I once read how, when Jawaharla Nehru’s father died, three weeks later, a letter arrived wherever he was then living in India. This occurred in 1931, but the letter was dated, February 28, 1926. Somehow, this letter, bearing postmarks of various locations, had followed him, or “lay in some pideonholes,” and finally reached him just after his father died. Nehru’s father had sent the letter five years before just prior to his son’s departure for Europe from India in 1926. According to Nehru, “Curiously, it was a letter of farewell” (Toward Freedom, 186). At this time, Nehru engaged in traditional grieving, reconsidering the joys of his connection to his father and imagining what would now be lost due to his father's absence. I find true beauty in this passage but I share it as much to open a conversation about what we call "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)" or simply Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS), or perhaps the even less severe version, Acute Stress Response (ASR), and how these relate to Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG).
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