That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister [Hardcover]

Terrell Harris Dougan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2009

"Dougan gets very personal ... exposing the nerve and dedication necessary to foster independence in a sibling with special needs ... A touching, surprisingly funny tough-love narrative."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Terrell Dougan writes with humor, humanity, and complete honesty. In this tale of two sisters--one who never gives up her dolls, one who never loses her pluck--she takes readers on a thought-provoking, endearing journey through life. Along the way, she shows readers the changing social attitudes of the last half-century, and her personal odyssey from resistance to acceptance."
--Rachel Simon, author of Riding the Bus with My Sister

"With heartache and humor, tenderness and honesty, Dougan inspires us to remember the kindness, joy, and grace that forever remain life's possibility."
--Andrew Bridge, author of Hope's Boy

"Enormously touching, funny, wise, breathtakingly honest, and compellingly readable."
--Judith Viorst, author of Forever Fifty

"Funny, and wonderful, and horrible, and happy and sad."
--Muffy Mead-Ferro, author of Confessions of a Slacker Mom

"Irene is a very special lady who makes others feel better about lots of things."
--Kim Peek, the original model for Rain Man

Meet Terrell Dougan's sister, Irene: a woman in her sixties who still believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny--but who also enjoys playing those characters for the children at the local hospital; whose favorite outfit, which she'll sneak into whenever Terrell's back is turned, consists of Mickey Mouse kneesocks and shorts; who wins over the neighborhood kids by hosting two fire trucks at her lemonade stand; whose fridge bears a magnet: NORMAL PEOPLE WORRY ME.

When Irene was born, her parents were advised to institutionalize her. They refused and instead became trailblazers in advocating for the rights of people with mental disabilities. The entire family benefited, with a life rich in stress, sorrows, hilarity, joy, and overwhelming kindness from strangers. Terrell has found that the only way to get through the difficult moments is to laugh--even in the most trying of times. In her moving, funny, and unforgettable memoir about life with Irene, Terrell Dougan shows that love, humor, and compassion are enough to heal us, every single day.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this compassionate memoir, Dougan, humor columnist for 13 years penning Of All Things for the Deseret News in Utah, writes for the first time about her mentally disabled sister, Irene. After Irene was born in 1946, their parents decided that she would not be institutionalized; with no Salt Lake City support group available, the girls' father, who ran an ad agency, teamed with other parents to launch a local day care center in 1952. Dougan made that a family tradition, opening a workshop for teens and adults with mental disabilities in 1968 and serving eight years as president of the Utah Association for Retarded Citizens. To tell Irene's story, she begins with a traumatizing childhood event; when she was 12 and Irene was six, they witnessed Irene's babysitter die from a massive brain hemorrhage. The lives of the sisters intertwined: Terrell became obsessed with swimming and ice skating; Irene learned to swim and ice skate, but not to read and write. Terrell studied at Stanford and later got married and had children; Irene was sent away at age 20 to a residential school in the hope she would learn some independence. Influenced by Benchley and Thurber, Terrell is a skilled humorist with amusing anecdotes about Irene, such as her behavior during the family's Venice vacation. Writing with honesty, she is equally impressive in relating the haunting memories of sadness and despair surrounding Irene's darker days. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Terrell Harris Dougan wrote a column for the Deseret News for thirteen years, for which she won the award for Best Humor Column from the National Federation of Press Women. She served as president of the Utah Association for Retarded Citizens for eight years, and on the board of the National Association for Retarded Citizens for two terms. She also took part in the beginnings of the Sundance Film Festival. Dougan lives with her husband in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (January 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401323294
• ISBN-13: 978-1401323295
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #763,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent book, both touching and funny, January 10, 2009

By 

critters - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Terrell Dougan and her family are my kind of people; even at the sad points they're cracking jokes. Are we really that unusual? I hope not, because sometimes it's just better to laugh than cry, and it's more socially acceptable anyway.

