The Choice

The “therapy memoir” seems to be a new or at least an increasingly popular genre – a therapist tells the stories of her patients (in forms disguised for privacy) while threading in her own life journey and what she's learned through her work with others. Dr. Eger's is a remarkable and moving example, drawing on her experiences as a Holocaust survivor and pioneering psychotherapist for a riveting, page-turning, beautifully written and heart-wrenching chronicle of human suffering turned into wisdom and love. What she discovers is that we need each other in order to survive, a theme of the primacy and sanctity of human connection that I'm finding confirmed over and over again in various ways. Recommended to anyone who wants to find meaning in the darkness.

Th first half of this book is about the authors experience leading up to her & her family's imprisonment in Auschwitz & up to liberation. It is the most emotionally rich story-telling of a death camp experience I have ever read. It's amazingly dramatic. I don't think I've ever cried as much from a book as this one.

The second half is about her experience after the war including meeting & befriending Viktor Frankl & her experience as a therapist. I enjoyed this but not nearly as much as the first half. I think Viktor Frankl does a better job as sharing his wisdom whereas Edith Eger does a much better job at sharing the texture of her experience.

‘“My mama told me something I will never forget,” I began. “She said, ‘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.'”‘

“And here you are. Here you are! In the sacred present. I can't heal you—or anyone—but I can celebrate your choice to dismantle the prison in your mind, brick by brick. You can't change what happened, you can't change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose how you live now.”

“This is the work of healing. You deny what hurts, what you fear. You avoid it at all costs. Then you find a way to welcome and embrace what you're most afraid of. And then you can finally let it go.”

‘Today I have been assigned two new patients, both Vietnam veterans, both paraplegics. They have the same diagnosis,...the same prognosis...I meet Tom first. He's lying on his bed, curled up in a fetal position, cursing God and country. He seems imprisoned—by his injured body, by his misery, by his rage. When I go to the other vet's room, I find Chuck out of bed and sitting in his wheelchair. “It's interesting,” he says. “I've been given a second chance at life. Isn't it amazing?”‘