Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

by Dani Shapiro

“The nature of trauma is that you have no recollection of it as a story.”

The people who are with us by either happenstance or design during life-altering events become woven into the fabric of those events.

“The nature of trauma,” van der Kolk had said, “is that you have no recollection of it as a story. The nature of traumatic experience is that the brain doesn’t allow a story to be created.”

“Do you know the three great spiritual questions?”

“Who am I?” I whispered and paused. I couldn’t remember the other two. We were silent for a long moment. Outside his office, on the main street of Stockbridge, I could hear the whoosh of a passing car, the chirp of a lone bird. Finally, he continued. “Why am I here?”

“And how shall I live?”

“There is in each of us a fundamental split between what we think we know and what we know but may never be able to think.”