In my hands at last

I opened the front door and looked at the package on the doorstep. I knew exactly what it was. My publisher’s logo confirmed it. I opened the package, calmly, and took out two advance copies of my book.

That’s when it hit me. I had done it. I had written a book, a story worthy of publishing and sharing with the world. A memoir based on my life with my mother, The Golden Daughter who gave the book its title.

I had no intention of writing about mama after she died. Our relationship had become strained towards the end of her life. But then I found her secret letters, 55 in all, mostly in Russian. At first I felt translating and reading the letters would put me back into her grip, reliving her dramas, and being, yet again, a victim of her narcissism.

But, after a year, curiosity, and the prodding of friends, got the better of me. I had the letters translated. And what a story they told. My mother was snatched from her home as a teenager and forced to work as a slave in Nazi Germany. She survived bad treatment, bad food, and wave after wave of bombings at the factory where she was forced to work. And after the war, there were the deceptions around her tangled love life.

I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about most of this. So I had to write the story to fill in the blanks on her troubled life, and to find how how her experiences had shaped my life.

So I set off on a four year adventure... researching, writing, travelling to Germany, to Northern Ontario and to Poland to search for my truth. When I wrote, there were times I felt I couldn’t breathe. The pain of reliving the past, of discovering its impact on me, was too much to bear. I wailed and howled at the sorrow, anger and pain spilling out of me at what I was discovering. In those moments my husband would hold me until I was ready again.

As I wrote, something became clear. I was not alone. Mama was not alone. She was part of five million slave workers snatched from their homes and schools by the Nazis. Many, like mama, never went home again. Most never spoke about their experiences. And we, the children of the slave workers, suffered, too. "Intergenerational trauma" is how the psychologists and therapists describe what was passed from the parents to their offspring.  Our stories needed to be told.

I was humbled to hold my book for the first time. It was birthed with tears and sorrow, yet it offered redemption, forgiveness and love. My book and I had gone through a lot together. Writing it had sustained me. We were warriors, and it was my ally. We had battled with the past, and understood so much more now.

The book will be published on August 5. But it is available now on pre-order. There are links on my website, or you can reserve a copy at Indigo, Amazon, or any good bookstore.

I will officially launch The Golden Daughter on September 14 at Pier 21 in Halifax. That's appropriate, since Pier 21 was, for mama, Stan, Frank and me, and so many other Displaced Persons after the war, our entry to a new world and new lives.