This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - How To Live A Fulfilling Life with Dr. Edith Eger | 251

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

How do we live a fulfilling life, even in the face of life’s inevitable challenges, hardships, or unspeakable trauma? This episode features a conversation with someone uniquely qualified to answer that question—Dr. Edith Eger, psychologist, Holocaust survivor, and author of The Choice, The Gift, and her latest release, The Ballerina of Auschwitz. I’m honored, humbled, and admittedly a little nervous to speak with Dr. Eger, who has redefined what it means to live with fulfillment, no matter the circumstances. Dr. Eger, a colleague of Viktor Frankl, has dedicated her career to working with veterans, military personnel, and trauma survivors. She was once a promising gymnast, cut from her Olympic dreams because of her religion, and later imprisoned in a concentration camp. In that unimaginable darkness, she exercised not just physical flexibility, but mental and emotional resilience—the very qualities she now teaches us to embody.  If you take away one thing from this conversation, let it be this: No matter what life throws your way, you can always choose how you respond—and you can choose to live a life that fulfills you. Tune in to hear this inspiring discussion with Dr. Edith Eger and her grandson Jordan Engel, and prepare to be moved, challenged, and empowered to live your fullest life. Connect With Our Guest: Dr. Edith Eger Website: https://dreditheger.com/  Book:https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ballerina-of-Auschwitz/Edith-Eva-Eger/9781665952552  IG: https://www.instagram.com/dr.editheger/?hl=en X:https://twitter.com/DrEdithEger1?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor  Related Podcast Episodes: Trauma with Jessi Beyer Healing Mental And Emotional Wounds with Stephanie Kwong Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kalil, and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today with you as the decider. Whatever feels true and real and right for you, whatever has you feel the sun from the inside, that's what it looks like for you to be doing woman's work. And the goal is to live a life on purpose, for a purpose, ultimately so that you live a life fulfilled. But how do we do that? I know enough to know the answer isn't about being happy every moment of every day or having

everything come easy or living in a world of only sunshine and rainbows because that will never be an available option for any of us. So the real question is how do we choose a fulfilling life in the face of life's inevitable challenges, hardships, or even traumatic or horrific experiences? Well, I have the guests that can answer that question better than anyone I know. I'm honored, humbled, and honestly a little nervous because our guest has redefined what it means to live a fulfilling life no matter the circumstances. Dr. Edith Eger is an eminent psychologist and one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors

old enough to remember life in the camps. A colleague of Viktor Frankl, Dr. Eger has worked with veterans, military personnel, and victims of physical and mental trauma. She is the author of the best-selling and award-winning books, The Choice and The Gift, and her newest book, The Ballerina of Auschwitz, is out now. You may not know that Dr. Eger was a gifted gymnast, cut from the Olympic team for her religion and forced to live in a concentration camp, where she exercised both flexibility of mind and body in order to survive. And she is going to teach us how we can, how we get to create a fulfilling life, even in the darkest of times. Her grandson, Jordan Engel, joins us as well as he was instrumental in

the creation of her new book, The Ballerina of Auschwitz. Dr. Eger and Jordan, it's an absolute honor to have you on the show. And I'll be honest that it does feel a little ridiculous for me to ask you about overcoming adversity in my life or in our lives, knowing what you had to overcome. So let me start by thanking you for being here. It's great to be here. Thank you for the wonderful introduction. And Edie and I are excited to be here and give you all the wisdom that we can. Amazing. So let me start by asking, I think when we think about living a fulfilling life, that's easy to do when everything's going according to plan, when things are good and we're happy and we're achieving. But my question is, how do we hold on to hope? How do we choose to

live a fulfilling life, even in the most hellish of circumstances? That we change our thinking, that we give up certain words like always, never, no matter what I do, this always happens, that we have all kinds of prediction. And you change your mind, you can change your life. I love that. So how do we change our mind? Any tips for controlling what I call head trash, the negative thoughts that we have in our own minds? I can only speak for myself. So I don't know whether you and I will agree, but I think what I'm planning to do, and then there is my inner voice who tells me what it has consequences and predictions and that you don't jump into something and you do it anyway because that can be dangerous. And when it's already out, it's not going to come back so quickly anyway. So I think we need to think about our thinking a great deal

because what you think, chances are you're going to do it and change it into behavior that you may not want to have in a future. I think that's great advice. And when I think of thinking, I often think about what's going on in our mind, but there's also the feelings that come up. And I have to imagine, and I'm just guessing here, that you must have felt anger, hurt, betrayal. There must have been a lot of really heavy, hard feelings based on your experiences. Even you, Jordan, I would imagine caring about your grandmother as you do and knowing what she had to live through and even, you know, things that, anti-Semitism that may still happen today. What do we do with the feelings, the anger, when we face trauma or

