Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Scars of the Second Generation

I think I finally have found a counselor I can work with and I think I am finally ready to face the issues that I need to deal with.

I come from a family where the generation of my parents and and of my grandparents suffered so many things in just over 30 years.   The world my family knew in 1914 was utterly and completely gone in 1946 with many members dead.   What they had to endure is beyond what I can fathom and they seemed to have survived it well, but it is becoming clear that is only a surface thing and does not represent what they had to do with their emotions.   My intelligent and interesting parents were not very emotionally open with anyone much.   To admit my parents were not great is a huge barrier for me to consider.

The counselor I am seeing, Susanna Hunter, is a few years older than me and a German.   She has the same sort of scars of the second generation in her life.

My goal is going to be to write about what it has been like to be the son of German immigrants that survived World War Two.  I was raised in a country that was the 'enemy' in the war.   I was raised in a society that said over and over again that the Germans were the enemy and the only people I knew that had been in the war were Germans, and they were all decent people.

These posts will be rambling and the intent is only for me to work some stuff out on paper.   More later.

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