Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen What’s Your “Why”? (Rachel Goldberg-Polin)
8 snips
Apr 23, 2026 
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, author and mother who wrote When We See You Again after the kidnapping and death of her son Hersh. She talks about writing through fresh grief, love intertwined with pain, faith and meaning, stories of survival and honor, and how a single why can sustain people in impossibly hard times.
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Writing From Inside The Wound
- Rachel wrote her book while still inside the wound, wanting to give her pain unvarnished rather than wait for distance.
- She describes the writing as words spilling out like "packages of pain" while she was "underneath the truck" with no perspective.
Anchor The Question When Asking How Are You
- Avoid reflexively asking griefed people "How are you?" without a time marker; instead ask "How are you today?" to contain the question.
- Elise recommends that tiny temporal anchors make the impossible question answerable.
Absence Of Rage Is Intentional And Revealing
- The book contains little anger; Rachel naturally goes to sadness rather than rage and wanted to tell the truth of love and loss.
- She sees pain as necessary for growth and compares lack of pain to being born without nervous awareness.
