ENGAGED!!

B'chasdei Hashem!  DIP 1 is engaged! To a wonderful boy whom we are so glad to welcome into our family!

that leaves DIP 3, just returned from the Holy Land.  But not yet...

I think I have survivors' guilt.

DIP 1's single friends all came to her engagement party/vort.  It was great to see them.  Did I imagine I saw a certain excitement, but sadness in their eyes? There are way too many of them, 25 + years old. And I know many of their mothers. We have commiserated.  Is it condescending to say this? Does it sound like I'm very full of myself? Is it demeaning in some way? To say that as excited and deliriously happy we are for our daughter and her chassan, there's almost a kind of sheepish guilt, or odd feeling of why are WE the ones Hashem chose to now answer? We have davened  and cried to Hashem, asking that our daughter find her zivug, and now that she did, I feel such a great relief.  Almost forgotten is the feeling of dread and despair and anguish of a few months ago, When another boy said no, another series of dates ended in "it's going nowhere". And I can't believe that after five years of dating, I would get over those anxious feelings so quickly. Perhaps that's part of the "guilt" - that I've abandoned the group I belonged to. That I escaped that group of people who really go about doing their daily routines  with the heavy pall of sadness and anxiety hanging our their heads.

I'm even saying "their" instead of "our" because I am no longer a part of "them". 

The Mothers of Single Girls Who've Been Dating For Years.

If you've felt this, please. share with me. 


Not the way I imagined this post would be written. I thought I'd write all CAPS, enthusiastic exclamations,  gushy excited comments, etc. 

My simcha is not diluted. I'm just reflecting....