Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Can Change an Adult's Life--for the Better

Even for an adult, the death of a parent hurts. But it need not to be devastating. When psychotherapist Jeanne Safer's ninety-two-year-old mother died, Safer was determined to derive insight from bereavement. What she learned through that process, combined with her professional work, astonished her Losing a parent can be the most potent catalyst for change in midlife that any adult will encounter. Death Benefits challenges the notion that loss must simply be endured and shows that, after the grieving for a parent stops, we will each have an unparalleled opportunity to become our truest selves.

Breaking the final taboo, psychotherapist Jeanne Safer reveals the previously unexplored opportunities for growth that adults can discover after a parent dies and the grieving stops

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)

Jeanne Safer, PhD, is the author of The Normal One, Beyond Motherhood, and Forgiving and Not Forgiving. She appears frequently on television and radio and has written for O, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and more. She lives in New York City.