Sarah Pachter, a dynamic and sought-after international speaker and lecturer, is a writer who contributes regularly to newspapers, websites and podcasts, and the author of two books: Is It Ever Enough? and Small Choices, Big Changes. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and five children. Her lectures and articles focus on self-improvement and connecting with Hashem. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that she recently gave her first TEDx Talk in San Diego.
While Ted and TEDx Talks have featured tens of thousands of speakers from celebrities to aspiring unknowns, Pachter is still one of the pioneers when it comes to Jewish religious female speakers. And her looking more like a model than a frum wife and mother, along with her poise, articulation and positive energy, can only help with deconstructing stereotypes.
Pachter’s talk, Love Triangles without the Romance: Fixing the In-Law Dynamic, is about mother-in-law/daughter-in law drama and how to avoid it – a universal subject if ever there was one. She presents the five rules she constructed from working as a kallah teacher for the past 17 years, all over the world.
From interviewing hundreds of mothers and daughters-in-law, the main tension Pachter has found is the conflict that results from mothers-in-law wanting to be more included and daughters-in-law wanting more space. This gave birth to this simple dual rule: Mothers-in-law, the less you intrude the more they include; and daughters-in-law, the more you include, the less they intrude.
The Five Rules are:
- Play fair. Equal love and equal attention: treat your daughter-in-law like a daughter and your mother-in-law like a mother.
- QTip. Quit Taking It Personally. It isn’t always about you. Stop finding malice where there might be misunderstanding, and give the benefit of the doubt.
- Start praising and thanking. Most daughters-in-law crave praise and most mothers-in-law crave thanks. Everyone craves appreciation.
- Choose connection over control. They are polar opposites and cannot co-exist.
- Accept and respect – and that includes boundaries. When a bride circles her groom under the canopy she is making a boundary to protect their privacy. Respect for each other’s limitations, and acceptance of each other is not optional and it goes both ways.
These rules are good for any relationship, but they are critical for the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law dynamic, which is so competitive (they both love the same man) because neither of them chose the relationship, it was chosen for them (by the same aforementioned man). The most important thing they have in common is that they are the two most loved women in his life.
The bottom line is to stop focusing on who is right and start focusing on what is right.
This TEDx Talk is based on an article Pachter wrote which went viral.
Pachter says that preparing the ten minute talk, whose tone is casual and friendly is a grueling process that requires meetings, approval, rehearsals and a great deal of preparation.
TEDx talks are usually local whereas TED Talks are global. Sarah says that her talk was accepted for the global network which is a big deal, once in a lifetime kind of thing and Sarah believes she is the first Orthodox Jewish woman to be chosen for that.
“The hashgacha pratit that led to this is incredible,” Pachter says. Two years ago, she spoke for a Pesach program in Arizona. They asked her if she would join them the following year in San Diego. She agreed. Two days later another Pesach program called her up from a different city telling her to name her price in order to come on their program. But she had already given her word to the first one and despite the temptation, she is a person of integrity. Had she not stuck to her word, this wouldn’t have happened.
She used the Pesach program in San Diego to glean votes as she was running on the Aish platform as a candidate for the WIZO Congress. The woman whom Aish connected her to at the event was impressed with how many votes she had garnered (she was in first or second place the entire time) and invited her to come speak at TEDx. Pachter only realized later how this personal invitation, resulting from this serendipitous meeting, saved her three rounds of grueling auditions, the night before the TED talks. They had a dinner at the former president of Ralph Lauren’s house, which they made kosher for Pachter, and people were talking about the process they had to go through.
“The Arizal says that when a person feels a powerful longing for something, it’s because a spark of holiness that is intrinsically connected to their soul is currently absent or in exile. This spark is a part of their soul root that they are destined to elevate and reunite with. Your neshama is inviting you to complete that mission,” Pachter explains.
Pachter understands that kind of longing. She saw it in her ba’al teshuvah home. Her mother had prayed for 10 years that their family would be able to keep Shabbat – her father worked very hard and felt unable to take Shabbat off. “But they eventually did,” says Pachter, “and today all of her children and grandchildren keep Shabbat, thank G-d. When you have a longing for something it’s destined for you.
“We don’t know the blessing Hashem had in store for us when we do an aveira. Had I cancelled on the other woman and taken the more lucrative offer this wouldn’t have happened.”
Giving a TED Talk had been on Pachter’s radar and vision board for three years and it just seemingly fell in her lap. Sarah invites everyone to visit their dreams, and to be a person of integrity.
And this, as they say, is just the beginning.
You can see the Ted Talk: at www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj2Xwg6L3wc .
And visit Pachter’s website at sarahpachter.com .
