I Survived: Stories From Some of the Darkest Moments in Modern History

Ruby Ridge shootout, 1992

Sara Weaver, 47, was 16 in 1992 when an 11-day standoff between her family and the federal government at Ruby Ridge, near Naples, Idaho, left her mother, younger brother and a U.S. marshal dead, and turned her father, Randy, into a reluctant anti-government folk hero.

After the horrific days of 1992, I had a lot of grief and deep depression. I’d witnessed things no 16-year-old should. My mom and brother were gone, and my dad was in jail. Our family was demonized in the media; I felt I had no voice. I was living with relatives in Iowa and thrust into public school after being homeschooled. I didn’t always want to be associated with Ruby Ridge. I tried to find my happiness by working hard, being a 4.0 student, getting married, starting a family, building a house and moving on. But I still wasn’t happy. I felt I had tried it all and was still miserable.

During this time, my son was a baby, and I didn’t want to leave him motherless. Because I had lost my mom, I knew how terrible that was, to not have that support system. One very hard day, I thought, What would my mom do? She would read her Bible. And so I went and dug out my Sunday school Bible. I remembered that at our church in Iowa, if I memorized a verse, I earned a piece of candy. In that moment I remembered the verse I had memorized at age 7 — John 3:16. I turned to it, and as I read, the weight of the world came off my shoulders. That began my walk of faith.

When you go through really hard things, when your loved ones have made sacrifices or you’ve made them, you want to know that this wasn’t for nothing. That there’s purpose in what you endured. I’ve spent my life looking for that purpose and found my purpose in God. But I also found it in talking to other people about what they’ve experienced. Listening to their testimonies, hearing their struggles, acknowledging, “Hey, you are not alone.”

My dad died last spring at age 74, and I received so many messages from people who were touched in a deep way by our story. One gentleman wrote with his condolences to say, “Knowing people like you are out there makes the world seem like a better place.”

It’s the same humbling reaction I get when I share my story at different book signings [she’s written a book called From Ruby Ridge to Freedom], church functions, speaking engagements or fundraisers. Practicing forgiveness is another crucial part of my story that others relate to. I feel incredibly blessed to be a beacon to others as I take my own healing journey. If anyone’s experienced trauma, they know I can relate to them. I can see them. I now know that there is always hope and that though we sometimes feel like it, we are never truly alone.

Holocaust, 1944-1945

Sent to Auschwitz in 1944 as a teenager with her family, Edith Eger, now 96, was plucked from the brink after an American soldier spotted her hand moving among dead bodies. Today Eger is a psychologist and best-selling author.

People are surprised, because I lived through hell, that I am an optimist. Even if you’ve suffered something unimaginable, you have the choice to heal. When I was in Auschwitz, I didn’t know what would happen from minute to minute. If I took a shower, I didn’t know if gas or water would come out. But the experience gave me hope that everything is temporary and that if we survive today, tomorrow we can be free.

It would be so easy to get stuck on the what-ifs in my life. What if my parents had used the tickets they purchased and come to America? They wouldn’t have died in the gas chambers. They should have left, but you can’t change the past. When something happens that you don’t like, you have to accept it and figure out how not to repeat it.

Part of that involves forgiveness. Forgiveness has nothing to do with me forgiving you for what you did to me. I don’t have any godly power. However, if I get rid of the part of me that keeps me a prisoner of anger and resentment, a prisoner of the past, then I can have room for love, joy and passion in my life. I tell people that if you have trouble releasing someone who has hurt you, it’s probably because you’re holding on to guilt or shame or judgment toward yourself. If you treat yourself with a gentle embrace, you free yourself from so much suffering.

Some people call me a shrink, but I’d rather be a stretch. I stretch people’s comfort zone. I help show things from a different perspective. For example, there are no problems. There are only challenges. There are no crises. There are only transitions. Nobody makes you happy. You make you happy.

I have three children, seven grandchildren and five great-grandsons. My wish for them is to be active in building a world where we can empower one another with our differences. I urge them to negotiate, to compromise. I am all for cooperation, not domination. But life is never going to be perfect, and just like you can’t get mired in the past, you can’t get hung up on the future. Scarlett O’Hara said that tomorrow is another day, but I look at what we can do today. Every moment is precious. The sun coming in my window. The smiles of my grandchildren. This conversation. If you think about it, this is all we have.

