Gift : 12 Lessons to Save Your Life by Edith Eger (book club recommendations txt) 📕

free to exercise our own free will. I first learned the difference between negative and positive freedom on liberation day at Gunskirchen in May 1945 when I was seventeen. I was lying on the muddy ground in a pile of the dead and dying when the Seventy-First Infantry arrived to free the camp. I remember the soldiers’ eyes full of shock, bandanas tied over their faces to block out the stench of rotting flesh. In those first hours of freedom, I watched my fellow former prisoners—those who were capable of walking—leave through the prison gates. Moments later, they returned and sat listlessly on the damp grass or on the dirt floors of the barracks, unable to move forward. Viktor Frankl noted the same phenomenon when Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz. We were no longer in prison, but many of us weren’t yet able, physically or mentally, to recognize our freedom. We were so eroded by disease, starvation, and trauma, we had no capacity to take responsibility for our lives. We could hardly remember how to be ourselves.

We’d finally been released from the Nazis. But we weren’t yet free.

I now recognize that the most damaging prison is in our mind, and the key is in our pocket. No matter how great our suffering or how strong the bars, it’s possible to break free from whatever’s holding us back.

It is not easy. But it is so worth it.

In The Choice, I told the story of my journey from imprisonment to liberation and then on to true freedom. I’ve been astounded and humbled by the book’s global reception and by all the readers who shared stories of how they have confronted their own pasts and worked to heal their pain. We were able to connect, sometimes in person, sometimes through email, social media, or video calls, and many of the stories I heard are included in this book. (Names and other identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.)

As I wrote in The Choice, I don’t want people to read my story and think, “There’s no way my suffering compares to hers.” I want people to hear my story and think, “If she can do it, so can I!” Many have asked for a practical guide to the healing I’ve done in my own life and with my patients in my clinical work. The Gift is that book.

In each chapter, I explore a common prison of the mind, illustrating its effects and challenges with stories from my life and clinical work, and closing with keys to free ourselves from that mental prison. Some of the keys are questions that could be used as journal prompts or in discussion with a trusted friend or therapist; others are actionable steps you can take right now to improve your life and relationships. Though healing is not a linear process, I’ve organized the chapters in an intentional sequence that reflects the arc of my own journey toward freedom. That said, the chapters can also stand alone or be read in any order. You’re the director of your own journey; I invite you to use the book in whatever way best serves you.

And I offer three initial guideposts to start you on the path to freedom.

We do not change until we’re ready. Sometimes it’s a tough circumstance—perhaps a divorce, accident, illness, or death—that forces us to face up to what isn’t working and try something else. Sometimes our inner pain or unfulfilled longing gets so loud and insistent that we can’t ignore it another minute. But readiness doesn’t come from the outside, and it can’t be rushed or forced. You’re ready when you’re ready, when something inside shifts and you decide, Until now I did that. Now I’m going to do something else.

Change is about interrupting the habits and patterns that no longer serve us. If you want to meaningfully alter your life, you don’t simply abandon a dysfunctional habit or belief; you replace it with a healthy one. You choose what you’re moving toward. You find an arrow and follow it. As you begin your journey, it’s important to reflect not only on what you’d like to be free from, but on what you want to be free to do or become.

Finally, when you change your life, it isn’t to become the new you. It’s to become the real you—the one-of-a-kind diamond that will never exist again and can never be replaced. Everything that’s happened to you—all the choices you’ve made until now, all the ways you’ve tried to cope—it all matters; it’s all useful. You don’t have to throw everything out and start from scratch. Whatever you’ve done, it’s brought you this far, to this moment.

The ultimate key to freedom is to keep becoming who you truly are.

Chapter 1

WHAT NOW?

The Prison of Victimhood

In my experience, victims ask, “Why me?” Survivors ask, “What now?”

Suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional. There is no way to escape being hurt or oppressed by other people or circumstances. The only guarantee is that no matter how kind we are or how hard we work, we’re going to have pain. We’re going to be affected by environmental and genetic factors over which we have little or no control. But we each get to choose whether or not we stay a victim. We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we do get to choose how we respond to our experience.

Many of us stay in a prison of victimhood because, subconsciously, it feels safer. We ask “Why?” over and over, believing that if we could just figure out the reason, the pain would lessen. Why did I get cancer? Why did I lose my job? Why did my partner have an affair? We search for answers, for understanding, as if there’s a logical reason to explain why things happened the way they did. But when we ask why, we’re stuck searching for someone or something to blame—including ourselves.

Why did this happen to me?

Well, why