by Edith Eger
With Tracy’s blessing, Daniel moved to be closer to his family. They planned for Tracy to move, too, to be near Joseph and far away from the chaos of abuse and addiction at home. In the meantime, Daniel regularly drove Joseph to visit her, and she sometimes traveled to see them. She seemed a ghost of herself—deep shadows under her eyes, her body somehow lethargic yet agitated. But when Daniel expressed concern, she was dismissive, face taut and eyes vacant.
And then she went missing.
No one knows the exact day she disappeared. Some say she had been in the company of a drug dealer. Joseph was five the last time he saw his mother.
“It was shocking,” Daniel told me. “Mind-boggling. She was an accomplished woman. Her community looked to her for help in the environmental field. I’d always known her to be a great person. When I look back at it now, I guess all those things were lying buried, never dealt with, catching up.”
He’d been grieving already—for the loss of his best friend as a life partner, the loss of their marriage, the loss of his coparent. But now the grief was absolute—and ominous. Tracy was gone all of a sudden, and forever. No one would likely ever know why. She’d become one of countless missing and murdered indigenous women in the United States and Canada, where indigenous women face murder rates as much as ten times the national average.
Daniel felt like he was spinning through a revolving door, recounting all the ways he’d failed her—every hurtful thing he’d ever said or done or been a part of, all the ways he’d missed understanding just how alone and out of place she must have felt in the world. He was surprised to find that her disappearance stirred up his own older grief, things he didn’t realize were still festering inside, unhealed—the ways he hadn’t known or accepted himself as a child, the onslaught of racism he’d experienced in school, the years he’d spent hating himself and contemplating suicide, the trouble he’d always had communicating his desires and boundaries. He’d been taught to be tough, to carry on, isolate, shut down his feelings, all in the guise of moving forward and onward. It was the same now. Well-intentioned people told him to toughen up and be a man, that she was in a better place now, that God had a plan.
These things may be true. “But they don’t help you get the pain and turmoil out of your body,” he said.
For three years, grief pushed him to his knees and held him underground.
“I could work and laugh and function,” he said, “but I was on cruise control a lot of the time.” If something triggered him, the bad feeling would last for days or weeks. Saddest of all, he knew he had no tools to help Joseph work through his emotions.
There didn’t seem to be a way out. He consciously accepted that he would be depressed and unhappy the rest of his life.
But what he was willing to accept for himself, he couldn’t accept for his son. His love for Joseph was his saving grace, the catalyst that allowed change to come about.
In order to better guide his son, Daniel started reading about grief. Reading led to talking. He started therapy, and in doing his own grief work, he found a new professional calling, completing a grief-therapy certification program and envisioning the life he wanted, unwaveringly repeating and believing it would happen, even if he didn’t know how.
Now Daniel works with Child and Family Services and also runs boys’ grief groups in the public schools, counseling troubled children and teens, many of whom have been in care since they were two or three. He says that a lot of grief work is about being quiet—about holding space. Sometimes he and the boys go for walks, or build a fire outside, or sit in silence at McDonald’s.
“My career keeps me practicing,” he said. “Helping others through the forest I walked through, I’m always reflecting, doing my own constant tending, keeping Tracy in my heart, staying aware of where I am and how I’m doing.”
In my experience, grief brings us together—or it pushes us apart. Either way, we’re never the same. Daniel is a beautiful example of how it’s possible for grief to guide us in a positive direction.
And his story reminds us that grief isn’t something you only do once. Grief will always be a part of their lives and relationship. And as Joseph grows and matures, Daniel will have to figure out all over again how to talk to him about his mother. There will always be questions with no answers.
Some things you’ll never understand. Don’t even try to.
There are so many reasons why—why this or that happened, or didn’t; why we are where we are; why we do what we do. Grief forces us to get clear about what’s my business, what’s your business, and what’s God’s business.
When the kapo at Auschwitz pointed at the smoke rising from the crematorium and said, “You can start talking about your mother in the past tense. She’s already dead,” my sister Magda told me, “The spirit never dies.” She’s right. When I go and speak at a school, I’m doing it out of love for my parents, so I can keep their memories alive, to learn from the past so we don’t repeat it.
And I talk to my parents. Not in the bereft way my mother called on her mother for help. But to cultivate the place in my heart where their spirits still live. To call them to witness how rich and full my life is—to see what they allowed to grow and thrive in the world.
I inherited my father’s taste for fashion and couture, and every time I get dressed, I say to him, “Papa, look at me! You always said I was going to be the best-dressed girl in town.” When I put myself together well, when I feel that contentment and chutzpah, it’s a ritual of celebration for my father.
