What's Inside The Walls: Finding Treasure in a Diseased House

This week I'm writing about why I started graduate school in Marriage and Family Therapy, and what this week's Torah portion, Tazria-Metzora, teaches about what's really going on when family life feels chaotic. The parsha describes a mysterious affliction that can appear on the walls of a house, and I think it's a powerful metaphor for what I keep seeing in my coaching work: the presenting problem is almost never the real problem. The kids' behavior is a symptom of something deeper, usually parental anxiety that predates parenthood entirely. The Torah's prescription is to bring in someone from outside to look, and sometimes to tear open the walls to find the treasure buried underneath.