Synopses & Reviews
Although five percent of the population loses a mother or father...few of us are psychologically prepared for the experience in later life. Death Benefits explores the uncharted territory each of us enters when a parent leaves us, and offers a blueprint for positive change in every aspect of our lives. Death Benefits demonstrates through powerful stories (including the author's own revelatory experience) how parent loss is the most potent catalyst for change in middle age and can actually offer us our last, best chance to become our truest, deepest selves. Safer challenges the conventional wisdom that fundamental change is only for the young; and that loss must simply be endured or overcome. Filled with moving and engaging stories of real men and women re-imagining themselves after a parent's death, it is a fresh, impassioned, and sophisticated look at self-transformation in later life.
Synopsis
Breaking the final taboo, psychotherapist Safer reveals the preciously unexplored opportunities for growth that adults can discover after a parent dies and the grieving stops.
Synopsis
When psychotherapist Jeanne Safer lost her mother, she was determined to turn her loss into an opportunity for insight and growth. Through her own experience, her work with patients, and in-depth interviews, Safer shows that the death of a parent can be a catalyst for change. In this updated paperback edition, Safer includes a helpful resource section, including information on hospice care, rehabilitation programs, and more. Bold, surprising, and compassionate, Death Benefits challenges the idea that loss must simply be endured or overcome.
About the Author
Jeanne Safer, PhD, is the author of The Normal One, Beyond Motherhood, and Forgiving and Not Forgiving. She appears frequently on television and radio and has written for O, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and more. She lives in New York City.