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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social groups & communities > Age groups > Adults > Elderly
Bestselling writer and psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom puts himself on the couch in a “candid, insightful” memoir.
Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In this profound memoir, he turns his writing and his therapeutic eye on himself.
He opens his story with a nightmare: He is twelve, and is riding his bike past the home of an acne-scarred girl. Like every morning, he calls out, hoping to befriend her, "Hello Measles!" But in his dream, the girl's father makes Yalom understand that his daily greeting had hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson.
As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the birth of the insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply a man's life story, Yalom's reflections on his life and development are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives.
This book considers what work and retirement mean for older women,
how each is experienced, and how working fits with other facets of
their lives. The authors draw on data collected from women
themselves, employers, industry stakeholders and older workers'
advocates, to explore older women's experiences of work and
retirement against a backdrop of current policy efforts to extend
working lives in response to ageing societies. Contrary to common
representations of the situation of older workers, the data reveal
how workplaces can be seen as relatively benign, and retirement
viewed positively. It contributes to academic debate regarding
identity, purpose and meaning in later life, identifying challenges
for work-focused public policy. Students and scholars of human
resource management, sociology, gerontology and social policy will
appreciate the extension of understanding older women's life course
trajectories that the book offers. Public policy-makers will
benefit from the different representations of older women in the
book, and the identification of where they would benefit from
policy changes.
You know you're having a senior moment when you decide it's time to
pull up your socks - and realize you forgot to put any on! Age is
just a number and you're only as old as you feel, but if you're
heading into your golden years and you're certifiably "no spring
chicken", you might benefit from browsing through the pages of this
tongue-in-cheek book to help you decide if your marbles just need a
polish or you've well and truly lost them! Inside you'll find
examples of classic "senior moments", such as: Ringing a friend to
ask them for their phone number. Getting annoyed at the fact that
your all-in-one remote won't open your garage door. Going to the
store for milk and coming home with a new dog collar, rawl plugs,
some plant pots that were on special offer... but no milk. Feeling
frustrated by your computer's instructions to "press any key", when
there's no "Any" key on your keyboard. With a sprinkling of
reassuring quotes from fellow old-timers, this collection will help
you see the funny side of getting older (but not necessarily
wiser).
How can we create more meaningful and intimate connections with our
loved-ones? By using moments of discord to strengthen our
relationships, explains this original, deeply researched book. You
might think that perfect harmony is the defining characteristic of
a good relationship, but the truth is that human interactions are
messy, complicated, and confusing. The good news, however, is that
we are wired to deal with this from birth - and even to grow from
it and use it to strengthen our relationships, according to
renowned psychologist Ed Tronick and paediatrician Claudia Gold.
Scientific research - including Dr Tronick's famous 'Still-Face
Experiment' - has shown that working through mismatch and repair in
everyday life helps us form deep, lasting, trusting relationships;
resilience in times of stress and trauma; and a solid sense of self
in the world. This refreshing and original look at our ability to
relate to others and to ourselves offers a new way for us to think
about our relationships, and will reassure you that conflict is
both normal and healthy, building the foundation for stronger
connections.
Working Daughter is a revelatory look at who's caring for our aging
population and how these unpaid family caregivers are trying to
manage caring for their parents, raising their children,
maintaining relationships, and pursuing their careers. It follows
the author, who was enjoying a fast-paced career in marketing and
raising two children when both of her parents were diagnosed with
terminal illnesses on the same day. In the challenges she faced and
the choices she made, readers will learn how they can navigate
their own caregiving experiences and prepare for when they are
inevitably called on to care for their parents.
Explores the mother-daughter relationship in the context of
caregiving Across the Unites States, about 34.2 million Americans
have provided unpaid care to an adult age 50 or older in the last
12 months. Much of this caregiving is performed by women and often
for their mothers or mothers-in-law, relationships that may be
warm, fraught, or complicated. Even in the best of circumstances,
caregivers can feel burned out, strained, and exhausted, but add to
the mix the complicated emotions that come from caring for a loved
one and you may have a perfect storm. Here, Jeanne Lord provides
valuable emotional support and information for daughter caregivers
to mother care-receivers during a stressful and uncertain time. It
is unique in that it offers not only personal insights from
caregiving daughters, but the perspectives of their mothers, as
well. Lord followed the women on their journeys over the course of
ten years, so the follow-up interviews give readers an opportunity
to fast forward into the future lives of the caregiving daughters
to read about their perspectives, and gain insights into new
attitudes and ideas for life after caregiving. Through compelling
stories and in-depth interviews, the very complex relationships
between mothers and daughters in a caregiving situation are
explored and revealed in an objective light. Offering comfort and
understanding to the reader, the book also offers suggestions,
ideas, resources, and support for navigating the care of their
loved one.
Encouraging older people to age in place in their own homes is a
common response internationally to the economic and social demands
of population ageing. It is recognized that the nature of the built
environment at various scales is critical to optimizing the social
participation and wellbeing of older people and hence in
facilitating ageing in place. This insightful book showcases a
range of design, planning and policy responses to ageing
populations from across the rapidly changing and dynamic Western
Asia-Pacific region. Ageing in Place considers diverse cultural,
political and environmental contexts and responses to show that
regional governments, industries and communities can gain, as well
as offer, important insights from their international counterparts.
