I don't know if this would potentially trigger anyone, thus the trigger icon on the post. Hopefully not, but reading about Holocaust survivors tends to make me cry ... so...

I recently read a book about the Jewish Resistance during WW2. It was really interesting. I went online and started reading stories about Holocaust survivors, and our local community paper had a few interviews recently.

Everything I'm reading sounds *horrible*. Horrible is too nice of a word. It sounds unbelievably, life-changing-ly awful. Just... mind-blowing awfulness. It's so hard for me to wrap my head around how people behaved at the time, the amount of... not just killing, but really senseless killing and callousness.

But, as I'm still struggling with my own therapy, something occurred to me. I'm reading stories about people who literally lost their entire families. People who escaped death camps, labor camps, starvation, gas chambers. People who had *everything* taken from them, every possession they owned, every dignity.

And, not one of them talked about therapy as a way of recovery. Not one of them said, "I am so thankful that I had a wonderful, kind therapist who helped me process all of this pain, so that I could go on and create a beautiful, meaningful life, despite the horror that I experienced."

None of them. Is it because therapy is a private enough thing, especially for an older generation, that they wouldn't consider it appropriate to mention in such a public setting? Is it because they didn't ever receive therapy? If that's true, how did they manage to go on? These are people who look beautiful, grateful to be alive, and like they've found a purpose for living. They got married, had kids, found ways to work.

Meanwhile, me with my rather insignificant-seeming-litany-of-traumas, I haven't dated in decades, shirk in horror at the thought of giving birth, can't imagine anyone ever wanting to marry me, hate my job, feel useless and pointless and like I don't fit anywhere in the world, and am pretty much just ready to just give up on this whole planet-earth-thing.

I don't know what to do with that. Am I wrong? How do people go through such a life-changing, huge, global atrocity - and come out being able to make a good life for themselves, without therapy as a way to process and heal? Maybe therapy's NOT the answer I thought it was?

Sorry if this is inappropriate, or weird... just... it's been weighing on me a bit.