horrific circumstance, how do we feel those but not let them overtake us? I think what we think is very important to see what it does for me are the consequences of A, B, C. a good talk with yourself, whether it's worthy of your time and effort to concentrate on the priorities and to do so, because once you do it, you're already out. And what is it that you want out? You have your private life, and then you have your public person. And so where is the genuine you? And I think that's important for you to have someone to be a good sounding word and repeat what you're saying. Nicole, one of the things that Edie talks about, and you talk about the anger,

is that she did experience anger and there was rage and there was something inside of her that had to, the fire has to go somewhere. And a lot of people try to just put out the fire inside of themselves. And that just turns into a burning fire that is going to erupt versus understanding that this fire is natural, is a part of who you are, is part of your defense mechanism. And Edie worked in her life to put that fire into her work, into her family, into ultimately writing her books. And it's not ever about removing the fire. It's not about not being angry. It's about focusing that anger and that fire into something productive in your life and into a

purpose that is actually helping humanity and helping your fellow people, rather than allowing that fire and that anger to turn into something which might become bitterness and not helping people. And you look at Edie's life, and it's just a perfect example of how to not whitewash what happened to you, but how to come to terms with what happened to you. Come to terms with it. And then put that into your life work. And it's her facing her past, which didn't happen immediately, mind you. But when she did do that work and came to terms with what happened to her,

came to terms with what happened to her family, that she was able to become the more ethereal, impactful version of herself. See, I was on the advisory committee for the military. And as such, I would go't have anything to do, so I went to the Holocaust Museum. us and showed other countries like France and Germany. And then on the right side was a big picture

meetings by Hungarians and I think I didn't go back there a long time ago and I thought that I saw myself. And I still cannot tell you that I did or I imagined it.

But the following day, I was with my cronies, my other professional, and I told them that I was among the dead, and I thought I was going to just die. But then I held someone's hand, and all I saw was a big lip. So Aisha get up quickly. He was black. He was black. This was when Edie did an interview with Oprah on Super Soul Sunday, and Oprah had the epiphany that Edie was liberated by an African American because the 77th Infantry,

the infantry that liberated Kunskirken, where she was held captive at the end, they worked with an all-black infantry. And so the first time Edie really saw a black face was the moment that she was liberated. Wow. And it's a very interesting and beautiful story about two oppressed people finding each other in a vital moment. Edie, I'm interested. You said that you were with your cronies in Washington and you told them that you had been in Auschwitz. What did they say? Did they know that that was part of your story?

They just wanted me to talk and not to stop. And they were wonderful professionals as myself. We were colleagues. And sometimes I hear from them as well. But, you know, I just had my 97th birthday and I was always the oldest in that group myself. And I'm so happy to get to know you. You must get up very early in the morning. What time is when you wake up? So I am not actually a morning person. I don't get up until 7 in the morning because I love my sleep,

and I'm able to do that. I stay up later than I get up in the morning. Edie, you like your mornings too, right? You like to sleep in just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm hearing, I think from both of you, and I would love if I'm off base, if you tell me, that there needs to be an outlet for these feelings of anger or rage or betrayal or even sadness or disappointment. And that outlet could be, as you said, Dr. Eager, a sounding board or to share your story and your truth and your experiences. It could be to talk to a psychologist. I know you are one

yourself. It could be, you know, to write a book. There are so many ways, but what I am hearing is it's important that we have an outlet for it so it doesn't eat us up inside. Is that fair? I think prevention is important that we can guess what would be the best or what would be the worst and what's in between possibly. And the more knowledge we have, not just information, but possibly who lived through it would be very useful. So you both said coming to terms with it. I feel like there are some things that I've experienced that are easier to come to terms with than others,

but I can't even wrap my head around coming to terms with something like the Holocaust or a concentration camp. Can you share a little bit, you said it didn't happen right away, can you share a little bit about how we come to terms with some of the worst things we've ever experienced or the worst moments society has ever offered. We can come to terms with our children, you know, disappointing us, but how do you come to terms with somebody taking a child and throwing them in the gas chamber? How did you come to terms with that level of horrible?

I did what I had to do to continue a life that I can be useful for others. And that is really the purpose and meaning that I get. Because if I leave this room, who's going to replace me? No. Don't leave the room. They may look like me. They may weigh as much as I do, but there will only be one of you and one of me talking right now. And so I think it's important for us to share, but not share everything to

everyone, you know, to be very useful about, to have an intelligent conversation. I think a lot of times, maybe women especially, were taught or told or inadvertently taught that we lose purpose over our lifetime. That, you know, sort of we peak at a certain point and you are such a great example of aging with purpose and inspiration. I, my understanding is you went back to school at age 50, you're doing a podcast at age 97, releasing a third book. How do you, how do we still have purpose and inspiration throughout our whole lives? It just comes, and I welcome it and ask for more. I'm being challenged, and I like it actually because that makes me think more. And the more you practice, the better you become. Jordan, you're witnessing this.

