Shadows and Echoes

About the Book

For too long, I hovered in the past. Shadows and Echoes became that opportunity, by pushing my hippocampal button, to re-live past experiences and re-capture the people who influenced me the most. It was time for new insights; for finding answers to the over-arching question: “Why I am what I am.”

Looking at one’s life when in his mid-fifties I believe, is not unusual, especially when there exists a moderate degree of dissatisfaction. Though for most, the past is probably only a segment of one’s life, an interval with fairly well-defined parameters. It is what was and then left there. This was not the case with me, until I began to write.

At the age of fifty-five and in the grasp of the realization of more years behind than in front of me, I felt a need to stop and look at not just where I was but where I had been, where I came from.

Encapsulating aspects of my life and personal influences, Shadows and Echoes originated as a strict narrative, a composite journaling if you will, for the benefit of my daughters. A change in the setting-fictionalized between psychiatrist and patient- added interaction and subtle nuances associated with the psychotherapeutic arena. That change gives the reader a focused relatable appeal. Personally, I found this freeing and to a great extent, stabilizing. The readers, I believe, will share similar ends, whether their “look-back” is joyful, sad, and/or wistful, or some combination.

With religion as the fulcrum, earlier foundations and broader issues are stressed, i.e. childhood and family dynamics and the post-World War II confluence of identity, assimilation, and anti-Semitism. In my late adolescence, for a variety of reasons our family had to leave that safe, monolithic, supportive “cocoon” I had known and loved. It was this breach that seemed to change everything: my academic dismissal from college that eventually propelled me into a marriage prematurely; chronic career identity diffusion; a second failed marriage, and a series of relationships.

Given his centrality in my life, much content was devoted to my father. He was my best friend and mentor, a role model in dealing with others; a “non-religious” man who could combine the religious and secular more effectively than anyone I have yet to meet; the person who men respected and women found charming; and the one who taught me how to grow old gracefully.

In completing Shadows and Echoes, answers begot further questions with the cycle repeating itself a number of times. Some personal influences lost their veneer and became stick figures; many events were seen for what they were-fictionalized and ethereal. The composite gave me at once, a sorely lacking reconnection with my people and religion, along with a firm understanding of its teachings, history, as well as its own struggles.

About the Author

Stan Silverman holds a PhD in Human Development- College of Education from the University of Maryland (1994), where he completed his dissertation on “An Exploratory Study of the Effects of Humor on Depression and Hopelessness of Incarcerated Males.” He earned an MS degree in Health Science Administration from Towson University (1981). He is a retired psychotherapist who was born and raised and lives in Baltimore, Maryland. As a psychotherapist, he worked with adolescents, baby boomers, and the geriatric populations, experiences which influenced his acceptance of causality over the life span. The older population, with its sensitive and emotional retrospection, offered a particular perspective tinged with forks-in-the-road, losses, changes, and regrets; factors that buttressed his own views and gave an impetus to much of his writing. He is currently working on his second book, Mazel, which explores how luck influences our lives in a variety of contexts. Stan has two daughters and a granddaughter.