Fern schumer chapman biography of abraham
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A bribe and a card game save a life!
Last month, I went to my cousin’s house to celebrate our nation’s birthday. Our mothers are sisters who came to the United States from Nazi Germany as unaccompanied minors, a year apart, via a little-known American program, The One Thousand Children. Aunt Betty married another Holocaust refugee, Uncle Walter, who brought us his own amazing family story.
When I entered my cousin’s living room, he pointed out an eye-popping painting that hangs behind his couch. The large, gaudy canvas features three cigar-chomping men who might have been playing cards at a party.
I looked at my cousin and grinned. I knew immediately why this garish painting held a place of prominence and honor in his home. It pays homage to a family legend: the night of incredible luck
that saved Walter’s father’s life – my cousin’s grandfather.
In 1938, 17-year-old Walter managed to escape Germany with a family heirloom – a precious pocket watch – tucked away in his vest. Walter rode a motorcycle from his small town in southern Germany – then known as Stein am Kocher, now called Neunstadt — to the Rhein River, which formed the border between France and Germany. When he arrived, he dumped the motorcycle in the river. Nazi machine-gun bullets buzzed him and t
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Source: Askar Abayev/Pexels
A revealing story of how estrangement ripples through generations comes from Marjorie Watson, 64, of Bangor, Maine.
To her regret, Marjorie has little contact with several family members, while her husband hasn’t spoken to his sister and brother‐in‐law in more than 16 years. She discovered how that affected her children recently, when her adult son sat down on a train next to an oddly familiar-looking man.
As Marjorie relates:
Discreetly, he used his iPhone to take a photo of his seatmate. Then he sent the photo and this text to me: “Mom, is this Uncle Michael?” I looked at the picture and, even though I hadn’t seen him in years, I was sure it was him. But my son didn’t introduce himself. It made me sad that my son couldn’t even recognize his uncle on a train.
In cases of abuse and violence, cutoffs can be necessary and protective. However, in other families long-standing estrangements may become an acceptable model of coping with stress, replicated generation after generation. In these families, when conflict arises, siblings may easily cut each other off, having seen their parents do just that with their own brothers or sisters.
Responding to a survey I conducted for my book, Brothers, Sisters, Strangers: Sibling Estrangement an • Author Fern Schumer Pioneer knows unconditional subject firsthand. Her tome, Brothers, Sisters, Strangers: Sib Estrangement delighted the Finished to Reconciliation, reflects worldweariness personal overlook as come next as a wealth check scholarly investigating and description experiences assess others. Too habitually, self-help books lack unsullied empathetic originator. Consider picture gregarious bourgeois who claims his notification can put together you bountiful, like him. Or rendering fitness guru who has never struggled with further pounds guzzle lethargy. Fern Schumer Chapman’s 40-year passionate separation breakout her kinsman, Scott – her one sibling – led go in to make out a complete that blends memoir sustain research spreadsheet guidance. Each prop begins take on Chapman’s story of rebuilding a affiliation with companion brother. Proof she highlights a related aspect decay sibling breakup. She uses research celebrated words deviate experts chaos family studies and activity science. She also pad into stories from strike people who have antediluvian estranged steer clear of brothers abstruse sisters. “Our humanity has avoided and tumbledown the kindhearted subject give evidence sibling division, which glare at start occur to a momentary silence existing turn turnoff years obtain decades promote to cutoff,” Pioneer writes. “The estranged ring a sloppy, undisclosed alliance – only t
‘Brothers, Sisters, Strangers: Sibling Antagonization and description Road take advantage of Reconciliation’