Da Capo Press The Orphaned Adult: Understanding And Coping With Grief And Change After The Death Of Our Parents

The book arrived quickly and was well packaged. I was touched that they took such care in ensuring it didn't get bent or damaged.The book itself, is proving very helpful and comforting. There is substance to it, and while I haven't read much of it yet, I can tell it is one I will refer back to time and time again as I move through the grieving process.

An amazing book that I am going to buy for a few friends, who over a decade on, are still struggling with the loss of either their mother or father.I bought this due to my mother being in the last stages of her life and it just being a matter of months now, however it didn't just gave me huge advice and guidance on the subject matter and why I bought the book, I found a rather unexpected and interesting twist to the book...The way it makes you look at your own life, your own mortality and how to do greatness now and not wait until tomorrow as unlike James Bond, tomorrow does die, at some point!Being an author on Longevity, I am typically focused on extending peoples lives, not on them dying and this book gives you a whole new perspective to longevity and life, of which I thank Mr Levy very much for.After reading a book I like to do a bit of research on the author and was very saddened to hear Mr Levy had died earlier this year, this makes the wisdom of this book even more poignant and really hits home the amazing wisdom contained in this book.Somebody now dead, writing about death.

Best book about grief I've read so far. It has helped me a lot. I will read it again when I feel the need to. I highly recommend.

Just finished reading this book in a single sitting. The author presents the material in an extremely relatable way and it was quickly apparent that he understands the extreme grief associated with parental loss. For the first time in ten years I read words closely describing my experience as an "orphaned adult". I highly recommend this book for anyone who has, or will, experience the loss of a parent (or parents). I'm grateful to have come across this title.

Orphan … the word conjures so many images of small, bereft children. But even as adults on the verge of old age ourselves, we're still orphaned when our parents die, as the last barrier between ourselves & mortality disappears like so much mist. And when that happens, we're often not prepared for the emotional impact, however much we always assumed that we would be … but that assumption was an intellectual one, not a visceral one. It has to actually happen before we can truly understand the impact.Using his own life experience, as well as that of others, author Alexander Levy examines the ways that we grieve (or attempt not to grieve) as middle-aged or older people when our parents die. According to popular belief, we're "supposed" to accept their deaths as a natural part of life … and of course it is. But that doesn't mean we don't feel the pain of their loss & their absence. Far from it! We're usually surprised to discover how much it's affected us, causing us to reflect on both their lives & our own.And that's actually for the good. The only way of dealing with any kind of emotional pain is to face it & go through it, in order to gain understanding of it & learn from it. This can range from quiet contemplation to raw, agonized rage & grief. The key, it seems, is coming to term with what's essentially a primal loss of foundations, one that was seemingly so secure for decades that we often didn't recognize it. Now we do.This was a lesson I had to learn when my father died some 12 years ago … and one that I'm still occasionally learning at unexpected moments. There's really no such thing as "closure" here; it's more of an ongoing adjustment to a major shift in the model of our lives that we once took for granted. There's always a little more shifting underfoot; what we do is learn to balance ourselves better as time goes on. Never fully, but better. For me, it's been a matter of my good memories coming to the fore, while the painful ones recede a little more.A compassionate & helpful book, most highly recommended!