5 min read

'The Choice' by Edith Eger - Book Impressions

'The Choice' by Edith Eger - Book Impressions

Edith Eger, Pub: Rider, Year: 2018, Read: Aug 2022

I scored this book a 5/5.

About Edith:

Edith is an Auschwitz survivor, a mother, a grandma, a psychologist, and a writer. 'The Choice' is her memoir following her experience of the atrocities of Auschwitz.

My Impressions:

I listened to 'The Choice' 3 years ago on Audiobooks and loved it so much I bought the book.

It is a story of trauma beyond imagination, inflicted by humans on other humans during WWII in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. What follows is the slow process of healing, with many lessons learned from Edith’s own personal insights and those she gleaned from her clients.

I was simply left in awe that anyone could survive the cruelty and injustice imposed, and then try to come to terms with the trauma that followed once outside of Auschwitz. “There but for the grace of God go I”. I was left wondering if I would have survived, not only Auschwitz but the deep loss, healing, and acceptance that must follow!

It is an emotional roller coaster of a book, but one I would highly recommend. I will be reading it again someday. For now, this book can find a quiet home on my bookshelf.

In Edith’s own words:

This book is “the story of choices, big and small, that can lead us from trauma to triumph, from darkness to light, from imprisonment to freedom.”
white and black wooden quote board
Photo by Mika Baumeister / Unsplash

10 of my favorite lessons learned:

  1. Despite how bad or horrific our past has been, we always have a choice in the present moment on how we choose to respond.
  2. There is a difference between victimization and victimhood: one is imposed on us from external forces and the other is our perception of lack of any personal control.
  3. No matter what happens in the external world, we can always turn inwards to our minds. This is our private space. We can hear our inner voice of hope. We can change our thoughts.
  4. Sometimes we are so busy focussing on what we don't have, that we don't pay attention to what is right under our noses.
  5. We need to be assertive in our own lives. To be otherwise is to give power to others to decide the course of our lives.
  6. To allow healing, we have to be able to feel and release whatever arises. We have to learn to sit with it, to hold it rather than push it away.
  7. We have to notice when it feels like we need to steer ourselves in a new direction. Maybe things are not aligning with us or our values. Maybe we are losing our sense of purpose.
  8. We need to rise above our self-limiting beliefs and not let factors, such as age, get in the way of our continued growth.
  9. We have to shed all the masks and behaviors imposed by 'expectation' to recognize our true authentic selves that may have become hidden.
  10. When a loved one passes, we need time to stop, step out of our lives, mourn, and grieve. Then, in time, we need to resume our lives and live alongside our grief.
brown wooden figurine on brown wooden table
Photo by Isabela Kronemberger / Unsplash

My 10 favourite quotes:

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." -Viktor Frankl
".... the biggest prison is in your own mind, and in your pocket you already hold the key."
".....dismantle the prison in your mind, brick by brick. You can't change what happened, you can't change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose how you live now."
"...when we force our truths and stories into hiding, secrets can become their own trauma, their own prison. Far from diminishing pain, whatever we deny ourselves the opportunity to accept, becomes as inescapable as brick walls and steel bars."
"Just remember, no one can take away from you what you've put in your mind."
"All your ecstasy in life is going to come from the inside."
"...her inner voice of hope kept her alive, but when she lost hope she wasn't able to keep living."
"The soul never dies."
".....there is no we until there is an I."
"...to be free is to live in the present."

If you enjoyed this, you may enjoy my other book impressions.

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