My rab­bi talks about our tal­ents as bless­ings. ​“Use them share them enjoy them,” she says. That’s pre­cise­ly what I wasn’t doing. I had every­thing I’d ever want­ed but I felt trapped behind a scrim, like the smoked glass of an antique mir­ror with life on the oth­er side, tan­ta­liz­ing and remote. I had been sex­u­al­ly abused and bat­tered when I was a teenage dancer and my fam­i­ly — a vol­canic father and remote moth­er — didn’t want to know. Many years lat­er, when my old­er daugh­ter teetered on the brink of ado­les­cence, my fears swarmed around me like furies, the result of PTSD, threat­en­ing to alien­ate both my chil­dren and destroy my mar­riage. Then one night I dis­cov­ered the obit­u­ary of a stranger, radi­ant and beloved, who HAD killed her­self at age 27. Why would some­one so ​“bril­liant” and ​“beguil­ing” com­mit sui­cide? As I began to unrav­el her mys­tery I dis­cov­ered star­tling truths about myself as a woman, wife, and moth­er— and as a sur­vivor deter­mined to con­vert the pain of the past into lib­er­a­tion and joy.