We probably went to school for what felt like a very long time. We probably took care with our homework. Along the way we surely learnt intriguing things about equations, the erosion of glaciers, the history of the Middle Ages, and the tenses of foreign languages. But why, despite all the lessons we sat through, were we never taught the really important things that dominate and trouble our lives: who to start a relationship with, how to trust people, how to understand one's psyche, how to move on from sorrow or betrayal, and how to cope with anxiety and shame? The School of Life is an organisation dedicated to teaching a range of emotional lessons that we need in order to lead fulfilled and happy lives - and that schools routinely forget to teach us. This book is a collection of our most essential lessons, delivered with directness and humanity, covering topics from love to career, childhood trauma to loneliness. To read the book is to be invited to lead kinder, richer and more authentic lives - and to complete an education we began but still badly need to finish. This is homework to help us make the most of the rest of our lives.

Hollow and Home explores the ways the primary places in our lives shape the individuals we become. It proposes that place is a complex and dynamic phenomenon. Place refers to geographical and constructed places- location, topography, landscape, and buildings. It also refers to the psychological, social, and cultural influences at work at a given location. These elements act in concert to constitute a place. Carlisle incorporates perspectives from writers like Edward S. Casey, Christian Norberg-Schulz, Yi-Fu Tuan, and Witold Rybczynski, but he applies theory with a light touch. Placing this literature in dialog with personal experience, he concentrates on two places that profoundly influenced him and enabled him to overcome a lifelong sense of always leaving his pasts behind. The first is Clover Hollow in Appalachian Virginia, where the author lived for ten years among fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-generation residents. The people and places there enabled him to value his own past and primary places in a new way. The story then turns to Carlisle's life growing up in Delaware, Ohio. He describes in rich detail the ways the town shaped him in both enabling and disabling ways. In the end, after years of moving from place to place, Carlisle's experience in Appalachia helped him rediscover his hometown-both the Old Delaware, where he grew up, and the New Delaware, a larger, thriving small city-as his true home. The themes of the book transcend specific localities and speak to the relationship of self and place everywhere.

In rural Mexico, people often say that Alzheimer's does not exist. ""People do not have Alzheimer's because they don't need to worry,"" said one Oaxacan, explaining that locals lack the stresses that people face ""over there"" - that is, in the modern world. Alzheimer's and related dementias carry a stigma. In contrast to the way elders are revered for remembering local traditions, dementia symbolizes how modern families have forgotten the communal values that bring them together. In Caring for the People of the Clouds, psychologist Jonathan Yahalom provides an emotionally evocative, story-rich analysis of family caregiving for Oaxacan elders living with dementia. Based on his extensive research in a Zapotec community, Yahalom presents the conflicted experience of providing care in a setting where illness is steeped in stigma and locals are concerned about social cohesion. Traditionally, the Zapotec, or ""people of the clouds,"" respected their elders and venerated their ancestors. Dementia reveals the difficulty of upholding those ideals today. Yahalom looks at how dementia is understood in a medically pluralist landscape, how it is treated in a setting marked by social tension, and how caregivers endure challenges among their families and the broader community. Yahalom argues that caregiving involves more than just a response to human dependency; it is central to regenerating local values and family relationships threatened by broader social change. In so doing, the author bridges concepts in mental health with theory from medical anthropology. Unique in its interdisciplinary approach, this book advances theory pertaining to cross-cultural psychology and develops anthropological insights about how aging, dementia, and caregiving disclose the intimacies of family life in Oaxaca.

This book can enhance everyone's understanding of how women experience loss and grief, and how they transition to resolution. It is an invaluable resource to women and everyone who supports them-spouses, partners, and family members as well as community and government. Women's grief is often a complex phenomenon-a natural, normal experience, but one that can seriously impact everyone-female or male-at every stage of life. Understanding Loss and Grief for Women: A New Perspective on Their Pain and Healing provides a way to look at how women experience loss through the lens of their socially constructed roles, and in light of the theories and practice of grief therapy and support. The book begins by explaining the social construction of women's traditional, transitional, and modern/postmodern roles, and then addresses the social construction of grief theory and practice in past eras and modern society. Several case studies enable readers to see how social constructs shape women's responses to various causes of grief, such as the death of a spouse or partner, child, marriage (divorce), and career (retirement). The final section of the book examines the health impacts of grief, offers suggestions to ameliorate negative health impacts, and emphasizes how loss and grief for women can be used as opportunities for self-growth. This book serves all members of the general population as well as educators, academics, scientists, and students of disciplines such as psychology, psychotherapy, medicine, sociology, and women's studies. It will enable all women to better understand, deal with, and heal from their loss and grief experience. Male readers will empathize with what their spouses/partners, mothers, grandmothers, siblings, and friends are experiencing in loss and grief and understand how to support healthy transition through grief to resolution. The community at large and care providers will learn how to create a more nurturing and supportive environment for women's grief response. Explicates the socially constructed roles of women, in the past and in modern society, to illustrate what has been considered "appropriate" expression and response to loss and grief for women, and to enable a unique understanding the phenomenal loss experience for women Presents an invaluable framework, as a scaffolding, that allows readers to interrogate their own and others' experiences of loss in a novel, more in-depth way-one that supports improved practice in the helping professions Includes women's real-life stories that tell their truths of the loss experience and how grief worked through them in transitioning to resolution Provides seminal information to professional grief counselors, physicians, nurses, clinical psychologists, and psychiatric social workers, as well as students of psychology, sociology, medicine, public health, and women's studies Allows family members, friends, or partners to better understand what a woman who is experiencing loss and grief is feeling, and instructs how to support healthy transition through grief to resolution