Anything to add or anything that you can share with us about what it is to see this from the outside looking in, you know, the choices that your grandmother continues to make and the impact she continues to have. She doesn't shy away from a risk. She takes the opportunities that come to her and brings her full self, her full intention to bring a moment of deep and powerful insight. And that is who you are. You didn't learn that from Auschwitz. You are that. And you happen to have survived the Holocaust, which gives you more insight about a certain thing which exists in humanity. But I think the choice is in each of us to show up, to bring it when the opportunities come, and to lean in to the fact that you have something very valuable to share. You don't have to have survived Auschwitz. I didn't survive Auschwitz, and I don't think I need to. I understand sitting next to Edie, the impact that it had. And my life work is to share

what I've discovered from her. And so many people will sit back and say, well, what did I do in my life? What did I learn? And the truth is you've learned a lot and you have so much goodness to share. And the question is, how are you sharing it? In what way are you impacting the people around you? And Edie has clearly been able to do that. And it might feel like, well, if she can do it, that's because she has all, she was a psychologist and she had this, she had that. But the truth is, we all have something powerful to share. And the more that we use our unique, and as she says it, our one of a kind diamond quality, and we share it with our community, all of a sudden, we're going to start lifting ourselves up by seeing that our wisdom is valuable.

And that's what you've done, Edie, is that you continue to see that your wisdom was valuable. And that kept bringing more and more attention to it. Let me ask you, were you teased as a child? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. For what? I don't know.

Some people like me, some people don't. Yeah. That's just a fact. They look for the reaction that you have, teasing you. That's very cruel. That it's human, you know. I think you were beyond teased, right? You were almost killed.

And for what? So you're going to decide to teach people not to give in to anything like... Don't respond to... Your life is cut out. It is. It is. I get to live a very interesting life sitting next to you. You know, when I entered the University of Texas and I was told to go home and write

an essay, I didn't know whether you drink it or eat it or what is it. It says, well, it's like the old preacher. Tell them what you're going to say and then say it and then tell them what you said and go home and do it. And that's exactly what I did. I'm going to say this, I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to bring it in and hopefully I get an A plus. And that's exactly what happened.

So Jordan, you said something that I found interesting. You said that Edie came into the concentration camp with this already existing. And I think I might say this wrong, but I think we might, people, myself included, might try to make it seem like Auschwitz is what turned Dr. Eger into who she is. But the reality is there are so many contributing factors throughout all of our life. So Dr. Eger, I'm curious to learn from you. In addition to this horrific experience, what else had you create such a fulfilling life? What other experiences or choices contributed to who you are? Edie, she's wondering, you are not a survivor of the Holocaust. You are little Ditsuka.

You are Edie. You are Grandma Ditsu. You are so many things in addition to being a survivor of the Holocaust. Multiple personalities. Each phase. You're defined by so many phases in your life. And beliefs are, many people say, I believe in this, I believe in that. I think I like to say I have faith. I have faith that I am hopefully a good person for that person to show up for this person so we can have an intelligent dialogue. And all I have to say is, tell me more.

Tell me more. So that actually leads perfectly to my next question. Where does curiosity fit in to living a fulfilling life? Is curiosity important? I don't think I would have survived without curiosity. And I think that's a wonderful question. And I want to thank you that you're so brilliant to know how to use our very limited time. And I thank you so much and hopefully I think many people are listening to

you as well I think it's very important for us to guide our listeners you're a very good guide from victimization to empowerment. And I think it's okay but not open up your whole life or your intimate life just to be sure that you know that that was necessary and no one did it before. So you're taking a chance that people may not like what you're saying and you may hear from them and you thank them for their opinion. Nicole, the Bellerin of Auschwitz, when we were coming up with what that book looks like, Edie and I.

Can she see those flowers? You want to show her the flowers? Yeah. Okay. Edie wants to show you the flowers that Oprah sent. Oh, I would love to see them. Oh my gosh. I know Oprah doesn't do anything small.

Oh, you all can't see this, but it is a table full of, I mean, the most beautiful flowers you've ever seen. Yeah, it gets delivered by two men who carry it in. And they come from L.A LA and they bring this thing and it's like the biggest, most beautiful, probably 200 roses flower arrangement. Oprah is an amazing fan. Dr. Eager, does that bring you joy? Sorry, Jordan, I cut you off. I love flowers and I love them when they're not totally bloomed as this one was. And now it's blooming totally to the fullest. I just love them. Jordan, you were saying something and I'm sorry I did cut you off.