To my mother, I offer thanks. For her wisdom, for how she taught me to find the power within. I even thank her for the times she told me, “I’m glad you have brains, because you have no looks”! Thank you, Mama, for doing the best with what you had. Thank you for the strength you had to take care of your drunk, grief-stricken father, to feed and nourish your family and ours. Thank you for inspiring me to discover my inner resources. I love you. I’ll never forget you.
Grieving is difficult, but it can also feel good. You can revisit the past. You can even embrace it. You’re not stuck there. You’re here now. And you’re strong.
You can come to terms with what was and what wasn’t. And you can concentrate not on what you lost, but on what is left: the choice to live every moment as a gift, to embrace what is.
KEYS TO FREE YOURSELF FROM UNRESOLVED GRIEF
Let the dead be dead. Grief changes, but it doesn’t go away. Denying your grief won’t help you heal—nor will it help to spend more time with the dead than you do with the living. If someone you love has died, give yourself thirty minutes every day to honor the person and the loss. Take an imaginary key, unlock your heart, and free your grief. Cry, yell, listen to music that reminds you of your loved one, look at pictures, read old letters. Express and be with your grief, 100 percent. When the thirty minutes have passed, tuck your loved one safely inside your heart and get back to living.
The spirit never dies. It’s possible for grief to guide us in a positive direction, toward a life with more joy and meaning and purpose. Talk to the loved one who has passed. Say what you’re thankful for: the memories you cherish, the skills he or she taught you, the gifts you carry with you because that person touched your life. Then ask, “What do you wish for me?”
Chapter 7 NOTHING TO PROVE
The Prison of Rigidity
When a couple tells me they never fight, I say, “Then you don’t have intimacy, either.”
Conflict is human. When we avoid conflict, we’re actually moving closer to tyranny than to peace. Conflict itself isn’t imprisoning. What keeps us trapped is the rigid thinking we often use to manage conflict.
The prison bars of rigid thinking can be hard to recognize because they’re often gilded in good intentions. Many people seek me out for therapy because they want to improve their relationships—to find a better way to communicate with their partners or children, to have more peace and intimacy. But often I discover that they’re not in therapy to learn how t
o negotiate conflict; they want my help in convincing others to conform to their point of view. If you come in with an agenda, if you’re keeping score or trying to change someone else, then you’re not free. Freedom is when you embrace your power to choose your own response.
My patients say it all the time: “I want him to…” or, “I want her to…” But you can’t want something for another person. You can only discover what’s right for you.
This is one of the most important tools for managing conflict: stop denying someone else’s truth. I love a good tongue sandwich. But my friend says, “How can you eat that? I get sick just thinking about it.” So who’s right? He’s right for him, and I’m right for me. You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to give up your truth—and please don’t ever do that! Freedom comes in letting go of the need to be right.
When I realized decades after the war that in order to heal I had to go back to Auschwitz and face the past, I invited my sister Magda to come with me. We had kept each other alive when we were prisoners; we had been each other’s reason to live. I wanted to go back with her to the place where our parents were murdered. To face what happened, to grieve, to be at the site of constant terror and death and say, “We made it!” But she thought I was an idiot. Who would willingly return to hell? My sister, the only person on the planet who shared so much with me, the person to whom I credit my very survival, had a completely different response to our common experience. And neither one of us is wrong or right, better or worse, healthier or unhealthier. I’m right for Edie, Magda’s right for Magda. We are both human—beautiful and fallible, no more, no less. And we’re both right. I went back to Auschwitz alone.
This is what I think Jesus meant when he advised us to “turn the other cheek.” When you turn the other cheek, you look at the same thing from a new perspective. You can’t change the situation, you can’t change someone else’s mind, but you can look at reality differently. You can accept and integrate multiple points of view. This flexibility is our strength.
It’s what allows us to be assertive—not aggressive or passive or passive-aggressive. When we’re aggressive, we decide for others. When we’re passive, we let others decide for us. And when we’re passive-aggressive, we prevent others from deciding for themselves. When you’re assertive, you speak in statements. When I wanted to go back to school, I was afraid of Béla’s opinion, afraid he would resent my time away from the family, afraid he wouldn’t like us being introduced as “Dr. and Mr. Eger.” But when you’re a whole person, an adult, you don’t have to ask anyone’s permission. So don’t put your life in someone else’s hands. Just make a statement: “I’ve decided to go back to school and get my doctorate.” Give the other person the information and freedom they need to be assertive about their wants and hopes and fears.
The key to maintaining your freedom during a conflict is to hold your truth while also relinquishing the need for power and control.
It helps when we can meet others as they are, not as we expect them to be. I have a patient who is often in conflict with his teenage daughter. One session, he was upset because when they’d escalated into a fight about whether or not she could use the car, his daughter blew up at him, calling him names and using profanity. He wanted me to be the judge, to hear the evidence and pronounce his daughter guilty, to take his side. But we don’t empower others—or ourselves—when we launch into complaints, when we say here’s-what-you-did this, here’s-what-you-did that. No one grows with criticism. So eliminate it. No criticism. None, ever.
