The Blogs: Thank you, Udi Kagan

Thank you Udi Kagan for shining a light on trauma. My mother, a survivor of Auschwitz, has suffered trauma. My father, abandoned by his family as a child, has suffered trauma. And I inherited this trauma, intergenerationally. Thank you, Udi Kagan, for shining this light on trauma, thus encouraging me to speak.

Thank you, Udi Kagan for speaking about denial, addiction and shame. For thirty years I tried to stuff my trauma into a box, to deny it. For forty-five years, I tried to escape the trauma via my addiction. During that time I caused a lot of pain to a lot of people. I am sorry. I am also sorry that, unlike you, my addiction was softcore, so I remember, unlike you, every minute of the shame and the pain. But I was able to function and give the appearance of being normative. I am not sorry about that.

Thank you Udi Kagan for talking about bargains we make with our trauma. We leave the trauma inside of us, chained up like a pitbull in the backyard , knowing that at one point the trauma will break free and bite us in the behind. It did for you, after ten years, on October 7. I hope it won’t any more. For me it still does from time to time. But I learned from you we cannot bargain with trauma, we have to admit to all the bad we have done, to embrace the trauma in order to process it, in order to heal. I hope you have found healing. I am still on the journey. You have healed via your art, I am still trying with mine:

Translating trauma

Grant me, my Lord,

in your infinite mercy,

a transmuted memory of grief.

A memory that does not cleave to the trauma,

but distills it.

Because memory tinged by trauma

ripples smoothly over the shales,

It flows above and cannot enchant.

Elusive, it does not engage,

Apprehensive,

it cannot touch