Julia Samuel’s latest book Every Family Has A Story: How we inherit love and loss is written with warmth. The timing of its release is oddly coincidental; there is hardly any possibility that the author would have known that Russia and Ukraine would be at war when she started writing this book. Yet, that’s all one can think of while reading it.
Samuel is a psychotherapist. She says in her introduction that “the level of influence of one generation on the next is often underestimated. The unresolved stressors of one generation can be passed down to intensify the daily pressures of life for the next… Holding rigid positions is a hallmark of families which are stuck in negative patterns.”
And even in families not necessarily facing an episode as traumatic as war, there could be other adversities such as a terminal illness or abandonment. Of the eight family stories outlined in the book, one man doubts his own parentage and is totally wrecked by it. Oddly enough, some families do survive improbable adversities, while others don't even manage to get through a minor hurdle. The book explores the whys and the hows of this. Lines from the book you will probably relate to-
1. Family is the single most important influence on a child's life and their outcome. They carry that reliable love into adulthood, as it strengthens their emotional, physical and spiritual well-being, which enables them to live a happy, healthy and productive life.
2. Families operate on a spectrum of dysfunction and function depending on internal and external stressors.
3. Families are in constant flux, which is why they are so complicated and why they are such hard work.
4. It is at those peak points of change - like death, illness and separation - that families often falter. It can be a propensity to hold on to the past, fearing the future, that makes family transitions both threatening and exciting, each family member offering different, sometimes conflicting, attitudes.
5. Families in transition, indeed at most times, require us to draw on our deepest reserves of love, patience, self-awareness, time, effort and, of course, money.
One case study in the book is about a family of a survivor from the Auschwitz holocaust. One realises how much dedication and commitment it takes to nurture a family, to prioritise it over other life demands, to hold together in crisis.
“In families most of what is talked about is of no consequence, and much that matters is left unsaid. It means our imagination goes to unknown and scary places: the stories we tell ourselves are full of gaps and assumptions... I came to understand that what is rejected in us, what is exiled to a dark unspoken place, tends to ferment and may become hostile and dangerous.”
It is such a tragedy therefore that the broken, scarred families that are being spawned by this war- are going to take superhuman effort to heal.
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