Navigating Mikvah Observance Post-Trauma

I've waited 15 years for this. It took 15 years for my immersion in a mikvah to be a neutral experience. Not traumatic. Not painful. Neutral. 

From the very first time immersing in a mikvah, a few days before my wedding, I was on my own. Searching in the dark, in unfamiliar territory. Mikvehs are notoriously non-descript buildings from the outside, and are often hidden and difficult to find. My kallah classes, in a different country from where my wedding was taking place, had been cut short, and I had no one to accompany me through this mitzvah. When I entered the doors to this unmarked building, I asked the first woman I met where to go. She motioned me down a hallway to a room. 

Photo by Melanie Wasser on Unsplash

Bath. Toilet. Tears. Rummaging through a binder of my sister's kallah notes because my own kallah classes were inadequate. Hair, face, nose, teeth, body, nails.... To what extent? I had no idea. How much nail is considered no nail showing...? Bath... I hadn't taken a bath since I was a child, forced into the tub to soak because showering was off-limits. The process of bathing in my own filth, freaked me out terribly. I find baths disgusting to this day. Shower after the bath to wash off the ick, and brush through my hair for the sixth time. How much combing is enough? I had no way of knowing. 

Finally, heart pounding, checking over the notes yet again, hoping I had done enough to be ready. I knew the balanit would have to see me naked, but I didn't yet understand to what extent that meant. Balanit call button. Knock on the door. Come on out! 

She was hurried. She was stressed. It was written all over her face and demeanor."It's my first time, I'm sorry... Can you remind me the bracha?"The confusion and judgement I felt, I was so apologetic, unsure of what I was doing wrong. Fingers check, toes, back... I didn't quite understand what she meant when she was checking me, but I went along with it. I had no idea what I was doing, understandably so.... At the time, I had never heard of a 'kallah room' at the mikvah. I didn’t know that kallahs are supposed to be treated differently. 

But I did it, got it over with, hated that she was watching me while walking in and out of the water naked.... The whole experience strange and uncomfortable. I felt terribly alone. 

I walked back into the room, threw on my clothes so I could just get out of there, and as I walked out, the balanit stopped me and asked in such an incredulous tone, "Are you a kallah??!" I actually assumed she was asking me this because I was walking out in fully covered clothes, but with wet hair, and no hair covering. Scared again that I did something wrong, I nodded with a smile, while she somehow gestured that it was ok to leave and I didn't have to pay. I had not realized that mikvahs charge for use. It had never occurred to me that I should bring money and need to pay for such an uncomfortably bizarre experience, that I was obligated to do in order to get married. 

Ten years later, my husband was on the phone with his Rav, a Rabbi who I have been trying to "train". He is a kind and gentle soul, with an out-of-the-box way of thinking, but he needed some tweaking in how to better speak to women. I continuously tried conveying the importance of understanding where a woman is coming from in her moments of pain, as she asks a shaila. ESPECIALLY when it comes to taharat hamishpacha challenges. 

This time, my husband was trying to explain to the Rav on my behalf that I could not re-shower in the mikvah itself before tevillah. Somehow, pre-Covid, it was more accepted to prepare in the mikvah showers and not at home. If someone prepared at home, they would need to quickly re-shower at the mikvah, before immersing. Post-Covid, I found this to be less of an issue, as it was more normalized to prepare at home. 

At that point in my life, I was deep in my C-PTSD symptoms from my traumatic childhood. The way that played out for me was constantly reliving life, as if I was back in my childhood experiences. Memories would replay over and over and constantly in my mind, causing many freeze-reponse moments where my body simply would not move. Internally, I was re-living my nightmares, though outwardly taking such effort to present as normal. I was attempting to work through this all in the very slow and painful process of therapy, but everything was triggering for me. At that time, I couldn't step in a shower or brush my teeth, as it would bring me right back to painfully difficult experiences of my childhood. Bedikahs felt invasive, and my availability for others was at a zero. My mind was fully preoccupied with living constantly in memories. I had already accumulated just about every heter I could find for my taharat hamishpacha observance. An extra shower, after preparing for the mikvah at home, felt like a halachically unnecessary torture. 