The story of Irene's life is an incredible one, from her birth in 1946 until now. I have to laugh at all of Irene's tricks to manipulate her sister and her caregivers; it's all SO true, and mental retardation does NOT mean stupid!!

If you're afraid this book will be dull, drab, and depressing, don't be! I don't find it that way at all. It's human and real, but funny just the same.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Story About Sisters & Their Challenges, January 2, 2009

By 

Pamela V ""MS V"" (Mississippi Gulf Coast) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

That Went Well - Adventures In Caring For My Sister - by Terrell Harris Dougan, is the true story of the author and her life caring for and about her mentally challenged sister, Irene.
Irene was apparently injured during her birth, when a period of anoxia left her with the intellect of a small child. Doctors said she would never learn to read and write, and would never live independently. Back then the advice was to find a state hospital and send her there.

The Harris family decided they could not do that to their young daughter and lovingly raised her at home, with the help of a live-in grandmother, Bammy.
At a certain point Irene became restless and combative and entered into several programs, none of which worked for her.
The book goes into detail about some of these programs, one founded by the author, and describes things that worked for Irene and things that didn't. Although it was a great source of stress for the author, in the end, when the responsibility of taking care of her sister was hers and hers alone, she realized she had built a large part of her life around taking care of Irene, and that she was grateful for it.

The first half of the book barely kept my interest, but I stuck with it to the end. The second half of the book was a better read to me, although there were still some things that focused a bit too much on the author and her life, and did not include much about her sister. I felt that anyway.

The last chapter was great and I kind of wish the author had put that much feeling into the entire book. In the last chapter, Harris-Dougan lets everyone know how she feels about how they act with her disabled sister. I appreciated the honesty and the humor used in that last chapter.

Overall, the book has merit. Parents of disabled children always worry about what will happen when they die, and who will take care of their child, and this book is an answer to that age-old question.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Frank, warm and funny, with some powerful lessons to share, January 11, 2009

By 

A. Reid (NC, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Terrell Harris Dougan writes primarily about her experiences as a caretaker and the impact on her life not only of a mentally disabled sister, but a physically disabled mother. Although she shares enough details of her personal story to give us a good sense of her as a person--where she came from, what factors have formed her--she focuses more (and best) on the issues raised by her caretaking.

Challenging work it is. Dougan does not seem to censor her experiences; there is real pain in what she does, though she does not wallow, but tries to bear all with resignation and humor that evidently can't be long suppressed. This book managed to raise both tears and laughter in me--sometimes, at the same time. To quote _Steel Magnolias_, "Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion." And that, I think, must be Dougan's gift.

If you want to read a book that will touch your heart and make you laugh, then this may be the book for you. If you want an interesting glimpse into the evolution of community care for mentally disabled adults, then this may be the book for you. If you want to read how one woman copes with being part of a network--family with needs and expectations, a society with expectations and goals, sometimes at odds with her own--then this may be the book for you. It's quick, it's warm, and it's witty; it is heartwarming and humbling. That's pretty good.

With a little more introspection, a little more depth, it might even have been great. But, honestly, I would have liked to have known more: more about Irene's condition and abilities, more about the systems and the people who have risen (and not) to Irene's assistance. I would have liked to have known more about the author's other family members and their interactions with Irene. What's there is fine--like a series of still shots taken from a documentary. An overview, the highlights, but it doesn't completely convey the full story.

Still, I don't hold that against Dougan. After all, it's her life, her business how much depth she wants to convey and how much privacy she chooses to retain. What it does, it does well.

A good memoir has a message for everyone; in spite of the difference in circumstance, they underscore our commonalities, the things that make us human, and help us to gain fresh perspective on our own lives. This is a good memoir. It doesn't take much imagination to see ourselves in her place. It doesn't take much more to look at our own lives through the perspective of her experience.

Dougan manages overall to convey her thoughts and stories with an unpretentious immediacy that soon had me feeling as though we'd been good friends for life.