Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

by Susan Cain

Early in her career, when Yehuda was studying post-traumatic stress disorder, she and her colleagues set up a clinic for Holocaust survivors at Mount Sinai hospital in New York City. Their intention was to serve the survivors themselves, but that’s not what happened. The survivors, who tended to feel that no clinician could understand their experiences, stayed home. It was their children who showed up. The lives of these children—most of whom were now middle-aged—turned out to have a unique pattern. They still felt troubled, decades later, by having witnessed their parents’ grief. They felt an overwhelming pressure to live for those who had perished. And they had difficulty with separation—especially from their parents. Most people in their forties and fifties identify as someone’s partner or parent. But this group still described themselves as so-and-so’s son or daughter. They lived in the shadow of their mothers and fathers.