Customer Reviews

Fatherless Women: How We Change After We Lose Our Dads

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is really outstanding. I recommend it to anyone who has just lost their father or for someone who has not gotten a handle on their loss however long ago it was.

Clea Simon writes as though she is speaking directly to you. She tells her own painful story and comforts her reader in doing so. Ms.Simon tells of many other women's experiences of losing their fathers so the reader gets many different perspectives on father/daughter relationships and how these daughters dealt with losing their fathers.

Fatherless Women, for me, chronicled all the feelings I had felt, did feel and would feel during the grieving process. I was very comforted by this book. It made me feel I was part of a group so I stopped feeling so alone and isolated. It made me familiar with my feelings so I could give a name to what I am/was going through.

Her book is an easy to read, informative, reassuring and very personable account of one of the most difficult things women go through.

I would not have been able to begin my healing without this book. I thank you from the depths of my soul, Clea Simon.

"Fatherless Women" explores what for many of us will be a scary, and challenging journey: Growing up from "good girls" to become "smart women." With lots of stories from dozens of women, it shows us how we grieve -- not always what you'd expect! -- and how, if we let ourselves mourn the death of our fathers, we can learn to appreciate them as humans and then understand all the ways they influenced us. With other stories, we're shown how this new insight not only helps us with our sadness and guilt -- it can also free us to be the women we want to be, taking the best of our fathers' legacies to us and dumping the worst (including our own overreactions). An invaluable guide -- and really affirming of my experience since my dad's passing!

I heard an interview with Clea Simon on a public radio show, and having lived through the loss of a close relative myself, I invested in her book. I found it to be a comforting and perceptive book, with many interviews that shed light on the possibility of living through loss and getting beyond it. Simon is generous with her own reflections, and her writing is lovely. I will be recommending this book to my friends.

My father died almost a year ago and I bought this book in October 2004. I'm still having a hard time reading it; not because it's not easy reading, but because of the depth of emotion it conjures up as it pushes me to reflect on the relationship between me and my dad. No matter how old I get, I will always miss him and wish I could have stayed young and he could've lived forever. I think when I get to the end of this book, I will have gone through more healing through my grief. It's that kind of book..

I tried to read this book after the death of my Dad due to a long battle with cancer. This author can only "help" or more accurately share stories of how dysfunctional her relationship with her father was, and how promiscuous she was, what a bad friend she was to those around her, rather than actually tell you anything about what life is like after the death of a father that you had a healthy relationship with. If you are normal and your father is normal, and you were friends with your father, this book is not for you. If you need therapy and your Dad needs therapy, here is clearly the book for you.

This book is full of sweeping generalizations to validate the author's bad decisions in the relationships in her life. It is not backed up with any research or facts of any kind. She should have bought a journal and written about the bad relationship in private rather than publish it. Please do not buy this book.

This is a warm, meaningful book on life after losing a father - one of the greatest losses you can experience in life. It's so encouraging to know that I am not alone - that every emotion I feel is okay and there are plenty of other women out there feeling the same way I do. This is a very helpful guide on surviving this difficult time and gaining insight into my life and the life of my father.

While I found it difficult to embark on reading a book on this topic (as my wound is relatively new and certainly unhealed) it was comforting to read about similar feelings and emotions women who've also lost their father are feeling. While I found many of the chapters to be irrelevant in my own personal life, I am sure many would find them helpful. In the very least, it was nice to take the time to help face my loss.

This book is filled with stories and anecdotes that I am sure would be very helpful to women who had difficult relationships with their fathers or who had many unresolved issues with their fathers. As a woman who had a good relationship with her dad and who was lucky enough to find love and closure at the end of his life, I haven't found this book to be of much help to me personally. I grew tired of reading so many negative examples of what the father/daughter relationship could be, and I found very little comfort or guidance through my own grief. I think this book could be valuable for some, but it wasn't the help I had hoped for.

As I began to read the introduction to this amazing book, it was as if I were dictating and Clea was simply putting the words on paper. Although our Father's were educated in different ways, the grief of a slow death is much different. My Father's illness lasted for six years and I felt like he died a million times before the actual death. Clea has taken an uncomfortable reality and placed it on a page for confirmation and viewing by all who have suffered the loss of our greatest Love as daughters. This is an amazing find!!!

Since I lost my dad almost 10 years ago, I felt it was a book I needed to read. I still have a lot of unresolved issues surrounding my father's death and it has impacted me in a very negative way. I thought this book would provide me some insight into why I am still having problems with my dad's death. I related to some of the book, but not all of it. The author's circumstances were very different from mine but she does include interviews with many other women, some of whom I could relate to and some that I couldn't. I am not really sure if it has given me the additional insight I had hoped for but it a well researched and well written book and is worth reading. It seemed more of a personal journal of the author's life and her father's death rather than a psychological study of how our fathers' death affects us, but I am glad I read it anyway.