This week, I just received two boxes of books of the final version of Klara’s Truth which will soon be going out into the world on June 11th. I have to say, receiving and opening those boxes was very exciting! It made me contemplate the reality of what it means for a book I wrote to be released into the world. It means that the story that came out of me no longer belongs to just me, that others will have their own views, experiences, and perceptions of what it means to them. It’s a little like sending a young child out into the big wide world, although with a child, you do it in small steps with lots of guardrails and they each have their own natural level of resilience.

These books will be going out to people who know me and perhaps many who don’t. Their readers will hopefully come from a variety of backgrounds. More than anything, I hope this book helps to expand people’s understanding of trauma. While Klara’s Truth focuses on the repercussions of the Holocaust as a context for the story, it highlights Klara’s individual and family traumas as well, such as intergenerational trauma and the trauma of childhood loss, neglect and abuse. Receiving some early feedback from a few people that the protagonist, Klara, seems much younger than her forty-nine years, and that because of this, it could almost be a YA book, confirms for me just how important writing about the long-term effects of childhood trauma is. Early trauma leaves a person shutdown, emotionally frozen in their trauma at the developmental stage when it occurred, with difficulty socializing with others and having ongoing romantic and platonic relationships. It can leave them in a fight or flight mode as well, whereby they can become hypervigilant at times and fall into collapse mode at other times. In addition, they can sometimes over-attach to others and over-please, or fawn. These are all coping mechanisms they may have used in their childhood to protect themselves and ways in which their nervous system reacted to the trauma. Often, the individual sees other people in their life moving forward not just professionally, but in developing ongoing relationships and potentially having families as well. As with Klara, people can succeed in some areas of their lives, often in work, but not necessarily in others. On top of all these symptoms, the person can be quite confused as to why this is all happening to them.

As a psychotherapist who is also a trauma therapist, I’ve been able to work with clients on these issues in my therapy practice. Through mind/body work, and trauma techniques like EMDR and Somatic Experiencing we can work on  supporting their nervous system, their mood, and helping them manage and grow their lives. We can also talk about setting limits with others especially with family members, particularly with those from their family of origin. However, what I can’t do as a psychotherapist, and no psychotherapist can do, is to create a loving family for my clients. Yes, I can help them make good choices in their lives and possibly in choosing their partners and friends, but I can’t make a family for them that doesn’t exist. However, as an author, I can do this, and it is one of the great joys of creative writing–that the writer can create whatever they choose to. The expression of writing and making up a story as I go along has been an extremely liberating and freeing one.

I’m very excited for June 11th to come, and for Klara’s Truth to finally be released. I look forward to sharing it with you, and to writing more stories in the future. Thank you so much for your support.