by Brooke Lea Foster
|
| List Price: | $14.95 |
| Average Rating: |  |
| Lowest New Price: | $234.85 |
|
 |
|
Product Description
How to deal with your parents’ divorce when you’re not a kid anymore
As the divorce rate soars among the baby-boomer generation, more and more people in their twenties and thirties are being faced with the divorce of their parents, and few resources exist to help them cope with their unique circumstances. Written by an award-winning journalist who has lived through her own parents’ midlife divorce, this practical, comforting guide includes advice on:
• How to help your parents without getting caught in the middle
• How to have tough conversations with your parents about money, property, and inheritance—theirs and yours
• How to understand the complexities of infidelity and stepfamilies
• How to rebuild relationships with each parent after the divorce
Customers who bought this item also bought
Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent Book for anyone feeling lost, 2006-12-14
My parents recently separated & are getting a divorce after 34 years of marriage. My father had an affair with a much younger woman for over a year. I never thought I would have to deal with such a huge change in our family, but I did. And reading this book helped me through it. Honestly, once I was done reading it I saw things differently and it truly helped me get a grip on the way things will NOW be. I highly highly recommend this book to anyone feeling lost and not sure where to turn. I took comfort in knowing this has happened to others and how they chose to deal with it.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A Dad's review of an unwanted divorce 10-years later viewed from his childrens prespective., 2006-10-11
10-years ago my wife ended a 32-year marriage. She said she had not loved me for years but would not divorce me until the children were on their own and married. She said that she didn't believe that I would take care of my children financially. Oh how wrong she was. My son has not spoken to me in years. He will not acknowledge telephone calls, letters, gifts, birthdays and holidays. Brooke Leas Foster has written a wonderful book about adult children of divorce. I have always believed that it was harder on ACOD than it was on younger children for all the various reasons cited in Brooke's book. As a result of having read The Way They Were from my children's prespective I have ordered the book for my daughter. I hope that she will also share it with my son. The "guilt" that I felt as a Dad has been lifted as a result of this book. I highly recommend to any parent of adult children contemplating divorce. A must read for all. Thank you Brooke. Well done.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Where was this book in 1989?, 2006-07-30
I really enjoyed reading this and for once I was able to identify with someone else's feeling about their parents' divorce. So many divorces seem to happen when children are young and we, as ACOD, have vastly different experiences than them.
I recognized so many emotions in this book and I am so glad to finally hear that I am not alone in these. Having your sense of security snatched away when you're a young adult that's new to independence can almost retard emotional growth.
The one thing that I would have liked to have seen portrayed in this book is the "nightmare" behaviors that one can experience as an adult child of divorce - whether that behavior is coming from the parent's new partner or whether they are coming from within one's self as the pain and anguish really starts to come to the surface. A lot of us dealt with this stuff in less than healthy ways - a bit of decadent behavior perhaps - and I would have liked to have read a bit more discussion on that. Not all of us dealing with divorces were drink-free, drug-free, straight A students with the ability to sit down and rationalize our behaviors and our experiences are just as valid. It would have been nice to have seen that side represented.
I guess for that reason alone I would have given it four stars. But because it's the first book on divorce that made me feel like other people understood it remains at a five.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
I'm so jealous of those who were interviewed for this book!!, 2006-07-16
WOW...I read this book with such enthralled interest and found myself nodding through so much of it because it fully validated all I have felt in the 12 1/2 years since I learned my parents' nearly 29-year marriage was ending.
Let me first say to anyone considering "staying together for the kids" that you seriously reconsider! Not only is there NO evidence that waiting until the kids are adults makes it less painful, but as many of the interviewees in the book attest, it makes the marriage seem to be a sham, and if the disenchantment with it is made known to the kids after they're grown, particularly if all appeared to be well, we end up questioning all we thought we had learned from it. I had always thought my parents were happy together. They never fought in front of us, and we always saw them make up. I was actually proud to have parents who appeared to be in love with each other after years and years--the way my husband and I are--only to find out from my mother when she left my dad for his best friend that she didn't think she had EVER really been in love with him! I had only been married for 4 years by then myself, and it crushed me. I began to question my own identity because of all the lies that suddenly came to light.
The other thing I wrestled with was the timing. I had just learned I was pregnant with my second child and had just had a crisis with a lifelong chronic health condition. Mom, who had always been so protective of me, chose THAT TIME to leave my father! She also lied many times to me about what she had planned to do, and perhaps predictably, I became extremely sick and battled one thing after another through my entire pregnancy. Brooke Foster validated for me what I have always wondered: whether all the stress from the split, as well as all the pleas and fights over whose "side" I should be on contributed to the demise of my health during that time. I'm sure now that it did, and since my son was subsequently diagnosed with autism, I am sad to say that I can't dismiss the role of the divorce as contributing to it.
I'm relieved to say I have a great relationship with both of my parents now, and even my mom's husband (sorry; can't say "stepfather"! I was 28 when they married!), and I have moved on from all of the anger and hurt I felt about it, but it does change who you are and how you think about your own relationships. When I find that my husband and I squabble about the same things over and over again, I worry that the cycle is beginning again, so even if you get to the point of being "over it," it can have a lasting--perhaps even lifelong--influence over you in some way. If you need to leave a lousy marriage, do, by all means, but please don't stay on account of your kids, because I can assure you that they will have other problems as a result.
If you are looking for a book that reassures you that you aren't (or haven't been) overreacting to your parents' divorce, this is the book to read, from someone who has "been there and done that." Please pick it up. It is definitely worth the read.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Just what I needed, 2006-06-28
I'm not a literary type, but when my parents announced that after 39 years of marriage they were divorcing, I had feelings I was unsure of how to deal with. I was actually at the hair salon, reading one of their magazines when I found the review of this book. It was exactly what I needed to read. I'm almost to the end of the book, but things that I said to my friends and family BEFORE I read the book, were right there in black and white. I was happy to see that I wasn't alone in my feeling about the divorce. It helped me tremendously to read and endorsed my feeling. As soon as I'm finished, I'm going to give it to my Brother, then to my Husband, then maybe mom and dad should get a copy for Christmas or something. Thanks Brooke!
Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon website at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.
|
Store Categories
|