When Rabbi Hyim Shafner conducts the Shabbat learner’s service at Bais Abe, he frequently discusses the morning blessings, known as Birkhot Hashachar (or Birchot HaShachar), in which we thank G-d for a series of blessings, including giving sight to the blind, raising the downtrodden and clothing the naked.

As part of these sessions, Shafner often asks participants to think about what they do — and what they are aware of — when they first wake up. It’s made me very conscious of the fact that I have the ability to open my eyes in the morning and see the sun shining through my bedroom shutters. It’s a great exercise for appreciating some of life’s most fundamental gifts.

I’ve extended that exercise to bedtime as I try to block out my frustrations and worries by recalling the many blessings I’ve enjoyed during the day.

These daily exercises, or prayers, if you will , usually pertain to my current status: being grateful for such things as good health, family, friends, my job and my freedom. But then something as simple as flipping through the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival schedule hammered home the fact that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy those things today if it weren’t for past divine and human intervention.

That schedule contains the photo of a woman I haven’t seen in years: Linda Fairstein. Although she’s appearing as the author of “Terminal City,” her 16th novel, Fairstein’s role in my past is not fiction. She helped me through my own very frightening chapter. Indeed, her good counsel may even have saved my life.

It was in the mid-1990s, when I was working as a news reporter in New York City. My then-husband and I were going through a divorce, and I had just moved out of our Brooklyn home to start anew in Manhattan. It was a very tough time for me, but the excitement of my job was a great distraction. In fact, just a few days after I moved, I was assigned to write a feature on a man who was prominent in the business and legal world.

He agreed to be interviewed and turned out to be charming and quirky and I found myself enjoying the assignment. After the piece was published, the man asked me to lunch. More invitations followed. He didn’t live in New York City but was frequently in Manhattan, and he started calling when he was in town.

Like many newly divorced people — especially those with a broken heart and in need of a shoulder to cry on — I stupidly fell into a rebound relationship. And this one was a particularly big ego booster because of the man’s prominence. Yes, there were red flags, but I ignored them.

Eventually, when I learned this man had not been honest with me, I ended the relationship. He went ballistic, barraging me with threatening messages about his power and ability to make me sorry. Then he started stalking me, sitting in his car outside my apartment building and office. I knew the man carried a gun, and I was plenty scared.

Things had gone too far and I needed help. As a result, I met with Fairstein, who was then head of the Manhattan District Attorney’s sex crimes unit. (Fairstein’s unit was the inspiration for the SVU spinoff of TV’s “Law & Order.”) 

I felt stupid and embarrassed. After all, how could a well-educated woman, and a reporter at that, have turned a blind eye to all the warning signs? But Fairstein assured me her office dealt with similar situations all the time. Although she opened a file on the man, she advised me how to defuse things without having to file charges, something I feared would have landed me on the front page of the New York tabloids and possibly pushed him into committing a violent act.

So now at night when I review my blessings, I thank G-d for protecting me during that difficult time and opening my eyes before it was too late. And I thank Linda Fairstein, his wise and tough helper.

Gail Appleson is a writer for Armstrong Teasdale LLP and freelancer who lives in St. Louis.