Summary

This chapter is sub-titled “The One I Become Will Catch Me.” The author frames her considerations of post-traumatic futures with the story of Joe Kasper, whose young son died three years after being diagnosed with a fatal form of epilepsy. In the aftermath of his son’s death, the author writes, Kasper went to graduate school to learn everything he could about recovery from trauma, and resolved to apply what he learned to living.

The author juxtaposes Kasper’s experience with research by Adam Grant (who was one of Kasper’s professors) that defined a perhaps surprising consequence of trauma in parents whose children had died. “It seems hard to believe,” the author writes, “but as time passed, instead of post-traumatic stress, some of the parents experienced post traumatic GROWTH” (78). That growth, she goes on to say, took several forms: “… finding...