Sasha and Olga: by Eva Maria Chapman

We totally recommend this amazing, true, healing and redemptive book. It is the extra-ordinary story of Eva's journey to find and heal her roots. Eva was the child of East European immigrants who had survived Stalin and the SS. This is the story, beautifully and honestly told, of her search to discover the detail of her parent’s stories, to re-connect with her surviving relatives, to heal the wounds that can be healed, and to bear witness to the human tragedy which just is. Please Note: That due to the book's weight there is an additional £2.00 shipping charge on this product. 364 pages. "I have had an amazing life and have learnt many amazing lessons. These I wish to share. ‘Sasha & Olga’ my first book, published last year, is about what I had to face within myself to honour my parents- to honour a mother who, from a crazed wounded place, beat me mercilessly as she descended into schizophrenia, and a father, who from deeply embedded bitterness, banished me from his heart for 33 years. I believe that everything that has ever happened under the sun is carried by someone. The particular crucible of suffering in which my parents were cooked, was passed on to me. I am proud to carry it, to bear it, to face it, to transform it. The famines, genocide, social experiments, battles, that raged around my parents, were felt in every cell of their bodies, and they suffered profoundly. I believe that in order to progress the world, this suffering must be communicated and received by another human being. My father took a huge step; he allowed my love in, and communicated his suffering to me in the last two years of his life. ‘Sasha & Olga’ shows how he let this love trickle into his arid and bitter heart and what flowed between us, unravelling a giant ball of suffering. As they say it takes two to tango. Our tango was fiery and passionate and lives on in this book. His suffering was monumental and he had carried it so stoically, had built it into every sinew of his body, so that he could survive. When he at last opened up to me, his heart burst like a mighty river – the tears he held back when his father was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks for non existent gold, the tears he held back when his parents were marched to their deaths by the Nazis, the tears he held back when his beloved younger brother was killed on the Western Front, all burst forth like an almighty dam. Every sinew of his body was softened, every tightening of his jaw relaxed, every bitterness stored in each cell, was released and he died a happy man. I am proud of this achievement. It is a great thing to have done for him. In doing it for him, I feel I have done it for every Ukrainian or Russian who has tried to hide a terrible past. By letting me see his suffering and letting it go, Sasha could move on. Extraordinary that he managed to let go a lifetime of bitterness and find peace in his heart. I was prepared to listen, to receive. In order to do so, I had to give up my own sense of injury, my own attachment to grievance and not being understood, my own catalogue of heartbreak." Eva Chapman Reviews: "Eva, you cracked it! What an example to us all. My eyes are sticky with tears, my throat a bit sore with laughing so loud and my head aches just a bit with sobbing so much and laughing at the same time. Got face ache really! God almighty, how do we survive the gift of life? How can humans ever be put in charge of anything so vulnerable as a baby. It's all a mad gamble and so few make it through to paradise on earth. I stopped at page 220 last night and this morning has been mostly your dad. Sasha was so real, so funny, so pig ignorant, so intelligent, so typically bigoted and caring, stupid and perceptive and tough as old boots and you cracked him. But then, as you so clearly observed, it was always you crying to be free. The biggest of hugs for you my dear friend! What a star you are. A few years ago I went to listen to the Dalai Lama for a few days at some big gathering in London. The kindest man I've ever come across. We all did a thing at the end to generate the mind of enlightenment. We all read out some stuff about going for refuge and this and that and then came to the last stanza. As long as space endures And as long as sentient beings remain May I, too, abide To dispel the miseries of the world. I sobbed for some while in my friend Sarah's arms after I read that bit out. Your book had a similar effect. Good for the heart. Very very good for the heart. And instructive in the lightest possible way. I know several of my friends will love reading it too. Thank you for letting me read it." Robert Gilson. Retired Training Consultant. "I totally recommended this book as a story, as heart moving heart healing, and as an inspiration for anyone concerned with ancestral and family healing. I wept buckets, laughed out loud, was inspired, moved and educated. I couldn’t put it down." Susannah Darling Khan "I was stunned, moved and full of admiration and respect for courage and wisdom of the author and extraordinary aliveness of the story". Jo May, Cornwall "I loved it. I admire the broad scope of it; it's so much more than just a personal memoir. I sighed, groaned, laughed and cried my way through it. Wow!" Wendy Noble, South Australian writer "I am deeply impressed with the scale of the work, its emotional depth and its coherence as a literary product." Wallace McCittrick, Adelaide poet "A vitally important family chronicle and remarkable story of courage, suffering, survival, loyalty and love, An amazing, and well-written catharsis that is rich in research, experience and an abiding love of all humanity both familial and universal." Peter Wilkins, Theatre Director in Canberra Australia "Only the pitiless will not be emotionally moved and affected by this well-written book. Only the most cynical will not be moved to tears. A must read." Chris Schacht. Australian Senator Details   Price: £15.00 Options   Quantity 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  Add to cart

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