How Do You Cope With Loss?

I admire Susan Baskin’s courage to confront her painful identity with Judaism (“Out of Hiding,” Oct. 27). Many of us who are the offspring of Holocaust survivors grew up in the shadow of trauma and loss, whether it was discussed or not. In my field of clinical psychology, the term “vicarious traumatization” describes how one can be indirectly emotionally injured by hearing or knowing of the horror that someone close to them lived through. Like Baskin, I have struggled to come to terms with how people can perpetrate such horrendous acts on others and how we are to feel safe in a world where this can happen. The answer still eludes me.

Evelyn Goodman

Culver City