The Beauty of What Remains: Family Lost, Family Found

by Susan Johnson Hadler

Overview

Where are they now, the lost, the forgotten? With the love in her mother's silence as her guide, Susan Johnson Hadler began a quest to find out who the missing people in her family were and what happened to them. The search led her to Germany, where her father was killed just before the end of WWII; then to a Buddhist monastery in France, where she learned new ways to relate to life and death; and ultimately to a state mental hospital in Ohio, where the family abandoned her mother's older sister years earlier. She believed that her aunt had died—but Hadler, to her great surprise, found her still alive at age ninety-four. And the story didn't end there. Captivating and often heartwrenching, The Beauty of What Remains is a story of liberating a family from secrets, ghosts, and untold pain; of reuniting four generations shattered by shame and fear; and of finding the ineffable beauty in what remains.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631520082
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	07/30/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Susan Johnson Hadler, PhD is the co-author, with Ann Bennett Mix, of Lost in the Victory, a book that broke the silence surrounding mention of fathers who died in WWII and how their deaths affected their children. She has published articles in the Washingtonian, Reader's Digest, and The Mindfulness Bell, and appeared in the Ancestors series on PBS. She formerly lived and taught in Tanzania, East Africa. Hadler worked for over twenty years as a psychotherapist in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

1 Questions 3

2 Twenty Pairs of Socks 11

3 Camp Lucky Strike 21

4 Sorrow Flies Up to a Branch and Sings 31

5 Requiem 37

6 Reunion of the 782^nd 41

7 Old Friends 47

8 The Ninety-Day Wonders 57

9 Arlington 63

10 The War is Over 69

11 Plum Village 75

12 Love is Stronger than Death 85

13 The Obituary 89

14 Waiting in Brooklyn 99

15 Dorothy's Cows 107

16 Small Clues 111

17 Mother's Last Breath 123

18 A Note From the Past 131

19 Stay With Me 141

20 Speechless 153

21 Sandra is Coming 163

22 Shoes for Elinor 175

23 Home Sweet Home 185

24 The Fall 195

25 Cousins 201

26 Last Words 211

Acknowledgments 223

Credits and Permissions 225

About the Author 227

Editorial Reviews

I know of no other book that better accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of showing how to turn loss into gain, or of demonstrating how to create out of absence presence. The book’s heart is how Susan Hadler found out and formed a closer emotional connection with the father she had never known than many children have with fathers they knew. Anyone who's experienced family deprivation needs to read this book, and it is so beautifully written that everybody else will want to.”
—Jeffrey Paine, author of Father India and Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West

“With courage and heart, Susan Hadler embarks upon a difficult journey to find the lost and forgotten members of her fragmented family. Along the way, she uncovers the family’s decades-old pain and sometimes shame—all with the hope of healing and reconciliation. Her story shows how loss, denial, and stigma can drain us, and also how forgiveness and compassion can restore us. Her unique blend of talents—equal parts writer, psychologist, and bloodhound hot on the trail—make for highly engaging and relatable reading. No one who reads this book will ever look at his or her own family history the same way again.”
—David A. Lande, National Geographic senior researcher and author of I Was with Patton

“If you don't believe it's possible to miss someone you never knew, Hadler's quest-based memoir will convince you otherwise. The Beauty of What Remains dovetails the search for her hero father who never came home from war with that of her mysterious aunts. In seeking them, she gradually finds herself, but will leave you pondering the secrets we keep.”
—Megan Smolenyak, author of Who Do You Think You Are?

“The Beauty of What Remains is a heartfelt memoir that reads like a good mystery. Susan Hadler shares the process of uncovering her family's history, including how meditation supported her along the way. A wonderful book!”
—Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness

“Hadler’s search for her father as an adult, a journey that took her to the last places on earth that he walked, serves as a prelude in this meditative memoir to her quest to discover what happened to her mother’s estranged sisters. What she discovers is a legacy of loss and mental illness, with repercussions for the generations that followed. Her years as a psychotherapist are evident in her measured, sympathetic treatment of the struggles faced by those in the family who used silence to cover tragedy. Both an exploration of loss and a celebration of discovering connections, The Beauty of What Remains is a moving account of one woman’s efforts to make her family whole.”
—Booklist

“This book is about the power of absence. Can we miss people we never even knew? . . . This book is also about the power of silence. Why did Hadler not know anything about her father or her aunts when she was growing up? Why was her mother so secretive about her first family, actively rebuffing Hadler’s requests for information . . . . compelling.”
—The Isthmus

From the Publisher