I finished reading a book by Dr. Edith Eva Eger yesterday. She is a Holocaust survivor, divorced and married the same man, had three kids, started going back to school at 32, and eventually obtained a doctorate in clinical psychology when she was 50-something. It’s one of those books that changes your worldview. When you think you’ve learned everything there is, life comes back to say “Nope, there’s more.”
What cracked me open were Eger’s reflections about her own fears and insecurities which she continued to experience in her life despite choosing healing. Despite everything she went through, losing her parents during the war, starting from nothing, and ending an unhappy marriage, she continued to work through the struggle and do the hard thing. She emerged with hope and didn’t let life drag her down. Through her experiences, I saw myself. They were completely different, yet I could relate to locking myself in a mental prison. Some of those chains are still there but that’s ok, because I’m working on it. Good things time. Like Eger said “Time Doesn’t heal. It’s what you do with the time. Healing is possible when we choose to take responsibility, when we choose to take risks, and finally , when we choose to release the wound, to let go of the past or the grief.” At several sections of the book, I really choked up. Vulnerability, when done with a genuine intention to share and help others is incredibly powerful. Vulnerability means, for me, to love yourself completely, to cast aside feelings of shame and unworthiness, to be ok with imperfection and judgement, and share that with others. When we internalize our trauma and refuse to be vulnerable, we freeze the version of ourselves at that point in time (many during childhood) to prevent from hurting more: the trapped, sad, victimized child never grows up. Until we’re willing to recognize, accept, forgive and let go, we will continue to be plagued by a perpetual sadness. The root of everything is giving ourselves the gift of choice. Even when life seems heavy and nothing goes our way, we have a choice of what we plant in our minds. The thoughts we decide to plant, how we spend our numbered days, that is the life we will live. I leave with one of my favourite quotes from the book:
We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one can take away from you what you put in your own mind.
Dr. Edith Eva Eger