Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Can Change an Adult's Life--for the Better
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Breaking the final taboo, psychotherapist Jeanne Safer reveals the previously unexplored opportunities for growth that adults can discover after a parent dies and the grieving stops Publishers Weekly Psychotherapist Safer appears to be targeting surviving adult children of dysfunctional parents when she claims, "The death of your parents can be the best thing that ever happens to you." Safer (The Normal One: Life with a Difficult or Damaged Sibling) describes her own mother as an unhappy woman who viewed her daughter as an extension of herself; she also relates anecdotes from patients and 60 interviewees whose parents were critical or rejecting, or who significantly impeded their children's happiness and personal growth. In other cases, parents dominated their children's lives because of prolonged illness. Safer offers some perspective along with helpful exercises for adult children to begin to heal from emotional wounds inflicted by their parents. For instance, just as one sorts through a parent's physical possessions and keeps some while discarding others, one can do the same with parents' emotional legacy. Some will be shocked by the central idea of Safer's book; others seeking to free themselves from ties that have bound too tightly will welcome Safer's message: there's no need to feel guilty about a sense of freedom and finding one's true self after a parent's death. (May)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Author's Note ixIntroduction: Life After Death 1Part I Death Changes EverythingChapter 1 My Death Benefit (Autobiography) 11Chapter 2 Death Benefits: The Last Taboo 49Chapter 3 Going Through the Stuff: Choosing a Legacy 63Part II Life Benefits: Body, Mind, and SpiritChapter 4 Using the Good China: Deserving a Life at Last 81Chapter 5 My Body, Myself: Health and Beauty Benefits 91Chapter 6 Till Death Do Us Part: Marriage and Divorce 103Chapter 7 Lifted Up in My Mother's Arms: Religious Epiphanies 119Chapter 8 A Voice of My Own: Creative Self-Expression 131Part III Orphans' Benefits: Seeing Parents with New EyesChapter 9 Father Knows Best? The Punitive Parent Dies 145Chapter 10 Mom's Best Friend: The End of Emotional Caretaking 157Part IV In Morte Veritas: The Insights Death BringsChapter 11 The Eleventh Hour: Near-Death Revelations 171Chapter 12 Perspectives from the Deathspace 183Chapter 13 In Their End Is My Beginning: Cultivating Death Benefits 205Acknowledgments 217Notes 219Index 221
