Maria von Trapp (1905-1987)
Filed under the name Maria · September 10, 2026
Maria von Trapp's family fled Austria and rebuilt an entire life through music, eventually settling into running a lodge in Vermont and continuing to perform, a story of resilience that later became 'The Sound of Music' but that in real life was, I imagine, far less tidy and far more work than the film lets on. I lost my own husband Daniel a few years back, and this year in particular I've found myself drawn to stories of people who kept building a life after losing what they thought their life was going to be. Von Trapp didn't just survive displacement; she and her family made something durable and joyful out of it, on new ground, in a language and country that weren't originally theirs. That takes a specific kind of discipline, not unlike research — you don't get to redo the experiment with the original conditions, you work with what's actually in front of you. Her family did that, admirably, for decades.