speaker 7 Do you think the subject is discussed less in the religious and Charedi community?

32:59 Speaker 2 Of course. Can I say everything? Of course, because ultimately it touches on so many very, very intimate things. And that’s true even apart from the Charedi community. A couple has to open up the most personal parts of their lives to a doctor and to other people. It touches the most sensitive, most exposed places—things that can be uncomfortable even between spouses. So yes. But I think we’re adults, and the people we speak to can understand that revealing one thing doesn’t mean you want to reveal another. The pain and the technical details are two separate things. We don’t have to talk about what happens medically, at the doctor’s office or anywhere else. And there isn’t enough conversation about it. There just isn’t. Because the disconnect is also really, really extreme. Having children is such a central part of life in the Charedi and religious community; it carries so much meaning. So where does that leave you, within something so meaningful, if you can’t be part of that whole experience?

34:00 Speaker 7 Yes. How can each of us be more understanding? How can someone contribute? How can we help?

34:09 Speaker 2 Look, it varies so much, because I—

34:10 Speaker 7 Because sometimes you find yourself at a loss for words. You want to help and you have no idea how.

34:16 Speaker 2 I’ve asked myself that question many times, because what I want isn’t necessarily what another woman wants. And even what I wanted yesterday, when I was going through treatments—let’s say, when I was undergoing fertility treatments—what I wanted at nine o’clock wasn’t what I wanted at eleven. It’s also very hormonal. You know what a pregnant woman is like? So imagine that, times three. And I think the very first thing is this: if we’re talking about what’s going on emotionally, when you’re with someone in that situation, understand that you genuinely care about her and that you’re thinking about her first, not about yourself. I’ll give you an example. Once, Tzipi Koltunyuk, the singer, approached me and said something very beautiful. She said, “I have a suggestion for you, and I asked myself why I should bring it up. Maybe I’ll hurt you. But the suggestion itself is good, so it isn’t hurtful. Then I realized I was afraid of your reaction, and if I’m afraid of your reaction, I’m thinking about myself. So if I believe that what I’m saying really won’t hurt you or intrude too much on your privacy, and that it might help, then I’ll say it.” Honestly, I don’t even remember the advice she came with. I just remember that I didn’t need it. But knowing how much she cared, and how much thought she had put into it, made me feel very good. And it may be that most of the time, when you approach people who don’t have children—who feel inferior to you, or feel that you pity them—their response won’t be great. But if it comes from a very genuine place, most of the time it will have a good effect, even if not at that moment.

35:50 Speaker 2 Because ultimately, someone going through pain doesn’t want to be pitied, but does want people to care. So if I have advice to give, it’s this: don’t pity them. Be understanding and recognize what they’re going through. Don’t think that my whole life is miserable now because I don’t have children. Think of me as having a whole life full of wonderful things. Maybe I have a good husband, parents, a job. Everyone has something in their life that’s going well, and within that life I have something that’s very, very hard. Respect my pain. I don’t know exactly how to put it, and I hope I’m not going on about it, but respect that pain. Now, practically speaking, what do you do in the moment? First, tell yourself all these things, and then approach the person from a genuine place. And first of all, with zero curiosity. Zero curiosity. If you want to learn about treatments, you can look it up on Google. Zero curiosity. Don’t even want to know what the person is going through unless she tells you herself.

36:44 Speaker 8 When someone asks out of curiosity, you can feel it. You can’t hide it.

36:47 Speaker 2 Right. Sometimes you don’t, you don’t have control over it, because once someone gives you an opening, suddenly you’re already in it. Zero curiosity. And don’t approach it as, “What an honor that this person came and poured their heart out to me.” Don’t try to gain something from their hardship. Ask if there’s something practical you can help with, because there are so many practical things involved in these treatments. So many. Is there something practical I can help with? Is there some way I can feel that I’m part of your journey? Is there something I can do to pamper you, or your husband, as you go through this?

37:26 Speaker 8 Did people reach out like that?

37:28 Speaker 2 Not many. Not many. There were lots of people who—

37:31 Speaker 8 I think it’s terribly hard to guess, for someone who, baruch Hashem, isn’t dealing with this.

37:35 Speaker 2 Because even the person going through it doesn’t know.

37:37 Speaker 8 Exactly. It’s such a fine line.

