Hi friends, today's episode is hosted by the poet Shera Erlichman.

Don't worry, I'll be back on October 30th. I'm Sheira in a mirror and was not perplexed, but utterly exposed.

In the first memory I am six, left momentarily home alone. My eyes in the hallway mirror reveal an

animal terror. In the second memory I am eight. My parents fight beyond my closed bedroom door, which has a mirror slung over it, and reflects

my gaze with such rawness it shakes me.

In the third, I am 19, traveling through Paris with my longtime girlfriend, when she reveals

she's cheated on me. The room tilts and I claw toward the tiny hostile bathroom where under red lights the mirror

shows my eyes stripped of certainty.

My world fragments.

I can't find Shera in there.

Then there's the summer.

I turn 22 and start losing my mind,

along with 20 pounds.

Deluded by insomnia and mania, I catch my gaze in a bus window's reflection,

and it is not dancing with joy as I suspected. It is gaunt and lonely, which shocks me. Who is

that girl? There's a reason we Jews cover mirrors during Shiva, the formal bereavement period after the death of a loved one.

For one, as a reminder to focus on our mourning and not on appearances.

The Cabalists had more spooky reasons.

Through death, the departed enters a realm that leaves behind a whole susceptible to evil spirits.

Evil spirits of the real kind and internal evils such as regret, guilt, anger.

To meet one's eyes in the mirror while grieving

is to meet parts of the self that are unbearable,

...