Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Can Change an Adult's Life--For the Better [Hardcover]

Jeanne Safer Ph.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 29, 2008

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.

Editorial Reviews

From 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)
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Review

"AARP Bulletin Today"
"Equal parts anecdotal, autobiographical and self-help, Death Benefits offers readers a new way to grieve--and grow in the process."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (April 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465072119
• ISBN-13: 978-0465072118
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #819,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, Free yourself of Guilt, May 5, 2008

By 

Heritage Group Home "PhotoBuff" (Los Angeles, Ca) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Can Change an Adult's Life--For the Better (Hardcover)

This book really touched my heart and after discussion with friends about it, I learned that so many shared the sentiments of the author but did not have the courage to talk about it because it would appear they don't love their parents or wish them dead. The author makes very important and courageous points regarding emotions and how a new phase in life really starts once our parents have moved on. It is valid, emotional and so very true. I felt a lightness and freedom after reading it and feel more comfortable sharing this info with my friends. I am not happy that my parents are deceased but I am truly joyous about the new life I discovered after I stopped having to structure my life around their care and well being. It is was a freeing and liberating feeling to focus on my own needs and the needs of my children, when in the past, parents needs were so demanding and time intensive, I was always living feeling guilty about not serving them enough or guilty about not being able to focus on kids. It was simply too much for an only child. I am thankful for this book ~ It is a treasure

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not much of a benefit, December 18, 2008

By 

William T. Barto (Fairfax, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Can Change an Adult's Life--For the Better (Hardcover)

The author has done a great service by sharing her advice on how to endure and possibly benefit from the death of a parent. She recommends that someone seeking to benefit from the passing of a parent take three main actions: construct a narrative history of your parent's life, conduct a psychological inventory of your parent's character, assessing which parts of the legacy you wish to keep or discard; and actively seek new experiences and relationships based upon one's experience and decisions based upon the narrative and inventory. The four-part "psychological inventory of your parent's character" was the most useful part of the book for me. Having recently lost a parent, it was very helpful to me to realize that I have some control over which parts of a parental legacy I retain. That being noted, I cannot give this book more than three stars; it was truly only "ok" in my assessment. The majority of the book is anecdotes from individuals who experienced liberation of some sort after the death of a parent. These anecdotes were occasionally interesting but ultimately tiring to me for several reasons. First, many of the persons whose stories gave rise to the anecdotes seem anything but typical, and they seemed to be drawn heavily from families which had experienced parental abandonment or abuse of either a physical or sexual nature. As a result, it was difficult for me (who had a merely difficult relationship with a recently deceased parent) to relate to the sense of "death benefit" proclaimed by these individuals. Moreover, it is not that significant a revelation to think that one might enjoy a psychological benefit after the death of a truly abusive or derelict parent. It would have been a more useful exercise to share more stories from children of merely difficult parents and how they can move beyond a parent's death in a positive fashion. Many of the story-tellers in the book are extremely un-self-aware and somewhat unattractive people; one woman described her father as a "Grade A Narcissist," and yet that same label could have easily been applied to many of the individuals profiled in the book. Finally, I found the whole "actively seek new experiences and relationships" portion of the stories (and the larger analysis) to be less than helpful; my recollection is that most of the story-tellers in the book went on a trip, bought something, changed careers, got a new wardrobe, redecorated, etc. I guess that economically "normal" people would just take a walk around the block or something less materialistic than the apparently affluent individuals whose stories make up the bulk of the book. Again, not fatal to the premise of the book, but neither the choice of stories and length of the book aided the persuasiveness or appeal of the author's thesis. I cannot help concluding that this would have been a better article than a book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Death is Tough; Surviving Sometimes Tougher, August 18, 2008

By 

Test Maven (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Can Change an Adult's Life--For the Better (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful book for any adult who's just lost parent(s).

Normally, books that purport to advise people in this situation are not much help (being full of stern warnings to hire psychotherapists and financial advisers), but this one really is different.

This one is about you. After all, you're still living.

It doesn't feel like it after you've planned a funeral (or two) and cleaned out a house from 1953, but you actually are still alive. And in this book, that's actually even OK. It's a true how-to on how to reassemble yourself, only stronger, after some big losses.

If other books on this topic have made your feel like your parents' somewhat slipshod and inept paralegal with a really mean boss, give this one a try instead. You'll feel better--and make better decisions.