Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

by Dani Shapiro

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.

Bessel van der Kolk: “The nature of trauma is that you have no recollection of it as a story.”

In Hebrew the word for soul is neshama. It is variously translated as wind, or breath. Try to capture it and it disappears.

If not for him, I would never have been born. I was connected to him on the level of neshama, which had nothing to do with biology, and everything to do with love.

I silently call to him, a Hebrew word—hineni. Here I am. Hineni, uttered only eight times in the entire Torah, is less a statement of personal geography than an expression of presence and pure attentiveness.