With significant changes in caring, family dynamics and the
supporting roles of governments in both Eastern and Western
societies, the chapters demonstrate a clear and increasingly
convergent preference for and promotion of ageing in place and the
need for collaborative efforts to facilitate this through policy
and practice. The unique geographical focus and multi-disciplinary
perspective of this book will greatly benefit academic researchers
and students from a variety of backgrounds including architecture,
urban planning, sociology and human geography. It also provides a
unique entry point for practitioners seeking to understand the
principles of design and practice for ageing in place in homes,
neighbourhoods and care facilities.
Mortality, With Friends is a collection of lyrical essays from
Fleda Brown, a writer and caretaker, of her father and sometimes
her husband, who lives with the nagging uneasiness that her cancer
could return. Memoir in feel, the book muses on the nature of art,
of sculpture, of the loss of bees and trees, the end of marriages,
and among other things, the loss of hearing and of life itself.
Containing twenty-two essays, Mortality, With Friends follows the
cascade of loss with the author's imminent joy in opening a path to
track her own growing awareness and wisdom. In ""Donna,"" Brown
examines a childhood friendship and questions the roles we need to
play in each other's lives to shape who we might become. In
""Native Bees,"" Brown expertly weaves together the threads of a
difficult family tradition intended to incite happiness with the
harsh reality of current events. In ""Fingernails, Toenails,"" she
marvels at the attention and suffering that accompanies caring for
our aging bodies. In ""Mortality, with Friends,"" Brown dives into
the practical and stupefying response to her own cancer and
survival. In ""2019: Becoming Mrs. Ramsay,"" she remembers the
ghosts of her family and the strident image of herself, positioned
in front of her Northern Michigan cottage. Comparable to Lia
Purpura's essays in their density and poetics, Brown's intent is to
look closely, to stay with the moment and the image. Readers with a
fondness for memoir and appreciation for art will be dazzled by the
beauty of this collection.
In "Never Retire," Dan Benson helps you answer the question, "How
do I make the money last- while making the most of the rest of my
life?" Dan goes beyond the traditional view of retirement. He puts
you on the road to a financially free "New Retirement." Gone are
the days of dependence on children, charity, or Social Security.
After reading "Never Retire, your future will seem brighter as you
discover fresh, creative ways to become financially secure while
staying young at heart, strong of body, and keen of mind.
Senior adult ministry isn't what it used to be. The comfortable
assumptions and outdated programs that were the basis for local
church ministry are being challenged. Baby boomers are hitting
middle age and retirement. And their own parents are living longer.
Authors Win and Charles Arn have updated and supplemented Catch the
Age Wave with ideas, examples and advice to help the local church
leader start and maintain a senior adult program. In addition, they
have added practical program ideas to use in any local church
setting. New challenges for a new day. Catch the Age Wave won't let
you miss the boat.
In 1963, Betty Friedan's transcendent work, The Feminine Mystique,
changed forever the way women thought about themselves and the way
society thought about women. In 1993, with The Fountain of Age,
Friedan changes forever the way all of us, men and women, think
about ourselves as we grow older and the way society thinks about
aging. Struggling to hold on to the illusion of youth, we have
denied the reality and evaded the new triumphs of growing older. We
have seen age only as decline. In this powerful and very personal
book, which may prove even more liberating than The Feminine
Mystique, Betty Friedan charts her own voyage of discovery, and
that of others, into a different kind of aging. She finds ordinary
men and women, moving into their fifties, sixties, seventies,
discovering extraordinary new possibilities of intimacy and
purpose. In their surprising experiences, Friedan first glimpsed,
then embraced, the idea that one can grow and evolve throughout
life in a style that dramatically mitigates the expectation of
decline and opens the way to a further dimension of "personhood."
The Fountain of Age suggests new possibilities for every one of us,
all founded on a solid body of startling but little-known
scientific evidence. It demolishes those myths that have
constrained us for too long and offers compelling alternatives for
living one's age as a unique, exuberant time of life, on its own
authentic terms. Age as adventure! In these pages, film producers
and beauticians, salespersons and college professors, union
veterans and business tycoons, former (and forever) housewives,
male and female empty-nesters and retirees, have crossed the chasm
of age... and kept going. They have foundfulfillment beyond career,
bonding that transcends youthful dreams of happily-ever-after, and
a richer, sweeter intimacy not tied to mechanical measures of
sexual activity, but to deep and honest sharing. While
gerontologists focus on care, illness, and the concept of age as
deterio
Population ageing poses a huge challenge to law and society,
carrying important structural and institutional implications. This
book portrays elder law as an emerging research discipline in the
European setting in terms of both conceptual and theoretical
perspectives as well as elements of the law. Providing a deepened
understanding of population ageing in terms of vulnerability,
intergenerational conflict and solidarity, expert contributors
highlight the necessity for a contextualized ageing concept. As
well as offering a comparative analysis of active ageing policies
across the EU, this book examines a range of topics including age
discrimination in employment and the freedom of movement of EU
citizens from the ageing individual's point of view. It also goes
on to describe elder care developments, discussing the ageing
individual's autonomy in relation to both traditional inheritance
rights and growing instances of dementia. Timely and engaging, this
book will appeal to academic scholars and students in relevant
areas of law as well as those studying across the social sciences.
Exploring a broad range of socio-legal issues in relation to
demographic ageing, it will also inform legal practitioners and
policymakers alike. Contributors include: M. Axmin, A. Blackham, C.
Brokelind, J. Fudge, E. Holm, A. Inghammar, M. Katzin, M. Kullmann,
T. Mattsson, P. Norberg, A. Numhauser-Henning, H. Pettersson, M.
Roennmar, E. Ryrstedt, K. Scott, E. Trolle OEnnerfors, C.
Ulander-Wanman, J.J. Votinius, A. Zbyszewska
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