Studies show that many trauma survivors experience some form of post-traumatic growth—a psychological phenomenon in which trauma deepens life’s meaning.
When I tell people that I had a brother who was kidnapped and murdered, I’m often asked how my parents survived. I was only four when Jon died, so for a long time I had the same question. My family suffered an unfathomable loss. Yet I grew up as free as most kids in the nineteen-seventies: my friends and I biked around town for hours, losing ourselves in the woods, the lakes, the arcades, with no cell phones to find us. When I finally had children of my own, I wondered more than ever how my mom and dad had done it. How had they found the strength not only to survive but to let me go? To read more from David Kushner, click here.