Mayim Rabim

OK, so it was a river. That's a technicality. Remember how I volunteered to go in the freezing mikvah waters in La Paz, Bolivia? Well, I just got my chance...albeit stateside. We were on vacation and my night finally came. I might add we were on vacation with my entire family...siblings, their spouses, kids, parents...the ganse mishpocha. We were three hours from the closest mikvah but minutes from a river. So during the daylight hours...

A visitor to our site wanted to ask us the following... please post your replies so we can possibly help her with her situation! Mindela writes:I am a young widow. I originally thought that it would be improper for me to go to the Mikva after he died because it seems like an announcement that I am available. Now that a few months have passed, I wonder if going to the Mikva again, one last...

I'm feeling a little bit better about this phenomenon. Well, not about having to wait till Day 8 - that still seems excessive to me, in the absence of something actually happening in my uterus, like pregnancy, surgery, or (chas veshalom) miscarriage. And I still wish it could be Day 6 more often than Day 7. But I'm trying to stop wishing for the elusive Day 5 Hefsek. As Desde pointed out, she's never had...

What do you do if you go away on holiday towards the end of your 5 days and you don't have a bedikah cloth? And there's nothing you can makeshift into a cloth. However did our foremothers manage without ready-made cloths? Oh, that's right - that was before the rabbis mandated that a woman couldn't possibly know when her own period ended without some sort of external gauge. Am I supposed to wait until I...

For me, PMS is not pre-menstrual, or post-menstrual (as it used to for me) but now pre-mikveh. After I get my period ceases for the cycle, I generally get moody : very cranky, irritable, snappish, headaches, total horror to be around. I don't think it's a iron thing.. I've tested fine. Anyway, it generally ends about a week after I stop bleeding. Now, that time frame has different meaning for me and my husband. Now...

Even after an incredibly long cycle (we broke into the triple digits!), even after taking progesterone to make my uterus shed its lining, even after a week of farewell kisses and laughing about how I nearly forgot where the mikvah is...it hurts to be niddah again. This morning I woke up, felt a twinge of a cramp, noticed a tiny brown dampness on my thigh (not technically niddah yet)...leaned over, gave the husband a kiss,...

I know these are not the things to focus on. Taharat hamishpacha is not about the picky details; there's a grander drama going on, of separation and reunion, of longing and anticipation. It can be a pain, but it can also be high romance. As my kallah teacher memorably said (this will probably identify her to some of you), "If you come home from mikvah upset by the hairs the woman before you left on...

Thank you all for your comments and responses to my last posting. We weren't staying in a hotel, so the pillowcase wasn't an option, although I'd have never thought of that myself. And there were no stores around, so buying hankies wasn't possible. And a good point was brought up by Shira, about starting the 7 days without a hefsek. I'll have to ask about that. Another thing I never would have thought of was...