Never Fitting In by Sonia Claire Ascher

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My Journey with Parental Trauma, Addiction, Healing

In 1938, during Kristallnacht, Sonia Ascher’s father was seized by the Nazis from his home in Germany and taken to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. This memoir follows her passage from a frightened child to an adult coping with the consequences of generational trauma that left her searching for answers to lifelong unasked questions. How did Sonia’s identity as a Jewish child of Holocaust survivors keep her separated from the largely Christian environment in which she was raised in America? And where did she belong?

This event and the complete change in her parents’ lives has a profound impact on Sonia. She shows how parental trauma leads to excessive control and silence. Turning to food for comfort, her lack of understanding and fear of what could happen to her, Sonia becomes hypervigilant to perceived dangers. Cultivating the desire not to cause her parents additional pain and sublimating her own needs, it takes Sonia most of her life to develop the inner resources required to become a fully functioning adult. As she moves from dysfunctional behavior to developing her ability to make good decisions, Sonia learns the truth about what her family endured, and matures to a well-adapted individual.

Her life comes full circle when, in 2024, Sonia accepts Germany’s restoration citizenship program and becomes a naturalized German citizen. After many years of searching for her place in this world, she finally finds it.

Year first published: 2026