Finding the Gems: The Search for Meaning in Life’s Traumas and Losses

By Gwen Hecht, PhD

During her four decade career as a therapist, Dr. Gwen has often been asked by patients:

 

"Why did that happen to me?" "Why isn't life more joyful?"

"Why can't I have what others seem to have so effortlessly?"

"Why do I feel stuck?" "Why didn't my previous therapy help?"

"Was I born only to suffer?" "Where was God when this was happening?"

"What is spirituality?" "How can I let go of my grief?"

 

In her enthralling story, Finding the Gems, Dr. Gwen Hecht blends psychology, spirituality, humanism, meaning and purpose in a soulful and penetrating account of her traumas and bereavement. She argues that finding meaning in painful experiences (incest, rape, and neglect) can free each of us to be who we want to be.

 

Each chapter is introduced by a quote and concludes with a spiritual lesson to help you find the "gems" in painful memories and experiences. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gwen Hecht, PhD
• Release date: Apr 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798218161484

Book preview

Divine Love

The mystic swims in the sea in which the unmystical drown.

—Larry Dossey, Healing Words

Mine was a sad and lonely childhood, as I was left to fend for myself against uncaring, cold, abandoning, and terribly abusive adults, both family members and strangers. As my life unfolded, there were too many losses to count: innocence, childhood, opportunities, Mother, family, and losses due to death. By my late twenties, I knew more dead people than live people.

Life would have been unbearable without love. As I look at my life from the vantage point of being sixty-plus years old, I recognize that I was fortunate to have been well and properly loved by three good men and to have loved them deeply with a combination of awe, wonder, respect, adoration, and passion. They changed something about me and what was to come in my life. Each man’s love provided a building block that lifted me higher, changing my vantage point, thereby changing my perspective and helping me to create a vision of what I wanted from my life. I am grateful for the lessons learned and the outcomes changed because they loved me.

And there are the guides, who come to us in many forms. Wasn’t each man my teacher, as I was his student? And was not I his teacher, just as he was my student? Guides to each other, we are changed, hopefully, for the better. Ultimately, that is our choice to make: how will Mother, Father, a lover, or a painful or traumatic experience alter us? Each person makes his own choice in that regard. I chose to align with my potential and my spirit, and I’m grateful I did.

I was a deeply spiritual child, aware that there was something beyond and feeling its presence regularly. I cannot honestly say I saw spirits or heard voices as a child, but I knew there was something more to life than being born, suffering, and dying. There had to be more!

I felt the presence of my soul, and we communed daily. I always knew details I wasn’t supposed to know about persons, circumstances, and events that were to come. Deeply spiritual people frequently told me that I was a deeply psychic person, an old soul, and that I should not squander my gift. The gift of foresight was not something I fully understood, and for the first three decades of my life, it controlled me; I did not control