37:39 Speaker 2 I remember coming back from Russia once. I was broken, physically and emotionally, and a neighbor of mine was arranging a meal through Shifra and Puah for a woman who had given birth. I thought, my body is so broken—don’t I need that meal? Don’t I need a hug during this difficult time? But there was no understanding of that. So where I live, I went to Shifra and Puah and brought in a friend who wanted to take charge of it, and they started a program under Shifra and Puah. They understood that Shifra and Puah helps women who have given birth, and ultimately its goal is also to encourage having children. And to encourage having children, you also have to encourage the people who are struggling. So everything the organization gives a woman for a month after giving birth, it now gives to any woman undergoing fertility treatments. By the way, even a woman who already has five children.

38:26 Speaker 8 Wow, wow. Oh my goodness, that’s moving.

38:28 Speaker 2 It’s been two years since I went to speak at that Shifra and Puah program—once before I gave birth and once afterward—so they would understand that a woman going through fertility treatments needs this. They provide cleaning help, and Shabbos meals you can pick up from somewhere. And it doesn’t come from a place of pity. A woman who has given birth is happy, and she accepts it with open arms. A woman going through fertility treatments is a hero too, and she deserves it. I think that’s the point: knowing how to offer these things. And there was one person who reached out to me and said, “Can I be part of this?” You. I don’t remember.

39:06 Speaker 8 I mean, we talked about it a lot and everything, but...

39:08 Speaker 2 So I do want to tell the story, even if it embarrasses you.

39:11 Speaker 8 Now that you’re telling it, it’s coming back to me.

39:14 Speaker 2 It was the hardest, hardest period, somewhere between the surgeries, and I was still going back and forth to Russia. I poured my heart out to you—I remember—about everything I was going through with the treatments. And one of the things I told you was that it was costing me so, so, so much money. Then you sent me a message. If I’d received it from someone else, or if someone had phrased it differently, it could have felt very, very uncomfortable. But you did it exactly the way I just described. You said, “I want to be part of...” That’s why I know this is something people should do, because it did so much good. “I want to be part of your journey. I don’t have any other way. I live far away, and I want to help you.” And I knew that money wasn’t something you just had to spare. You worked very hard for it. You sent me about 1,500 shekels and said, “I want to be part of this. This is my way”—something like that—“of showing you how much I’m part of this.” For a second it felt strange to me, and Yisroel, my husband, didn’t agree to accept it either, but...

40:14 Speaker 8 Now I remember.

40:15 Speaker 2 But I accepted it. I accepted it, and it helped me at the time too. A few years later, we paid you back. But it made me feel that you were with me. Yes, it made me feel that you were with me.

40:25 Speaker 8 That’s moving. Moving and embarrassing, I have to say. Ah, Esty, tell me—let’s get back to work.

40:35 Speaker 2 Yes.

40:36 Speaker 8 Everyone who knows you knows how you get things done, and—wow, it’s hard to move away from this subject, but it all goes together in your life.

40:45 Speaker 2 That’s exactly what I was about to say. It just all goes together.

40:47 Speaker 8 One thing leads to another.

40:48 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

40:49 Speaker 8 Two tips: How do we manage to succeed? How can we succeed? I don’t know if this particular challenge can be compared to anything, but people face all sorts of smaller challenges of different kinds throughout life, and they also want to succeed at something they’ve started in their careers. How do you separate the two? How do you succeed at work when there’s a weight on your heart?

41:13 Speaker 2 When something is missing in your life, think of it as a whole cake that you can divide into pieces. That puts things in perspective. You can say, okay, even if half my cake—and I mean a round cake cut into slices—even if half my cake is black, let’s make sure the other half is as good as it can be, so I can feel good there. So I think that when there’s something you want very, very much and can’t have, it’s important to identify the other things you want to achieve. Once you define your professional dream for yourself, you can start taking small steps toward it. I think today I have more peace of mind in pursuing things, and more confidence and understanding of what’s happening in my life. But I think that even back then, I knew what my goal was, where I wanted to get professionally, and it simply...

42:09 Speaker 8 You didn’t let it interfere with...

42:12 Speaker 2 Yes. I felt that I didn’t want to lose that too.

42:15 Speaker 8 Wow.

42:17 Speaker 2 And let me tell you something else. Most people nowadays want to earn money. You want to earn money because you need to live. You want to earn money because you want to move forward. So you say, if I have a dream and a talent, let’s put them to work there, because that’s where I’d rather be. Very simple.

42:33 Speaker 8 You have to do what you’re good at. It’s a crime not to.

42:36 Speaker 2 Right.

