So I gathered all my courage and visited the museum. It was every bit as excruciating as I’d feared. I got so flooded with emotion when I saw the photographs of the arrival platform at Auschwitz in May 1944 that I almost couldn’t breathe. And then I came to the cattle car. It was a replica of an old German train car built to transport livestock. Visitors could climb inside and feel how dark and small a space it was; feel what it was like to be packed in so tight you were sitting on top of other people; imagine sharing one bucket of water and one bucket for waste with hundreds of people; imagine riding all day and all night without stopping, the only food a stale loaf of bread shared among eight or ten other prisoners. I stood outside the cattle car, completely paralyzed. Frozen. People crowded behind me, waiting quietly, respectfully, for me to step inside. For many minutes I couldn’t do it—and then it took every ounce of strength I could muster to coax one foot and then the other through the narrow door.
Inside, a wave of terror came over me and I thought I might vomit. I curled up in a heap, reliving the final days I saw my parents alive. The relentless churn of the wheels on the track. When I was sixteen, I didn’t know we were going to Auschwitz. I didn’t know that soon my parents would be dead. I had to survive the discomfort and uncertainty. But somehow, that was easier than reliving it now. This time I had to feel it. This time I cried. I lost track of time sitting there in the dark with my pain, barely noticing as other visitors entered, shared the dark, moved on. I sat for an hour, maybe two.
When I finally got out, I felt different. A little lighter. Emptied out. All my grief and fear weren’t gone. Every swastika in every photograph, every hardened eye of an SS officer standing guard made me flinch. But I’d allowed myself to revisit the past and face the feelings I’d been running from for so many years.
There are many good reasons why we avoid our feelings: they’re uncomfortable, or they’re not the feelings we think we should be having, or we’re afraid of how they might hurt others, or afraid of what they could mean—what they might reveal about the choices we’ve made or the ones we will make going forward.
But as long as you’re avoiding your feelings, you’re denying reality. And if you try to shut something out and say, “I don’t want to think about it,” I guarantee that you’re going to think about it. So invite the feeling in, sit down with it, keep it company. And then decide how long you’re going to hold on to it. Because you’re not a fragile little somebody. It’s good to face every reality. To stop fighting and hiding. To remember that a feeling is just a feeling—it’s not your identity.
One September morning sixteen years ago, Caroline was just starting a load of laundry, enjoying a quiet day alone in her house in rural Canada, when there was a knock at the door. She could see through the front window that it was Michael, her husband’s cousin. Michael was her age—in his early forties. He had been in trouble much of his life—theft, petty crime, drug abuse—and was finally ready for a second chance. Though he’d recently moved in with his girlfriend, Caroline and her husband had been the family members who’d taken him in to help him turn his life around, setting him up with a job and a stable environment. He’d become a fixture in their lives, another trusted adult who often joined Caroline, her husband, and her three stepsons for dinner.
As much as she cared for Michael and felt good about helping him, for a second Caroline considered pretending she wasn’t home. Her husband was out of town, the boys were finally back in school after summer break, and she didn’t want Michael’s visit to interrupt all the things she’d planned to accomplish on her first morning alone in three months. But it was Michael—a relative she loved, who loved her in return, who relied on her family. She opened the door and invited him in for coffee.
“Boys are back at school already,” she said, making small talk as she put the mugs and cream on the table.
“I know.”
“Tom’s gone, too, for a couple of days.”
That’s when he pulled out a handgun. He put it to her head, told her to get on the floor. She knelt by the refrigerator.
“What are you doing?” she said. “Michael, what are you doing?”
She could hear him undoing his belt, unzipping his jeans.
Her throat was dry. Her heart pounded. She’d taken a self-defense class in college, and words formed in her mouth, the things she’d been taught to say if someone assaulted you. Use his name. Talk about family. She kept the words coming, her voice somehow sure and steady, talking about Michael’s parents, the boys, family holidays, favorite fishing spots.
“Okay, I won’t rape you,” he finally said. His voice was so offhand and casual, as though he were saying, “I don’t think I’ll have any coffee after all.”
But he kept the gun pressed to her head. She couldn’t see his face. Was he high? What did he want? He seemed to have planned this out, to know he would find her home alone. Was he going to rob her?
“Take anything you want,” she said. “You know where to find everything. Just take it, all of it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I’m gonna do.”
She felt him move, as though ready to step away. Then he stood still again, gun hard against her skull.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this,”
