Edith Eger

He was like, he's like, I know you're having a really hard time.

And then he gave me The Choice by Edith Eger.

You know, the book set in the Holocaust concentration camp.

As if to go, get a fucking grip.

That's natural.

But another teacher of mine, her name is Edith Eger.

She was a Holocaust survivor as well.

She says victims, and she said this out of the Holocaust, victims say, why me? And we're all victims, you know, for a period of time.

I had my wife, thank God, and she and my children got me through it.

Then I had my teacher, my mentor, and his name is Viktor Frankl.

I think you've probably many of your listeners have heard about him, but Viktor Frankl saved my life.

Turning to him, turning to his philosophy, turning to his example became an example for me to get me through it.

I've been a victim.

We're all victims.

Another teacher of mine, Edith Eger, a Holocaust survivor as well, says victims say, why me? We all say, why me? When we're in it, that's okay.

Survivors, she said, say what now? And so, Joe, now is time to stop asking why me, and together we're going to say what now.

And there was a, I just read a quote.

Okay, yeah, this is from Dr. Edith Eger, who wrote a book called The Choice.

She had survived the concentration camps and she became a famous psychologist.

And she makes a statement that doing what is right is rarely the same thing as doing what is safe.

I think there's so much to what you've just said.

And, you know, as you were talking and certainly sharing the reality that you're first generation of a Holocaust survivor, one of my all-time favorite podcast interviews was with Dr. Edith Eger, Holocaust survivor who just recently passed.

And I think what I heard from that conversation and what I heard you say is something that, to me, it gives me chills even to this day, and that is the positivity and the beliefs, the mindsets that these exceptional people, through incredible adversity and challenges, what they continue to do to inspire the next generation, what they continue to do to not just have bitter, bad attitudes and, and just, uh, you know, hold-

They didn't wallow.

Unforgiveness is death by a thousand paperclips.

But Basically, that's my point is we have to bring to the surface, like, what is going on with us? What are we thinking? Are we holding on to feeling like someone's wronged us or we're a victim? No matter what someone's done to us, there's a really good book by Edith Eger called The Gift.

She, as a child, she was in the concentration camps and she basically lost her entire family But she made it out and then became a psychologist, I think, something like that, psychiatrist, psychologist.

And at least a year or two ago, she was still living.

And The Choice is really about inner freedom.

And she writes in her book, Dr. Edith Eger, who continued to provide therapy well into her 90s on Zoom.

Her grandson would prepare the Zoom room for her.

She was a woman of great luminous beauty and vitality.