A fresh start
Hi friends,
Welcome to this blog. As you can see, I am making a fresh start and am excited about bringing your attention to the subject of family legacy. What do I mean by that? I mean more than the repeated stories and the framed pictures on the mantel. I mean the stories they didn’t tell, the issues they didn’t resolve, the secrets that got buried. Yes, my family background might have contributed to family secrets and omissions more than the average, because my parents escaped from Nazi Germany in the thirties. But I think you would be surprised if you asked your parents questions about their past, before they became parents, before they assumed the familiar identities that you have known.
Sometimes the things we don’t know affect us more than what we know. Carl Jung said that what we don’t know consciously comes to us from outside as if by chance. That would be a good start to describe the manuscript of my new book, a historical memoir that I have been working on for twenty years. It is just making the rounds of the publishing world so I don’t want to tell you too much at once, but look forward to checking in each week and peaking your interest.
Let’s just say that like so many of you, I thought, especially in the sixties, that I could just walk away from my family and chart a completely new destiny. I explored many paths, determined to live fully and consciously, but even going to India and swimming in the Ganges could not really make me free until I turned back to my family past and found the truth of those who came before me. Only then could I actually choose what to inherit and what to leave buried in the past.
I was aided by history. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the door to my mother’s hidden past creaked open. I can’t wait to tell you more and welcome your comments.