This week marks the one year anniversary of the publication of Quest for Eternal Sunshine—A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey from Darkness to Light, a book based on an unfinished manuscript my father, Mendek Rubin, left behind when he died in 2012. The four years I spent researching and completing the book transformed my life in significant and unexpected ways. I gained profound insights into my father and his healing journey, uncovered my own history for the very first time, and discovered hundreds of relatives I never even knew existed.

Although Quest for Eternal Sunshine’s launch was overshadowed by COVID and all my in-person events were cancelled, in many ways, the timing felt perfectly predestined. My father’s life story helped put the pandemic in perspective, and his wisdom was especially good medicine during this strange and difficult time. Promoting the book led me to develop the Quest website and social media feeds, which have become ongoing tributes to my father as well as growing resources for wisdom, healing and self-discovery. I am deeply grateful to all of you who have accompanied me on this journey by getting the book, reading my newsletter, or by attending our free monthly events. Thank you!

It’s been seven years since I first began this project, and through it all, different aspects of my father’s teachings have felt most relevant to my life. From his insights about how the human brain works, to how to give up a victim mentality, to the true nature of forgiveness, to the miracle of self-love, to the importance of not compromising ourselves to conform to society’s expectations, to the power of gratitude and acceptance—his lessons continue to penetrate ever more deeply. Lately, I find myself following in his footsteps as I work to change my stubborn, habituated patterns that prevent me from being present and relaxed so I can enjoy life more fully. Figuring out how to “change the script”—a primary focus of my father’s healing journey—has only recently become a primary focus of mine.

My dad was decades ahead of his time in his intuitive understanding of neuroplasticity, which Dr. Elizabeth Stanley, author of Widen the Window—Training your Brain and Body to Thrive during Stress and Recover from Trauma (introduced in my blog, Healing from Prolonged Stress), boils down to this: “The repetition of any experience makes it easier to do—and harder not to do—again in the future.” This explains why it’s so difficult to break long-established patterns, especially when we are triggered or stressed, and why my father’s incredible persistence and patience in retraining his mind eventually yielded such extraordinary results.

In my father’s search to liberate himself from the prison of his emotional suffering and create an inner world that was pleasant to inhabit, he taught himself to focus on the positive and embrace joy at every opportunity. For years, he practiced thinking about things that made him feel calm and cheerful in order to create “new grooves” in his mind that led to delight. “I believe that we all come to this earth with an endless capacity for joy. Psychological suffering only comes later, because it is learned. And because it’s learned, it can be unlearned,” he wrote.

Dr. Stanley explains that with every choice, conscious or unconscious, we are either reinforcing or changing patterns that shape our future. “We can choose to let our earlier neurobiological choices play out their programming. Or we can choose to interrupt this programming when it’s no longer serving us and choose instead to intentionally rewire these structures… No matter how difficult our past may have been, the choice today is entirely up to us.”

My father, a brilliant inventor, discovered this by experimenting on himself. The exercises he created helped him overcome decades of depression and fear to become one of the happiest and most peaceful people I have ever known. He wrote, “I searched for love as someone else might search for buried treasure, with everything I had in me, every day of my life. And I was surely rewarded. Love has transformed my inner landscape, so that now I have only to look within myself to find satisfaction and the source of all that is good in life.”

In celebration of the first-year anniversary of our book, I want to share a lovely guided meditation recorded by Hilary Nicholls for the book’s release day. It’s a visit to a plateau in the midst of a beautiful mountain range that my father called his “sanctuary.” He described his most often used visualization as “a place of rest and leisure where the health of my body and the well-being of my mind were restored and invigorated.” My father said that over time, this place became as real, or perhaps even more so, than any place he’d actually visited. “I suspect that my sanctuary exists on some level of reality that cannot be explained—a place that is open to the public, where everyone is welcome.”

Happy Anniversary "Quest for Eternal Sunshine!"