Choice

I’m always on the lookout for examples of people who have gone through great challenges and came out the other end stronger and transformed. This month I’d like to share someone with you who is an answer to my prayer for guidance during these tumultuous times. I’m not sure how I found out about the book, The Choice, by Dr. Edith Eva Eger. Sometimes these gifts just seem to appear at the perfect time.  At the age of 16 Dr. Eger was arrested by the Nazis along with her family and sent to Auschwitz. She bravely describes the hell she lived through during the holocaust. Like her fellow survivor and mentor Victor Frankel, she had the ability to bear witness during the worst conditions imaginable. She miraculously survived Auschwitz and other horrors then, after being liberated at the brink of death, faced the ordeal of finding her way as a refugee in America with no money, few resources and unable to speak English. But she persisted through it all being a wife, a mother, then a single mother and eventually, in middle age, she got her doctorate in psychology. Dr. Eger became known for her ability to help people suffering from PTSD and other difficult cases. She died last year at 98. Her stamina and ability to survive is hard to phantom.

As I read her book I wondered if I would be able to survive half the things she went through. She didn’t just survive, she thrived. She came out on the other side filled with light and a talent for healing others who are going through their own dark passages. This beautifully written book pulls you in as it gets deeper and deeper into what she wants to share with us. Dr. Egen provides us with a living example of how we have choices even in the most challenging of circumstances, that we can choose to let go of victimhood and find joy no matter what life hands us. There are many valuable lessons written about in The Choice. I’d like to share a few that I find useful as we navigate these darkening days.

The first powerful lesson pertinent to our time, any time really, is the discovery that love and cooperation were key to survival in the camps not, as some would think, pulling in and focusing on oneself. “To survive is to transcend your own needs and commit yourself to someone or something outside yourself.” This discovery is especially useful for Westerners who are taught that survival depends on looking out for “number one”. This truth that our survival is tied to the community is demonstrated over and over again in both the human and animal kingdoms. The more we connect and support one another the stronger we are both as a group and as individuals. In this digital age we need to relearn real time community connection, the type that brings soup when we’re sick. Real connection with real people makes us stronger and more resilient.

Another important lesson Dr. Eger shares is that running away from our trauma just pushes it deeper within us. The healing path is one of gently and lovingly turning to face our trauma and fear. “To heal we embrace the dark, we walk through the shadow of the valley on our way to the light” and “Our painful experiences aren’t a liability-they’re a gift.” This statement coming from someone who experienced the cruelty and horror of the holocaust bears considerable weight. If someone who has survived watching her family and thousands others put to death before her eyes, starvation, humiliation, and torture can reliably say that painful experiences are not a liability but a gift it opens up the possibility for each one of us.

Another lesson I take away from Dr. Eger’s book that is relevant to our time is the reminder that refugees come to our country traumatized. They are looking for a safe haven. Rather than seeing refugees as a threat to our well- being, we can marvel at their courage and ask ourselves, what can we do to support them? What can we learn from them about courage, commitment and resilience?

We are all part of one human family. How can we lift one another up? The authoritarian powers would have us gang up on each other while they wrest control and steal from the coffers. What happens if we stop long enough to see that we are more alike than different, that we benefit when we support one another. But first, to do this work requires us to be brave and face our own illusions of victimization asking, like Dr. Eger asks, “Within my own darkness, had I found the light?”  I hope you find your way to Dr. Eger’s books and come to see the light within your own darkness.