Event: Communications for Strengthening Relationships

hammer-895665_640Moreau Community Center
Feb. 12, 2016

Join us as BJ shares the tips and strategies that have worked for her as the result of very difficult experiences maintaining positive, healthy relationships with her own adult children. This session will provide concrete tips that you and your family can apply to have effective communications that will help you to build unshakeable relationships with your family as well.

When: 

February 12th, 2016, 6:30pm

Where: 

Moreau Community Center
144 Main St.
Moreau, NY

Event: Communication for Unshakeable Relationships

globe-489519_640Saratoga Chamber of Commerce Women in Business Group
Feb. 9, 2016

Even the best communicators can benefit from improving their communications skills. Before BJ Rosenfeld discovered the secret to staying connected, she almost lost all connection with her adult son.  Through trial and error, she found the strategies that worked and then made a commitment to share her story with people worldwide. Through a focus and commitment to two way listening, compromise, and judgment free support, BJ will lead a discussion in how we can find ways to better connect in our personal and professional relationships.

Where:  Saratoga Chamber Women in Business Group

When:  Tuesday, Feb 9, 2016

For more information or to register, please view the Saratoga Chamber of Commerce event page: http://tourism.saratoga.org/events/details/women-in-business-group-14279

BJ Rosenfeld Featured on WNYT Today’s Woman

BJ’s work with parents of adult children was featured on WNYT’s Today’s Woman, just in time for Mother’s Day.

She spoke at length with WNYT’s Elaine Houston regarding her own experiences with her sons when they chose to follow a religion quite different from her own.  She also talked about her journey to create and maintain a loving and close relationship with them and her 10 grandchildren despite those differences.

BJ is a published author, with several books including The Chameleon in the Closet, a direct result of the journals she kept during her own transition with her children. She is available for public speaking engagements as well as personal and corporate coaching through her business, where she guides and supports other parents who also want to have enviable relationship with their own adult children.

Dealing with Empty Nest Syndrome on BlogTalkRadio’s ReadMyLips Radio

It’s September and that means back-to-school season. If your children have gone off to college, you may find youself an unwilling, lonely, worried empty nester in a too-quiet house. How can you change your attitude, find mental-spiritual-social-emotional comfort, and learn to forge a new type of relationship with your almost-grown-up child?

Meet BJ Rosenfeld, an international family relationship expert who helps parents achieve an unshakable relationship with their adult children. “When children choose a different way of life than their parents, families have to work to stay together. How far should… [read more]

Listen to the program here!

Check Out Lifestyle Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with aka RadioRed on BlogTalkRadio

BJ Rosenfeld Interviews on NewsmakerTV

Imagine a Jewish mom caught in the position of not “being Jewish enough.”  That’s exactly what happened to BJ Rosenfeld had to come to terms with when her sons chose to become Orthodox and began rejecting much of what BJ herself lived in her own life as no longer acceptable to them.

Her journey to come to grips with the situation and create a loving, accepting relationship with her sons is chronicled in her book, The Chameleon in the Closet.

She speaks candidly about her experiences, including her closets, here with Jess Todfield of NewsmakersTV:

The Chameleon in the Closet Featured On Huffington Post

What would you do if someone close to you did not want you to write a memoir that involved him or her? Would you respect their wishes or would you forge ahead? And, if you did forge ahead, would their watching over your shoulder, metaphorically speaking, compromise what you really wanted to … [read more]

BJ recently spoke on Huffington Post about her journey to reconnect with her newly Orthodox sons and and find her way to an enviable relationship with them and her grandchildren. From changing her clothing to changing her own attitudes about acceptance and love, you can read more about how she did it here on Huffington Post.

Excerpted from “A Mother’s Love Versus Her Sons’ Religious Demands” by  on Huffington Post.

Chameleon in the Closet Reviewed on Amazon

The reviews are in!  On Amazon.com, that is.

The Chameleon in the Closet: A Conservative Jewish Mother Reaches Out to Her Orthodox Sons traces the universal journey parents take as their children try to find their place in the world. When her older son broke with his Conservative Jewish upbringing and plunged into Orthodoxy, BJ Rosenfeld was confronted with the challenge of accepting or rejecting his rigorous beliefs. Somewhere along the way… [read more]

Heartfelt and Wise

It is almost painful to read this mother’s account of reconciling herself to the changes her sons made in their lives. Not because of the writing–she excels at that–but because she does such an excellent job, her emotions are palpable. We raise our children with expectations–our own–and that’s the problem. When they’re young we steer their decision making. As they mature, we anticipate their steps into adulthood. Nothing prepares us for radical diversions from the road on which we initially placed them.

An amazing journey into one woman’s quest to serve her family.

Knowing little about the Jewish world, this book was a terrific journey as seen through the eyes of a Jewish mother trying to navigate the often turbulent path of being a parent. I laughed, and I cried as the author dared to be authentic to dig deep inside herself to share her feelings, her beliefs, her fears, her confusion, and her frustration, as well as her happiness, her laughter, and her pure joy in some amazing recollections of her life moments (sometimes all at the same time!)—all in search of love and compromise to attempt to find her place in the lives of her children. As parents, we cannot choose the path for our children; however we do choose our path as to whether we travel this journey together with them (or not). What a lovely and heartfelt story regarding one woman’s journey into herself as well as her learning about the intricacies of what her life means to be Jewish, and more importantly, what her life means to be a mother of her Jewish children and grandchildren. Thank you for sharing your example and your courage to love.