Non-Jewish Readers Are Connecting to Lubavitcher’s Story

COLlive interview: Florida-based Chanie Wilschanski discusses her new book "This Can’t Be Normal" and its unexpected resonance with non-Jewish readers.

By COLlive reporter

Chanie Wilschanski, a Florida-based educator and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast, has released her debut book, “This Can’t Be Normal,” which explores the tension between outward success and internal strain.

In an interview with COLlive.com, she reflects on her personal wake-up call, the Chassidic sources that shaped her perspective, and the book is growing traction beyond the Jewish community.

What is your book about?
The book answers a simple but unsettling question: why does success start to feel like survival? We live in a time where everything is competing for our attention at once: family, growth, work, relationships, and responsibility. The default assumption is that to succeed, you must keep up with all of it, all the time. Stay responsive and productive and be “on”. This creates a constant tension between priorities. Even when things are working on the surface, internally, it feels like if you slow down for a moment, everything will collapse.

This Can’t Be Normal illustrates that the pressure people feel isn’t a personal failure or lack of discipline—it’s structural. The book introduces a different way to operate, where your life and leadership don’t depend on you constantly holding everything together in real time.

What led you to write it?
There was a time when I thought I had everything I wanted. We had just moved to Florida, and we bought our dream home. I had a great marriage, kids, health, great friends, and a thriving business. On paper, it was exactly the life I had worked and prayed for, but I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe inside of it.

At the same time, I was seeing the same pattern in the leaders I was working with. They had success, teams, business was growing and scaling, but behind the scenes, they were carrying an invisible weight that was crushing them.

That’s when I started asking a different question: How do you build a life that is not just successful, but actually sustainable, restorative, and connected? I didn’t want success only when things were calm. I wanted it in the middle of responsibility, pressure, and real life.

What practical change did you make after your ‘wake-up call?
I wasn’t lacking strategies, tips, or hacks. I was operating inside a model that wasn’t sustainable. I had tried the systems, frameworks, and productivity tools. They worked temporarily, but under pressure, they broke, and everything routed back to me again. Each new solution was just a more sophisticated version of survival, because I was still operating inside the same model—one where I had to constantly stay “on” to keep everything functioning.

I started by asking different questions: What actually restores me? What anchors me when life is full and unpredictable? What kind of life am I trying to build, and what does it cost to sustain it?

The real cost isn’t just time or money. It shows up in more subtle ways—being physically present but mentally elsewhere, losing patience faster, struggling to think clearly, or realizing you’ve stopped making space for things that matter to you.

I stopped relying on willpower or mood to hold everything together in the moment. I also got honest about trade-offs. Instead of trying to fit everything in, I started deciding in advance what matters most in a given season—and letting other things take a pause. Those changes sound simple, but they fundamentally shift how your life operates under pressure.

How much of your upbringing influenced this book?
So much of my upbringing influenced this book through hundreds of small, repeated moments. I remember watching my father (Rabbi Mordechai Kanelsky of New Jersey) at night, already exhausted, still putting on his hat and jacket to say Shema before going to bed. No one was watching, but he did it every night.

I remember him sitting down to write a duch to the Rebbe, accounting for how he showed up that week on shlichus. This is who he is. And I remember him picking up the phone when he had a question—calling a mashpia or a rav.

As a child, I didn’t have language for any of this. But I absorbed it, and I know it’s encoded into me.  A sense that what mattered didn’t depend on mood or convenience. You showed up and didn’t negotiate with it in the moment.

I remember standing in line for Kol Shel Bracha from the Rebbe and getting dollars. I treasure these moments and the dollars I now have. And as an adult, I so deeply appreciate the cost of the trip from New Jersey every time I see the Rebbe.

There was a school across the street from my house. I could have literally rolled out of bed and been in school in one minute. But my parents chose to send me to Bais Rivkah in Crown Heights, because they wanted me to have a Lubavitch Chinuch.  That meant long daily commutes and sitting in traffic for hours.

And it’s a big part of what shaped this book—this idea that values are not what you say or intend, but what you return to, consistently and reliably again and again and again.

What’s the response you’re getting?
The most common responses are: “Are you watching the security feed in my school?” or “Have you been to my house?” People feel seen in a way that finally gives them language for something they’ve been carrying for a long time but couldn’t fully explain. These are strong, capable leaders. On the outside, things are working. But internally, there’s a level of pressure and weight that hasn’t been named. When they read it, they recognize themselves in it.

What are non-Jewish readers connecting to?
The non-negotiables and the “return moment.” The idea of something being truly non-negotiable—something that doesn’t bend based on mood, pressure, or convenience—feels unfamiliar to many people who didn’t grow up with built-in anchors like Shabbos or Yom Tov. Shabbos starts at 4:14, whether you are ready for it or not!  For them, it reframes discipline. It’s not about willpower in the moment; it’s about non-negotiable values that we always return to.

The “return moment” is how I translate Teshuvah into everyday life. You don’t have to wait for a new week, a new month, or a new season to realign. The moment you notice you’ve drifted, you can return immediately without drama or delay.

That combination of clear standards and the ability to return to them in real time is what people are finding both grounding, refreshing, and restorative.

Were you surprised by the book’s broader appeal?
Yes. I expected it to resonate with people in formal leadership roles—school owners, directors, Shluchim—because they are carrying visibly large responsibilities. What surprised me was how strongly it connected beyond that. Mothers, radio hosts, husbands, wives, grandparents—people who don’t identify as “leaders” in a formal sense are seeing themselves in it. The broader response made it clear that this isn’t a leadership issue. It’s a human one.

What is one belief about success that this book challenges?
The belief that more responsibility requires more of you. Most people assume that as life grows, or as your family gets bigger, as you have more work, or a bigger institution, then the solution is to stretch themselves further. To be more available, responsive, and capable.

That works for a period of time,  but then it breaks. This book challenges the idea that success should feel like constant pressure. It shows that if everything depends on you holding it together in real time, that’s not growth, it’s survival.

AUDIO: Chanie Wilschanski speaks with Nachum Siegel on JM in the AM

For more about the book and to download the first chapter for free, visit: thiscantbenormal.com

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