Featuring Stumbling Blocks by Jennifer Krebs
Each quarter, we will highlight three books connected by a shared theme. This quarter, in celebration of spring, we’re exploring Beginnings, Renewal, and Voice—a path our lives, and the stories we carry, can take.
We often think of a beginning as a starting point—something clean, contained, and entirely our own. Yet many of the most defining parts of our stories began long before we did. They are shaped by the lives that came before us, by experiences we didn’t choose, and by stories we inherit rather than create.
In Stumbling Blocks, Jennifer Krebs reflects on her own life through the lens of her father’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor. Though Jennifer was born into a time of relative peace, her story—like all of our stories—did not begin in isolation. It was influenced by what came before.
Many of us have heard some version of, “You have it so much easier” (like walking two miles to school in snow uphill both ways). In many ways, that may be true, but in many ways, it’s also probably not. But whether it’s true or not, this relative “ease” doesn’t erase the past.
Our stories do not begin the moment we leave our mother’s wombs to enter the world; they have this backstory influenced by the preceding people, experiences, and histories—sometimes in ways we understand, and sometimes in ways we are only beginning to recognize. What we carry is not always visible, but it is often deeply felt. The obstacles, histories, and “stumbling blocks” we encounter—whether tangible or not—are inevitably part of our stories’ foundation.
Stumbling Blocks invites us to reconsider those early influences, not simply as burdens, but as shaping forces. It reminds us that even the most difficult origins are not separate from who we become, but they shape what we become, not only by their simple existence, but by how we react and what we chose to do with them.