As a Jewish Queer person and a psychologist specializing in Jewish LGBTQ+ mental health, my experience of 2026 is colored by conversations with clients, colleagues, and friends on the challenges we are facing as humans holding multiple politicized identities. Some common emotional themes continue to emerge: exhaustion, loneliness, burnout, disconnection, anger, and deep sadness. If you are feeling any of these emotions, I hope my words can serve as validation, a reminder of the beauty within our identities and communities, and the truth that you are not alone. Below, I have drafted an imperfect list of what I am seeing/feeling:  

Our identities have been politicized, and there is a real mental health impact. 

How many times have you heard one of your identities being discussed in legislation, the news, or a community social media page? Probably more than you can count, am I right? The stress from this experience is real and there is actually a name for it: minority stress (Meyer, 2003). Minority stress theory essentially says that when you navigate the world as a person with a marginalized identity, there is extra wear and tear on your stress system, on top of all the regular human stresses from just living. Minority stress gives us language for the impact of exposure to ongoing reminders that you are different, to oppressive legislation, to hate crimes, etc. When you hold multiple marginalized identities, like Jewish and Queer, or Jewish, Queer, and Latina, the stress is additive. So if you're tired from the weight of it all, honestly? Same. 

It can feel so lonely to not feel fully seen in your communities.

In LGBTQ+ spaces, you feel unsure about what Queer community thinks about your Jewishness or anxious to go to a Pride event with your synogogue because you don't know how folks will react. In Jewish spaces, you feel hurt by conversations of whether having a gender neutral bathroom will still be prioritzed because fear of losing funding for security is impacting DEI efforts. Or maybe your perspectives on the war in Israel feel really different from your family and your leaders. It all feels heavy and messy and painful, and particularly lonely. 

The weight of being expected to represent everyone is real.

How do you feel about what is happening right now? Why do queer people do this? What do Jewish people actually believe about that? If you have been asked to speak for entire communities, to have clean and confident answers to questions that keep you up at night, you know how exhausting that is. That pressure to educate, to represent, is a form of minority stress, too. You did not sign up to be a spokesperson all the time. You crave spaces where you can just be you without having to explain.

It can feel uniquely scary and vulnerable to be LGBTQ+ and Jewish.

Is it safe to hang a Pride flag? To put up a mezuzah? To send your kid to Jewish day school? To go to a Pride event or Jewish event? These are not hypothetical questions for a lot of us right now. On top of that, the legislation and news about our communities access to rights as Queer people feels unending. These concerns can challenge us to re-examine expressions of our identities and grieve the loss of our sense of safety and autonomy.  

Your identity, beliefs, and relationships may be changing, and that can be scary, too. 

Maybe you find yourself questioning beliefs that felt foundational to your identities, or ending relationships where you feel harmed/rejected and grieving the loss. I cannot count the number of times I have heard about beliefs about the war or gender affirming care impacting all kinds of relationships, changing families, long standing friendships, and professional communities. There is a concept called moral injury that keeps coming back to me as I think about the grief of this moment. Moral injury occurs when our core values, such as beliefs about how humans should treat on another, are betrayed in ways that harm us psychologically and spiritually. Many folks I talk to describe this deep sense of harm and complex emotions around the communities and people they once called home.

I believe that connection is the antidote to the pain of this moment. 

So much of what we are experiencing can feel like floating in isolation, connection and community care can help ground us. Not perfect connection, not connection free of conflict or complexity, but the kind where you don't have to explain everything. In my own life and in my work, I have seen how much it matters to find a friend, a community, or a therapist who can hold the fullness of who you are without asking you to choose a side of yourself to lead with. 

We have rich histories of resilience and tools to draw from.

Yes, the world often feels like its on fire, but we come from communities who are no strangers to moments like these. Across generations, Jewish and Queer people have developed deep wells of wisdom for navigating oppression, processing grief, marking transitions, and returning to one another. Ritual is one of those tools. The way Shabbat asks us to pause and rest, not when everything is resolved, but on a schedule, regardless. The way Pride was born as an act of resistance and a claiming of our right to joy. We can draw from these wells of wisdom to navigate the current moment. When we light a candle, gather at a table, march in the street, or simply let ourselves be held by someone who gets it, we are participating in a tradition of healing that is centuries deep.

Our histories teach us the importance of connecting to joy alongside the grief.

Perhaps one of the most profound gifts of being both Jewish and Queer is an inherited valuing of complexity. Our traditions do not ask us to resolve contradiction, they ask us to sit with it, wrestle with it, find meaning inside it. Holding grief and joy at the same time is not a coping skill we have to learn from scratch. It is our legacy. So is questioning, creating, and refusing to be flattened into something simple. You are allowed to mourn what has been lost and still build something beautiful. You are allowed to feel the full weight of this moment and still claim a life that is joyful, complex, and unapologetically yours.

You deserve a space where you don't have to explain yourself.

If anything here resonated, and you find yourself wanting a space where all of this, the complexity, the grief, the joy, the questions, is already understood, I would love to connect. I offer individual therapy as well as groups specifically for Jewish LGBTQ+ folks, because sometimes the most healing thing is being in a room full of people who just get it. Reach out and let's talk about what might be a good fit for you.

In Community, 

Dr. Dani 

Reference

Meyer, I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 674–697.