We do this for others, but most of all for ourselves, so we can live free of unrealistic expectations, and free of the anger that comes when our expectations are not met. I’m very selective about who’s going to get my anger, because when I’m angry, I’m the one who suffers.
Unhealthy conflict has everything to do with being locked in a better-than, less-than mind-set. When Béla and I were traveling in Europe one summer, we discovered that the Bolshoi Ballet tour was scheduled to come through Paris while we were there. I’d always dreamed of seeing them perform. Béla bought me a ticket and dropped me off at the theater, but wouldn’t go inside. I thought it was about the money—that he didn’t want to spend more on a second ticket. I came out at intermission, entranced by the performance, and encouraged him to come in for the second half. “There are open seats,” I said. “Get a ticket and come enjoy this with me.” But he wouldn’t go in. “I don’t give money to Russians,” he said. “Not after what the Communists did to me in Czechoslovakia.” He’d convinced himself that this was how he could avenge the cruelties and imprisonment he’d suffered. I argued with him, urged him to reconsider, told him, “These artists have nothing to do with what happened to you.” But of course I couldn’t change his mind. I went back into the theater and enjoyed the rest of the performance, for me. On one hand, it’s too bad he couldn’t set aside his judgment and anger, and sit with me in the dark, enjoying something breathtakingly beautiful. On the other hand, I can’t say my way was better than his way. Béla’s way was better for Béla, my way was better for me.
Many of us live as though we have something to prove. We can become addicted to having the last word. But if you’re trying to prove that you’re right or you’re good, you’re trying to make yourself into something that doesn’t exist. Every human is fallible. Every human makes mistakes. You’re not helpless—and you’re not a saint, either. You don’t have to prove your worth. You can just embrace it, celebrate that you’re imperfect and whole, that there will never be another you. Drop the agenda. If you have something to prove, you’re still a prisoner.
This is even true in the face of someone else’s unkindness or persecution.
My friend’s daughter came home from kindergarten very upset because her classmate had called her “poopy-face.” My friend asked me how she could help her daughter deal with the conflict. It’s important that we give up the need to defend ourselves. We’re all probably going to face bullies. But if someone calls you a poopy-face, don’t say, “I’m not a poopy-face!” Don’t defend yourself against a crime you never committed. It just becomes a power struggle. The bully throws you a rope, you pick up the other end, and you’re both tugging and exhausted. It takes two to fight. But it takes one to stop. So don’t pick up the rope. Tell yourself, “The more he talks, the more relaxed I become.” And remind yourself that it’s not personal. When someone calls you “poopy-face” he’s really talking about how he sees himself.
I lectured once at the Satyagraha House in Johannesburg—a home where Mohandas Gandhi once lived, now a museum and retreat center. He was able to bring the British Empire to its knees, without any bloodshed, without the rhetoric of hate.
This is one of the ways I was able to survive Auschwitz. I was surrounded every moment by dehumanizing words—you’re worthless, you’re dirty, the only way you’ll leave this place is as a corpse. But I didn’t let the words penetrate my spirit. Somehow I was blessed with the insight that the Nazis were more imprisoned than I was. I first understood this the night I danced for Mengele. My physical body was trapped in a death camp, but my spirit was free. Mengele and the others would always have to reckon with what they’d done. I was numb with shock and hunger, I was terrified of being murdered, but I still had an inner sanctuary. The Nazis’ power came from systematic dehumanization and extermination. My strength and freedom were within.
Joy is a wonderful role model for how to dissolve rigid thinking. For many years, she was married to an abusive man. He treated her with disdain and contempt, hurting her verbally and financially, regularly threatening her with a gun to her head. She survived by keeping journals, meticulously cataloguing their interactions, what each of them said and did. It was a bid for sanity—keeping track of the truth day by day.
When I work with a patient who is in an abusive relationship, I always say: If your partner ever hits you, leave right away. Go to a transitional living center. Stay with a friend or relative. Take the kids, ask for help, and
get out.
If you don’t leave the first time, the abuser isn’t going to take you seriously. And each instance of abuse will make it harder and harder to leave. The violence will usually get worse the longer you stay. And it will get more difficult to reverse the psychological aspects of the abuse, the things the abuser wants you to believe—that you’re nothing without him, that when he hits you, it’s your fault. Every minute you stay, you’re putting yourself in harm’s way. You are much too precious for that!
When someone hits you, it’s an instant wake-up call. You know what you’re dealing with. It isn’t easy to leave, but once you have the awareness of your partner’s capacity and tendency for violence, the problem is 50 percent solved. When the abuse is more covert and psychological, you may doubt what you see. You may ask, “Is this really happening to me?” If someone physically harms you, you know. Yes, it’s happening. Yes, I’ve got to go.