Singing Mother Home: A Psychologist's Journey through Anticipatory Grief [Hardcover]

Donna S. Davenport (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The book touched me. It made me laugh, cry, and feel as if she accompanied me in my similar experience." -- Michael Watkins, Executive Director, Maximum Living Consultants

"This is a moving tribute to the power of love. . . It is open, frank, funny, and upsetting--a touching story." -- Judy Jordan, co-director, Jean Baker Miller Institute, Wellesley College

"This is a unique book by a professional who understands the field of loss and grief. . . .poignantly heartbreaking." -- Melba Vasquez, Ph.D., past-president American Psychology Association's division of counseling psychology and division of women

About the Author

Donna Davenport was a Phi Beta Kappa English major who received her doctorate in Counseling Psychology in 1978. She has authored over a hundred articles and papers, and co-authored a textbook on psychotherapy. She is an associate professor in the Counseling Psychology doctoral program at Texas A&M University, and has a private practice.

One of her areas of expertise has been grief. In addition to working with a number of patients experiencing various forms of loss, she teaches a doctoral seminar in Dying and Bereavement Issues in Psychotherapy.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: University of North Texas Press (March 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574411624
• ISBN-13: 978-1574411621
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,416,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, sincere, touching book, May 19, 2003

By 

Brent Lane (College Station, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Singing Mother Home: A Psychologist's Journey through Anticipatory Grief (Hardcover)

In reading Singing Mother Home, it quickly becomes evident that Donna Davenport has poured herself into writing this book as she shares sadness, frustration, humor, and heartwarming memories concerning her mother and the process of her mother's death. It reads very easily and is divided into subchapters so that I was able to pick it up and put it down as time allowed. I found however, that I read much more at each setting than I had originally planned. I was able to resonate with many of her memories of her mother, the feelings of the anticipatory period, and desire to keep elements of my own loved ones alive in my present life.

This book provides a very well-written account that left me feeling as though I had lived a bit of both Donna's and her mother's lives. There is a fullness to their lives and their relationship that comes across very clearly, and I believe that anyone would connect with this account and feel a sense of commonality and renewed hope.

This book was a wonderful purchase and I would recommend it for anyone who has experienced or is experiencing grief. I plan on buying one for a family member who lost her husband a few years back. I believe that readers will surely feel the sense of connection to it that I did.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Melody Lingers On..., May 18, 2003

By 

Edward Correll (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Singing Mother Home: A Psychologist's Journey through Anticipatory Grief (Hardcover)

In "Singing Mother Home" we have the unusual privilege of a watching a highly qualified practitioner of two of the "helping professions," teaching and counselling, come to very personal terms with the kind of situation she teaches and counsels about. Dr Davenport's gentle telling of the story of her mother's death, and the openness with which she shares her inward struggle, serve both to humanize "the experts" and to validate the anguish of the rest of us, "non-experts" all, whose guilts and fears can be considerable as we face the necessity to allow beloved parents to take their leave.
A couple of chapters at the end of the book allow Dr Davenport to offer her professional insight into the dynamics of grief. Considered with her remarkable self-revelation in the narrative of her story, the reader's sense of her is that she is not merely a highly skilled professional but, under the circumstances, a companion of uncommon humanness along an inevitable and inexorable road, one we all must travel.
Those of us who have attended parents during their last years, months, days and hours know that there are a myriad details both of heart and body, to deal with. Dr Davenport shares with us many such in the thought and behavior of the pricipals of her story, but it is quite a tribute to her literary skill that the tale never becomes merely a chronology preoccupied with "events," whether physical and psychological, but uses them only as tools to enhance the real issue of relationship with oneself and others as death intrudes on well-ordered lives with its threat to make a mockery of human devotion.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, original, immersive, April 21, 2003

By 

Chris Stone (Harrisburg, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Singing Mother Home: A Psychologist's Journey through Anticipatory Grief (Hardcover)

Most people are so uncomfortable with the concept of death they spend their lives ignoring it as completely as possible. This book is a fascinating read because it does just the opposite -- and it does it in an original and intriguing way.

Written by a psychologist about the death of her own mother, Singing Mother Home tackles the subject matter from two mutually cooperative angles.

The author not only comes to terms with the permanence of death as a reality in her own very personal world, but explores it as a professional too, by giving us an up-to-the-minute look at death and loss from the perspective of modern psychological theory and applying it in her particular case.

Fortunately, the theory doesn't bog down the writing. It's a surprisingly quick read despite its elegant prose and almost immediately compelling -- who among us hasn't wondered what it would be like to lose a parent and how to cope during the process?

Alternately, if this is a situation you've already struggled with, you'll no doubt resonate to the universality of the author's trials -- with her expectations of herself at such a difficult time, with her family, with death generally.

I'd recommend it to anyone interested in any of these topics.