You Gotta Be You

Newsletter October 27, 2025 Together, we're #keepingitsacred...

“To thine own self, be true,” wrote Shakespeare in Hamlet. “If I fail, if I succeed, at least I lived as I believed,” sung George Benson before Whitney Houston made it popular in The Greatest Love of All.“You gotta be you, and only you, babe,” insisted Salt N’ Pepa in one of my favorite songs of all time, Expression.What do these famous quotes have in common? A human desire to be true to who we are. To be authentic. To be known and known well. Not to put on airs. Or engage with the world under false pretenses. But to be known, seen, and (hopefully) appreciated. I know I have already shared with many of you about my love for the Netflix show, Nobody Wants This, but why do I love it? I have seen season 2 in full TWICE now. And a huge reason why I love it is that it shows how everybody, when it comes down to it, is searching for the truth about their own identity, boundaries, desires, and vision for the future. And the fun part is that people don’t do that in a vacuum. We do that amidst community who gives us ideas to bounce ideas off of, to see what rings true, to experiment with, and to learn from. Without any spoilers I will just say that the show brilliantly surfaces questions many of us have about religion in the modern world, life paths taken and not taken, boundaries, and, in all, truth. The show looks down on being fake and challenges everyone to be real. And we see the characters in the show struggle with this process in ways that we each, in various capacities, struggle with our own truths and revealing them. And then figuring when and how and where to reveal them. This is the beauty of being human. This is the beauty of being alive and having a spirit. This is our soul-work. And it is hard. Perhaps that’s what nobody wants in the show Nobody Wants This. Nobody really wants to have to struggle and search out and seek and find and reveal their true selves. Billions of people doing this everyday on the planet and in our most intimate of relationships is what makes the world messy and hard and sometimes filled with heartbreak. Nobody wants to do it. But this is the beauty of life. Revealing the Mystery of it all. And I capitalize the “M” here because our true selves is the spark of the Divine within. It is through this eternal struggle for the truth of ourselves that we come closer to the Divine. But we come closer to the Divine, closer to revelation, through this struggle. This is what life is about, and a huge part about life and being Jewish is honoring this struggle. That’s, in part, why the Jewish people are known as Am Yisrael— the people Israel. The word Israel is a compound word that broken up into parts “Yisra” and “El” mean “wrestle” with “God.” We are a people who wrestle with God by wrestling with the truth of who we are at the spark. This can be an excruciating process. I think about gay folks coming to terms with the truths of themselves at the height of anti-gay violent acts or legislation. I think about people who have to come to terms with their own terminal diagnosis. I think about dating people who have grown apart and have to come to terms with the truth of how they feel about the one they are in a relationship. But, no matter how hard the reckoning, the end result is a beautiful honoring of one’s own spirit, and a claim of one’s own dignity. Yes, a Netflix show sparked all of this for me. So, if you watch it, and want to talk about it— on this dimension and others, let’s! We will host a Season 2 Nobody Wants This series review on Tuesday, November 18, at 5pm PT/8pm ET. To delve into the issues, please reserve 90m for the program to enjoy analysis, Q & A, and sharing of your thoughts on the series. And as always, we welcome clergy from all denominations, and people from all religions and none, seekers and anyone not described by this list. We are each enriched by the diversity of opinion. And thank you for building a community with me where people’s exploration and expression of their most authentic selves are honored. That’s how we’re keeping it sacred. Together, we’re #keepingitsacred... 

Together, we’re #keepingitsacred...

Rabbi Heather Miller

Founder, Keeping It Sacred

---

For more information, please see the full newsletter and our full newsletter archive at keepingitsacred.com/news

And to sign up for the newsletter every week, please sign up at the bottom of the page in the purple boxes-- we just need your name and email address.

Thanks for your interest, and thanks for #keepingitsacred…