N CONTROL

A temple seminar showed the
newly single how to get
their lives on track
after divorce or widowhood

HEIDI PRESS

Local News Editor

Rabbi Sherwin Wine told how to "take
control of your life."

A

joke ' making the rounds
goes something like this:
How many psychiatrists
does it take to change a
light bulb? Only one, but
the light bulb -really has to want to
change.
Singles — especially the newly
divorced and widowed — can take
control of their lives, but they
really have to want to work at it,
because taking control of one's life
is a process which requires con-
scious effort.
That was the advice given to
more than 100 singles who
attended the • recent singles
weekend at . the Birmingham Tem-
ple entitled, "Taking Control of
Your Life." In a special Shabbat
Eve service whose theme was dig-
nity and in a series of workshops,
singles heard from specialists in
behavior and from two clergymen .
— one a divorcee — that one can
take steps to overcome life's
traumas and get back to normal,
healthy, living.
In addition to the workshops,
singles were treated to a dinner
and dancing. According to Joe
Levine, chairman of the weekend
event, the temple hoped to involve
the "singles community in a mean-
ingful and enjoyable weekend that
provided socializing.
"I feel real great that it's going
so well," Levine said looking at the
response from singles in their 20s
to their 70s, adding that he hoped
the temple could offer a similar
weekend next year.
Although most of the workshop

.78

Friday, March 27, 1987

Emmaline Weidman talked about
"removing blocks to loving."

Dr. Jude Cotter gave a lesson on
self-hypnosis.

facilitators were involved in sociol-
ogy, psychology and other "ologies"
dealing with human behavior, the
most poignant discussion came out
of a presentation by David Blake,
pastor of the Fellowship Lutheran
Church and president of the
Phoenix Center, a clinic for parents
with teenage problems. Rev. Blake,
a divorcee, told first-hand through
humor and song, how he survived
the trauma of divorce and de-
veloped the courage to begin dating
again.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

The father of two daughters,
Rev. Blake explained how his di-
vorce came about and likened his
feelings at the time to a rock and
roll song, Love Stinks! From that
point he proceeded through a series
of stages, a process he compared
with a long-playing record _ . One has
to get through the songs to get to
the end of the record, and he had to
get through various stages of grief
to "be a whole and happy person."
The first stage he labeled as
denial. "You feel like you're losing
something, but you don't know
what it is . . . It's part of the
human condition to deny some of
the reality around us."
The second stage Blake called
depression. "Depression is neces-
sary if you're going to get on with
your life," he said. "You can't go

David Blake highlighted his
presentation with humor and song.

from loss to happy without depres-
sion."
Blake said the depression stage
is marked by "if onlies . . . If only I
had done this then the relationship
wouldn't have failed." But, Blake
advised, it's healthy to suffer a lit-
tle depression, but cautioned
against shutting it out through ex-
cessive drinking, smoking or eat-
ing. "Depressed people become vic-
tims of an overactive fork," he ob-

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