When my father was dying, we smoked weed together.
To be clear, my father was not exactly the type you would ever envision vaping medicinal cannabis. He was a doctor, strict in his religious beliefs, and beyond stubborn when it came to his daughters. But at the time, I was fully into my journey as a chronic pain patient… and my father, on his deathbed due to a double-whammy of metastatic melanoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, wasn’t eating.
“What’s the worst it’s gonna do, Daddy?” I remember asking him. “Kill you?”
My Dad laughed, and then, took me up on the offer. We had a weird, shared, morbid sense of humor like that. And it was nice, sharing this first—this shehecheyanu moment—with my father. He was, after all, the same man who had once torn down a poster in my bedroom because it had a marijuana leaf on it. And now, we were standing in his bedroom together, vaping weed. I think we both saw the humor in that moment. But humor makes confronting the unbearable… just a little more tolerable.
Next Tuesday, my third book, Kissing Kosher publishes. Like all my books, it balances the outlandish against some very real experiences of my life. Thankfully, it’s also received some truly stellar reviews. A starred review from Kirkus and Booklist. Countless author blurbs. Beautiful, heartfelt, touching reviews from all over social media… and Gawd-help me, even Goodreads.
In reading those reviews, a common theme has emerged. That Kissing Kosher is brutally honest. That my writing is vulnerable. I’m an author who is audacious and fearless in my storytelling.
It’s such a wonderful, beautiful, and appreciated commentary on my work. But then, because I am me—because I self-reflect and think about *everything* constantly—I wonder about these words.
I wonder if there’s something broken inside me, or which developed from a decade of being homebound with chronic disability, that makes me have no filter when it comes to storytelling. I wonder if I’m too honest, if bleeding repeatedly on the page will come back to bite me in the future, like if something catastrophic occurs and I need to get a “real job” one day, or if I need to re-up my life insurance.
And, of course, I know it will hurt—when someone eventually comes and writes a six-page diatribe denying the reality of this chronically painful experience. When someone, who has never had to give up a career or children, who has the ability to walk into a room without thinking about the chairs… complains that my character made everything about her disease.
You try to separate yourself out as the author—hand the book over, leave the rest to God—but the truth is, my characters are me. We share the same story. We share the same hurts and struggles, too.
And so, I sit at my desk, day after day, pouring my honest and open heart onto a page. Not worrying about the future. Pushing through the pain in my body and the fatigue in my eyes… to write, and write, and write…even though, there are many days, many moments, where I look at my husband and ask, “How long am I expected to live like this?”
So why do I do it? Why do I stand, in the center of some field, my rib cage split open, my heart bared to all… a tree line full of soldiers holding slingshots and arrows. Why am I so brutally honest, and vulnerable—why do I make people uncomfortable in my stories? I could just as easily pull back, write something surface and frivolous, keep all my hurts and my harms locked safely away… and probably find fans, too.
I’ve talked about it with my husband. I don’t believe I’ve ever talked about it here. Those feelings. Those fears, lingering inside me. The way I question myself, constantly, over whether brutal honesty is a safe or healthy choice for me. My third book is about boundaries, after all. But it wasn’t until yesterday when I read an absolutely beautiful review of Kissing Kosher from Sandy Saucier at Novels Alive that I found my answer.
She was writing about Kissing Kosher , her own experience for a time as a pelvic pain patient, the fact that one in seven women experience long-term pelvic pain with no relief, and in analyzing my heroine, Avital Cohen she wrote, “To have not only Avital’s experience exhibit the pain and life-altering accommodations that are made in the face of chronic pain, but to paint such a beautiful and necessary community surrounding her, acknowledging her, learning from her, and supporting her…”
And I broke into tears.
Full on, cried, in the front seat of my vehicle, while doing an errand.
Because I realized that was what all of you were to me.
You are my beautiful and necessary community. You are the people who acknowledge me, and learn from me—who I learn from, too, honestly—and on all those hard days, you are the ones who keep me fighting.
We have this saying in Judaism. Hazak, hazak, v’nithazek—be strong, be strong, and together, we will all be strengthened. And while it is normally used at the conclusion of a book of Torah, I can’t help but feel the words also apply here. No one is strong on their own. No one can stand in a field alone, and handle the onslaught that life throws at them.
My strength comes from many places. It comes from God. It comes from my family. It comes from the page, my imagination, the place I disappear in order to escape my failing body. And many days, it comes from you. Your kind words. Your beautiful messages. Your likes and shares. The stories you so bravely and courageously share with me through DM and email. And sometimes, even cards. The knowledge that when I do an event, someone almost inevitably shows up who has shown up before.
Because I’m real to you, too.
And maybe it’s weird for an author to have such heartfelt and honest feelings about the people she meets online and through her books—those folks some would deign to call fans or even strangers—but you’ve all helped me embrace my weird. You’ve given me courage. Some days, you’ve even gotten me out of bed. And I just wanted to say thank you, for this amazing journey, for three books together, for the places we have come from and the places we may be going. You all have my heart. And I won’t ask you to be careful with it… because I know you will.
Hazak, hazak, v’nithazek.
When my father was dying, I stood at his bedside and we smoked weed together.
When my father was dying, I stood at his bedside.
I stood at his bedside.
Shabbat Shalom.
*****
To read the full review from Sandy Saucier, please head to novelsalive.com
Publication Date: August 29, 2023
From the author of THE MATZAH BALL and MR. PERFECT ON PAPER comes this hilarious and emotional rivals-to-lovers romance.
Step 1: Get the secret recipe. Step 2: Don’t fall in love…
Avital Cohen isn’t wearing underpants—woefully, for unsexy reasons. Chronic pelvic pain has forced her to sideline her photography dreams and her love life. It’s all she can do to manage her family’s kosher bakery, Best Babka in Brooklyn, without collapsing.
She needs hired help.
And distractingly handsome Ethan Lippmann seems the perfect fit.
Except Ethan isn’t there to work—he’s undercover, at the behest of his ironfisted grandfather. Though Lippmann’s is a household name when it comes to mass-produced kosher baked goods, they don’t have the charm of Avital’s bakery. Or her grandfather’s world-famous pumpkin spice babka recipe.
As they bake side by side, Ethan soon finds himself more interested in Avital than in stealing family secrets, especially as he helps her find the chronic pain relief—and pleasure—she’s been missing.
But perfecting the recipe for romance calls for leaving out the lies…even if coming clean means risking everything.
Jean Meltzer studied dramatic writing at NYU Tisch and has earned numerous awards for her work in television, including a daytime Emmy. She spent five years in rabbinical school before her chronic illness forced her to withdraw, and her father told her she should write a book—just not a Jewish one because no one reads those. Kissing Kosher is her third novel.