In hearing the response of this Rav, telling me that I did indeed need to take 'just' another quick shower at the mikvah.... I lost it. Absolutely lost it. The primal screams escaping from my mouth, with my back slowly sliding down the wall, I collapsed to my knees, sobbing. I had never cried that deeply, that hard. It felt as if my cries were the accumulated tears of all women together, who have been screaming through the pain of injustice through this mitzvah. The devastation of knowing that so many Rabbis, DO. NOT. GET. IT! We are meant to entrust our lives into their hands. But we are not being asked the right questions. We do not know how to provide the necessary information, to enable their crucial understanding of the extent of our agony. Rabbis who give generalized answers, because they are not holding the full picture of us in their eyes. Oh, the twisted nature of rules. 

Over the years the law in Israel changed, and women can now immerse in a mikvah without a balanit. I received more heterim, after extensive questioning, and several rabbis conversing with each other over my shailas... and my experience in going to the mikveh began to shift.

Eventually, I enrolled in a course through The Eden Center, to become a certified kallah teacher. I have yet to teach a single kallah, because I still feel like a hypocrite and cannot fathom teaching someone about the 'beauty' of these mitzvot. But I do hope that one day I will have the courage and honor of teaching kallot who are survivors of abuse. There are many nuances to marriage post trauma, and women should learn this together with someone who gets it. 

Mikvah going continues to be difficult for me, though my voice is finally being used."Ani tovelet levad, (I immerse by myself)" "Ani tovelet levad," "Ani tovelet levad, bli balanit (without an attendant). Yesh li heter litvol levad (I have a heter to immerse by myself)." The words play over and over in my head during my 7 minute drive to the mikveh. 

Sometimes the words come out, and are spoken with conviction. Occasionally, the words get stuck somewhere between my brain and my lips, and I do toveil the 'traditional' way, with a watching balanit. This version always ends with me back in my tears, my trauma and raging feelings of injustice. 

Often, these words are said by the disassociated version of myself, standing in front of a lady looking at me strangely, as she questions my validity. Usually facing a comeback of, "Let me tell you why you should toveil with a balanit" or "Is it because you are embarrassed?" No, no, it's because I have many years of trauma holding me down right now like a weighted anchor, barely allowing me to put one foot in front of the other and walk to a room... But I don't say that, I can't say that. Right? 

Sometimes I'm lucky enough to get a balanit who is kind, or who has had this encounter with me in the past, and doesn't give me slack for doing the unusual. The best is when I can go directly to the mikvah room, still fully clothed. No re-showering for me anymore, I always come straight from my home shower. Here in the mikvah room itself, I can lock the door, undress, do a chafifa in the mirror, and walk my own self down straight into the water. I split my hair over each shoulder, go fully under, and run my hands over the top of my head under the water. For many hair types, the hairs stick together when wet, so it's unlikely a hair will stick out from the water. [But of course, everyone needs to discuss their situation with their own halachic authority]. I then say a bracha with my hands wrapped around my waist and dunk twice more. Sometimes I'll do one more if I am nervous one of them wasn’t okay. I try to pray, I really do. When our precious hostages were being tortured in Gaza, I prayed deeply for them. But the time spent on prayer is miniscule, as I cannot wait to get out and be done. The thoughts in my mind are mainly, "God....I'm doing this for you. I'm doing this purely...for you." 

And then, one time, it happened. I walked out of the mikvah building, laughing. Truly, utterly LAUGHING. For the first time in over 15 years of marriage, I genuinely got to experience the feeling that so many have described to me, as mikvah being slightly "annoying". This is in such contrast to my experience of every mikvah time before being deeply traumatic, each one compounding on the one before, each exit bringing me to a state of shaking and tears when leaving the building. This time? It was neutral. Not too bad, not good. Neutral. 

"Is THIS how other people experience mikvah?! Neutral??" I asked myself, driving home in a mixture of tears and laughter, over the irony of my mikvah experience over the years. I had waited 15 years for this feeling of neutrality, and I cannot even begin to imagine what feelings may come next. For now, I am grateful to experience a mitzvah once so difficult, becoming a little bit easier. 

Sima Gleicher is a trauma coach and can be contacted at: ourstorywithin@gmail.com