Taking Care of Parents Who Didn't Take Care of You: Making Peace with Aging Parents

Cade's book lets us know that we are all in the same boat when it comes to caring for our aging parents. Nobody has a perfect childhood although some are more difficult than others. We all need to learn to forgive, understand and move on. I believe the most important concept Cade offers is that we must decide where to draw the line for our own sanity and capabilities. We must accept that we can't and SHOULDN'T do it all! I will definitely be sending this on to my sister-in-law!

Many of us are faced with the aging of parents and often the onset of dementia. Eleanor Cade's book gives us examples of that common stuggle and what other people have done to cope with this difficult transition in our parent's life. After I'd read this book, I gave copies to my sister who is a primary caregiver of our mother, my cousin and another friend. All of these women found hope and encouragement in the stories of others. I recommend it.

Eleanor Cade's book has been an enormous help as I wade through elder care for my mother. It provides practical advice, straightforward talk, and especially emotional companionship. It's a really difficult situation, and we need this kind of support. My mother even read it and said it helped HER! That's amazing.

Given to me as a gift, I knew not what to expect, but found a very readable, thoughful and insightful book. Moreover, I too have taken the opportunity to give it as a gift to at least 7 other people. Even if you were fortunate enough to have had parents that took care of you, this is a sensible, reflective, and skillfully written manual for dealing with any emotions associated with aging parents.

Indeed, Cade asks us, how do you take care of your parents, when they didn't take good care of you - and in fact may done have you harm? Cade, through interviews with adult caregivers and mental health professionals, encourages us to use the grieving process for the care-givers experience. Denial, Anger, Acceptance, and (eventually) Gratitude are stages in grieving that are broadly accepted in the mental health community. The call to action, if you want to call it that, is to find a motive for taking care of troubled parents that you can live with and live for. If you have unresolved issues with your parents, this book might challenge you to move beyond your (legitimate) anger and defenses. The surprising news is there are a quite a few of us who are challenged with taking care of our troubled and troubling parents. I was surprised, for example, to read that some caregivers she interviewed thank their parents for modeling how not to live and act. If you're ready to do the work of emotionally evolving and taking care of emotionally damaging parents, I recommend this book.