Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders

I have just purchased 4 copies of Another Country to send to friends and relatives. My copy was purchased at the DesMoines Airport, as I browsed in the bookstore with my mother in law (91) in her wheelchair, returning from a nostalgic trip to Mom's family farm and a reunion with her 93 year old brother. I cried as I read the Introduction (almost poetry!) and thought, "someone understands us!" Beautifully and carefully crafted, Mary Pipher's book does a stunning job of recreating the peaks and valleys of aging, family relationships, and the growth of us all as we age, both as parents and children of aging parents. As I read it my only regret was that she didn't interview my own parents, married 61 years, living in their own home and still mentally alert and vital aging "young-olds". She could have learned from them some valuable lessons, as I have, about aging and dignity, remarkable people who have remained flexible, loving and marvelous role models for my own aging process. The book was a catharsis for me as the child of aging parents but it was also hopeful, positive and offered new ways to think creatively about aging. I highly recommend it to all.

I read this book wanting to have a better understanding of what my parents might be feeling as they enter old age. Their health is starting to decline, yet they want desperately to maintain their independence. It seems irrational. Why not enjoy prepared meals and cleaning services of assisted living when you can afford it? Pipher's book answered my questions. It isn't fun to reach what she calls old-old age when health declines and one needs assistance with some of the daily routines. Yet our culture makes it difficult to ask for help and even harder to accept it. Pipher shows how the baby-boomer generation and their depression-survivor parents differ, and the "great divide" is psychology not technology as one might expect. She addresses the realities of care for our elders and encourages family communication and geographical closeness. In the last chapters, she seems unrealistically optimistic about families caring for each other and a bit preachy on that idea. But she does give much useful information on understanding our elders and some good advice on communicating with them.

Mary Pipher's books are a whole cut above the self help genre, because they look perceptively at the whole social context of problems, so that we recognize the massive currents around us. Like Silent Spring, Children First (Penelope Leach), and other epochal books, they answer the big questions of a generation. Another country is painful, honest, gutsy and real, yet it offers real direction and tools for this issue that is so important to those of us with ageing parents.Which of course, is everyone. One of the three or four really original voices in American social sciences, with a knack for matching the personal and the bigger picture.

This is a vital guide-book for those of us with aging parents. As the middle-aged child of an often difficult mother, I came to understand the that the reasons for nitpicking or explosive criticism often are that a parent feels unneeded and by-passed. Since I am not one who easily picks up on these types of non-verbal clues but, rather, expects a direct request or expression of what's on someone's mind, I was having a hard time understanding this anger and bitterness.Basically, we and our parents speak entirely different languages. I am grateful for this book to help me translate. All of my family, young and old, will be the healthier for it.

When I had my first baby I turned to Dr. Spock to learn about the things I might expect to experience. I didn't know I would need a book to help me be the best caregiver I could be for my grandparents.Another Country was so pertinent to my life I felt it was my diary written for me to read. I'm living so much of what is covered in the book, with my grandmother living with us. Ms Pipher writes about I am experiencing. It explains some things, answers questions, but also makes me ask some too. I'm so glad to have found this friend! Definitely a book for my shelves, to be revisited again I'm sure, just as Spock was.