My Journey with Parental Trauma,
Addiction, Healing
A lifetime of searching. A journey toward belonging.
Holocaust Heritage · Amsterdam Publishers
In 1938, during Kristallnacht, Sonia Ascher's father was seized by the Nazis from his home in Germany and taken to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. This memoir follows her passage from a frightened child to an adult coping with the consequences of generational trauma that left her searching for answers to lifelong unasked questions. How did Sonia's identity as a Jewish child of Holocaust survivors keep her separated from the largely Christian environment in which she was raised in America? And where did she belong?
This event and the complete change in her parents' lives has a profound impact on Sonia. She shows how parental trauma leads to excessive control and silence. Turning to food for comfort, her lack of understanding and fear of what could happen to her, Sonia becomes hypervigilant to perceived dangers. Cultivating the desire not to cause her parents additional pain and sublimating her own needs, it takes Sonia most of her life to develop the inner resources required to become a fully functioning adult. As she moves from dysfunctional behavior to developing her ability to make good decisions, Sonia learns the truth about what her family endured, and matures to a well-adapted individual.
Her life comes full circle when, in 2024, Sonia accepts Germany's restoration citizenship program and becomes a naturalized German citizen. After many years of searching for her place in this world, she finally finds it.
Sonia Ascher's beautiful memoir is a profound exploration of finding one's voice after years of inherited silence. She takes a deep dive into her parents' Holocaust history in order to understand how that trauma seeped into her entire upbringing. Never Fitting In offers a profound lesson for our time: finding our way forward begins with the courage to look back.
As an only child of Holocaust Survivors Sonia writes about her very personal struggles dealing with the impact of her parent's trauma on her life continuing well into adulthood. It is a story that touched my heart. I am Jewish and have read much about the Holocaust, history of World War II and the Jews, but never from this viewpoint. The book is well written and she is painfully honest and courageous in telling her story.
Never Fitting In is the moving story of the author's life and the impact of being the child of Holocaust survivors has had on it. I was engaged from the beginning to end.
Easy to read ~ Hard to put down! Sonia has a way with words that makes it feel she is telling her story over a cup of coffee. I've known Sonia for many years and this just makes me love her even more! Well done, my friend, well done!
[An excerpt from Never Fitting In — to be added]
Coming soon — questions for thoughtful conversations about family, identity, and healing.