I want to make sure you were able to. So I was going to say something about imagination and that imagination is one of the parts of Edie's story that comes up over and over again in terms of one of her tools that was in her chest about how to make it through. And from when she was a little girl, she was imagining herself as a dancer. And she would, on her walk to school, she would dance as if she was in a magical place. And then when she went to Auschwitz, she had this, the most challenging moment of her life, where she had to dance for Dr. Mengele. And in that moment, she used her imagination to separate herself from where she was and be the dancer in the Budapest Opera House, a place that she had never performed in her life, but imagined herself there so that she could perform at a level that was well beyond anything imaginable in the barracks of Auschwitz. And then after she survived Auschwitz,

she was there contemplating what the future looked like. And in that moment faced suicidal thoughts. And I don't know if you know this, but the suicide rate for survivors of Auschwitz was very high, was hundreds of thousands of survivors in the year or two after surviving that horror went on to take their own life. And Edie, who had never had suicidal thoughts until surviving, until after survival, and what she says is that it was imagination to see what her future was going to look like that pulled her out of that spiral. And I think from learning what I know of Edie and spending time with her, she spends a lot of time

in her imagination. She's not a talker. She's a thinker and a dreamer. And so her mind is always imagining what is and what could be. Well, and I so appreciate you sharing that. But for the first time, I wish we did a video podcast because when you were talking about dancing, Dr. Eger, you started moving your arms and your body and it was just so beautiful to see. It actually felt like I got to observe you in your imagination and what that must've been like. So incredibly powerful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My last question is about the ballerina of Auschwitz. I've read The Choice.

It's a third book. But what are your thoughts about sharing this with younger audiences? Is this impactful? Is it scary? Is it important? I have my opinions, but I'm curious about yours. I think it's very important to hold ourselves responsible for what we have experienced and what we did with it. I think we owe it to them. It's our responsibility.

So I do that all the time, that today I am living today. I don't live yesterday. I do remember. I do hope that you will not wipe it out either. But it's history. And without history, what would we do? If you forget that, I think it would be a loss because you learn from history because it's going to repeat it

unless we stop it now. I think it's very important for us to let children know and they will come and tell you, tell us more stories, and let me see which one would be good. And you can say, well, let me tell you about the teacher that was not nice to me. I'm still crying about that. I don't know, just whatever you want children, hopefully to use you for their own addition knowledge that they have now. So don't call me a shrink, call me a stretch. I love that. Jordan, anything to add from your perspective of the book?

I think this book is uniquely set up to give a historical understanding of what happened in World War II to the Jewish people, but it doesn't give you the darkest hours of it. It definitely alludes to what happened and how horrible it was. But what uniquely separates this book from any other one that I've ever read about the Holocaust, is how Edie used the Holocaust to discover her strength. And for so many of us, the trauma, the challenge, and the worst moments of our lives, we associate with the thing that kept us from who we are. Where Dr. Eger's book reveals that sometimes it is actually the challenge which shows the strength that you have in you, if only you decide to see it that way. And I think there is so much power and you build so much trust in yourself when you know that you can recover from the worst, the most challenging, the hardest times.

It gives us strength for the future. I feel the most amount of gratitude for both of you being here on the show today. Thank you. I don't know if I've ever been more excited to have a guest on. And thank you for your courage, for sharing with us, for continuing even at age 97, for being such an incredible example. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And for those of you listening, the website is dreditheager.com. The book is The Ballerina of Auschwitz. You can order it on Amazon or go to your local bookstore and let's support them. And also I want to make you aware that there is a live event on November 16th and 17th called Illuminate. It takes place in San Diego, but also has a virtual component.

And we will put all of the information and links to all of that because I know, like me, you're going to want to learn more from Dr. Eager. So again, thank you, Jordan. Thank you both for being here today. Thank you. Thank you, Jordan. Thank you both for being here today. Thank you. Thank you so much. I will never forget you and you can call me anytime and we have another good talk. Thank you.

Or call me anytime. I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. As we wrap up, I think the biggest takeaway here is this. If someone who has lived through one of the darkest chapters in human history can talk about hope, joy, and fulfillment, then we all have the opportunity within ourselves to do the same, no matter what it is that we're facing. And it's not about comparing struggles. It's about learning how to move forward in spite of them. And as Dr.

Eager so beautifully reminded us, we may have every reason to feel anger, sadness, or pain, but we also have the ability to choose how we respond. If you take nothing else away from our conversation today, let it be this. You always have a choice and you can choose to live a life that fulfills you. And really, that choice is the foundation of what I mean when I say woman's work. It's about making the decision over and over to live authentically with purpose and in alignment with what lights you up from the inside. Because when you choose to live your truth, no matter the circumstances, well, that is woman's work.