Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

by Dani Shapiro

The idea is that eventually, the sense of I am will dissolve. Once we’re past all our many labels and notions of what makes us who we think we are, we will discover that there is no I—no us. This will lead us to a greater understanding of the true nature of impermanence.

It turns out that it is possible to live an entire life—even an examined life, to the degree that I had relentlessly examined mine—and still not know the truth of oneself.

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.”

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land.”