42:37 Speaker 8 Actually, from a young age you were already...

42:39 Speaker 2 That’s what I was about to say...

42:40 Speaker 8 Since you were tiny.

42:41 Speaker 2 I’ve never really worked at anything else. Once, for six months, I was a teacher and taught thinking games at a school when I was nineteen. I also worked two days in an after-school program, and about fifteen minutes at some phone job. From the time I was nineteen and a half, I think, or twenty, I’ve worked only at the job I still do today. It’s been nine years.

43:01 Speaker 8 Oh, wow, that’s amazing!

43:03 Speaker 2 I can see today how good it makes me feel...

43:05 Speaker 8 Nine years suddenly sounds like such a long time.

43:06 Speaker 2 Right. I’ve been doing what I do for nine years, and over the years it’s become more and more focused.

43:12 Speaker 8 So today you’re in a place with more peace of mind, probably also because the business is already established and you... and you can work...

43:17 Speaker 2 Not just that. Because even things that are established—as you saw, you had an entire life that was established.

43:22 Speaker 8 Yes.

43:23 Speaker 2 Today nothing can be guaranteed, but you know who you are. When you reach a certain point, you keep refining your sense of yourself. You know who you are and how you respond to storms—whether they’re financial storms, difficulties in your marriage, or a storm of hardship like the one I went through. Whatever the storm, you know who you are, what you believe in, and what guides you. I think that’s the secret to life. Yes, today I know that back then, at first, I wanted to work so I could be somebody. After that, I wanted to work so I could fulfill my dream. Today I want to work so I can have a peaceful, calm family life, support my family with dignity, and reach our financial goals. There’s no need to be embarrassed about talking about money and things like that. Yes, that’s what drives me today.

44:09 Speaker 8 Wow.

44:09 Speaker 2 I really feel that I’ve fulfilled myself in terms of my talent.

44:14 Speaker 8 Esty, you’re fascinating—even though I know you, it’s still...

44:18 Speaker 2 Yes, well, invite me for Shabbos and then we’ll talk—we’ll keep talking.

44:22 Speaker 8 Esty, a few words to close. Something people can take away with them.

44:28 Speaker 2 Um, there are two parts to this. So first I’ll say something about fertility, since that came up first. If someone in your family is going through fertility treatments, or if you’re a friend, take those two pieces of advice I mentioned about not pitying her. Know that people can simply feel it. They feel when you care, when they’re loved, when they’re embraced. And if you’re going through it yourself, know that there is light at the end. I don’t know whether that light will be a child being born, or a certain understanding that suddenly dawns on you one day. There is light, and you just have to look for it in every moment, and know that this is a challenge that isn’t your fault. It’s something you’ve been given. It hurts—it's hard to say you’ve been given it as a gift, but, um, yes. And the most interesting thing is that being a woman who has gone through a challenge like this probably never leaves you. Even after I gave birth, I found it hard to see posts about it and feel—like I wasn’t part of a certain Facebook group, because—

45:28 Speaker 8 It felt uncomfortable, you mean?

45:29 Speaker 2 No, not uncomfortable. It’s more like, that’s me. I’m one of those people, and I don’t choose to be someone else.

45:35 Speaker 8 It’s part of who you are, right?

45:36 Speaker 2 Yes. I thought I’d have more children right afterward, one after another. Um, no. I’m okay with being part of this group of women. It’s an amazing group—people learning to cope with the biggest challenge in their lives. And that’s it. Let’s call it what it is. And I also want to tell anyone who dreams of achieving something in life: imagine your dream coming true. Just picture it in your mind, and then make a list of how you’re going to make it happen.

46:09 Speaker 8 I see you doing that all the time, making lists nonstop, right?

46:12 Speaker 2 Yes.

46:13 Speaker 8 Like, the smaller dreams within the dream, and the even smaller ones. Basically, everything—

46:17 Speaker 2 Yes.

46:17 Speaker 8 Break it down, break it down.

46:18 Speaker 2 I actually make a yearly list, a six-month list, a monthly list, a weekly list, and a daily list of what I need to do to eventually reach that dream.

46:26 Speaker 8 Wow, Esti, you’re an inspiration.

46:29 Speaker 2 Thank you. I always dreamed of being a grandmother.

46:32 Speaker 8 And you’ve given us a lot of strength. So, um, thank you very much.

46:35 Speaker 2 Thank you.

46:35 Speaker 8 It was a pleasure listening to you.