What obsessing and letting go can do to our psyche
My mother-in-law Tashta grew up in former Yugoslavia—now the countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia[1], and Kosovo[2]—under a communist government. I can only imagine what it was like…but those images are vivid, thanks to the detailed narratives Tashta has repeatedly shared. This is a story about how her emotional high tides, which crested at least a couple of times each day, changed to a peaceful and permanent low tide.[3]
People respond to trauma in different ways, but for Tashta, frequently recounting what she endured was her default coping strategy. To friends, family, and perfect strangers, she would tell the story of how her grandfather was murdered by the Ustaše, a group that evolved from a separatist movement opposed to the royal monarchy to an ultranationalist organization that committed genocide in the name of creating an ethnically homogenous state.
Here, I should pause to clarify that my intention in this article is not to cast aspersions but simply to share my experience living with a witness to this time and place. The atrocities committed by the Ustaše are difficult to verify with precision and remain an emotionally sensitive topic. Equally difficult to verify with precision and equally emotionally sensitive are the atrocities committed by Serbian groups during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s.
