A valuable manual for struggling caregivers.
The founder of a self-help program for family caregivers shares insights into managing the interpersonal aspects of aiding a relative.
In this debut health book, Gelberg-Goff presents a companion to her Take Back Your Life support group, which advises family caregivers and provides strategies for managing the challenges of helping a loved one. Although an appendix details some of the logistical aspects of the role, the volume focuses primarily on the emotional aspects: balancing the caregiver’s needs with those of the patient, dealing with frustration in a productive way, and setting boundaries. Anecdotes based on anonymous stories from Gelberg-Goff’s clients—as well as her own as caretaker for multiple relatives—serve as case studies for the topics. Each chapter concludes with a series of questions to guide further discussion and action as well as links to additional resources on the author’s website (lorengelberggoff.com). The narrative voice is that of an unflappable and patient adviser, with the refrain “and we breathe” appearing many times throughout these pages. There are frequent reminders that caregivers should be aware of what they are and are not able to change: “Your decision is not written in stone. Each new decision brings you new direction, and each new reaction you feel or receive from others means you get to go back to Step 1 and process how you want to handle this new awareness.” Although the text is occasionally repetitive (Gelberg-Goff cites passages by Julia Cameron about anger eight times in one chapter), the conversational and confiding tone makes for an easy read, with plenty of actionable lessons for overstretched caregivers. The author provides sample scripts for difficult conversations and frameworks for establishing emotionally healthy thought patterns that readers can easily apply to their own situations. While caregivers will still need other resources for understanding the practical aspects of home health aides, long-term care insurance, and assisted living, this guide is a useful tool for learning to manage the less concrete but equally important emotional facets.
A valuable manual for struggling caregivers.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9994011-0-1
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Well Within
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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