Jonestown massacre, 1978

Jackie Speier, then a congressional staffer, was shot five times during an ambush by People’s Temple cult leaders before being left for dead on an airstrip near Jonestown, Guyana. Later that day, cult leaders encouraged and forced some 900 members to commit suicide, many by drinking poison-laced punch. In 2008, Speier, now 73, became a congresswoman herself, but only after further tragedy and defeat.

Initially it was my grandmother who prompted me to want to survive. As I lay there bleeding out, with my whole right arm and leg blown up, I kept thinking, I don’t want my 93-year-old grandma to have to live through my funeral.

When you survive something like that, you pretty much live with fearlessness. Whatever terrible thing happens, you think, This can’t be that hard. But nothing prepared me for the profound loss and trauma of losing my husband, Steve Sierra, in a car crash in 1994. I was pregnant with our second child, after having lost two through miscarriage. He was the primary breadwinner. We were financially extended. I was three months from personal bankruptcy. I couldn’t breathe. I was on bed rest because this was a high-risk pregnancy. My father came over and I said, “Dad, I don’t know if I can go on. I don’t know that I can bring this baby into the world.” I just missed Steve so much. My father was very Germanic. He said, “Jackie, it’s been three months. Get over it.” I was so outraged. I told him to get out of my house. I didn’t talk to him for weeks. But I understood the message. You’ve got to get over it. I mean, bad things happen to good people all the time. But our challenge is to move beyond it. Not that you don’t grieve, not that you don’t have the loss, but self-pity is not going to get you anywhere.

I’ve always loved giving speeches about overcoming adversity, because I’ve had plenty of it. I lost the first time I ran for Congress, and I lost when I ran for lieutenant governor in 2006. You just keep going. Every time a door shuts, a window opens. But there comes a time when you need to pass the torch to a new generation. My husband, Barry Dennis, looked at me one day before I retired and said, “You’ve been a weekend wife for 20 years. When are we going to have time to enjoy our lives?” I’m 73, but I feel like I’m 42, so I will need to adjust.

Change is important and exciting and necessary, even if the path is not always clear. When you lose a loved one, people don’t know what to say or do. One of the things I did was to pay it forward. A friend and I created what we call the Merry Widows Club. This was over 25 years ago. We still get together. We laugh. We cry. We support each other. It’s a group of 12 women. We remind one another that there is always a way forward. You’ve just got to be willing to open your eyes and see it.

Capt. Federico Gonzales (top row, second from left) poses with five other airmen in his World War II bombing group.

Courtesy Laurence Gonzalez

The Power of Survival

Resilience expert Laurence Gonzales, author of Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, shares the best strategies for coping.

Turn trauma into purpose. When Gonzales’ dad’s B-17 bomber was shot down over Germany during World War II, he was badly injured and taken prisoner by the Nazis. He could have emerged a victim but became a seeker instead. “Dad came home, went to college and became a scientist, and that focus gave his life meaning,” Gonzales says, adding that purpose at any age speeds resilience, whether through faith, sports, hobbies or volunteering.

Savor the wonders. “Even in anguish, you’re still alive,” Gonzales notes. “Stay attuned to that miracle.” Deborah Kiley and four others were adrift without supplies or fresh water in the Atlantic after their boat sank in a storm in 1982. Two crew members who drank seawater went mad, jumped overboard and were eaten by sharks. Kiley survived with luck and a mantra: “Focus on the sky, on the beauty there.”

Worry isn’t an action. Yes, you may be in pain. You might even die. We all do eventually. “Try to move beyond the fear and think about correct, decisive action,” Gonzales advises. Breaking large jobs into small, manageable tasks helps. Stranded alone at 12,000 feet after her light aircraft went down in the High Sierra, Lauren Elder crawled on all fours, “thinking only as far as the next big rock,” Gonzales says, until she found help. “If you’re frozen by trauma,” he adds, “keep asking, What’s the next manageable thing I can do?”

When in doubt, laugh. When asked how his dad got back to life after war, Gonzales doesn’t hesitate: “Humor,” he says. “He would come in from work in the evening dancing with a cane, like a vaudeville act, and would just put us in stitches. He was here on Earth. To him, that was all the gravy he needed.” —D.H.