When psychotherapist Jeanne Safer lost her charismatic but difficult ninety-two-year-old mother, she was determined to turn her loss into an opportunity for insight and growth. She took a comprehensive “inventory” of her mother’s history and character just as she had gone through her mother’s possessions. What she discovered astonished her—and changed her life in ways that she never could have imagined while her mother was alive, and that decades of psychological exploration had failed to accomplish.

            Through her own experience, her work with patients, and in-depth interviews with sixty men and women who have lost a parent, Safer shows that whether amother or father was devoted or despotic, loved or loathed, parent loss can be the most potent catalyst for change in midlife. In addition to her own revelatory example, she offers remarkable and inspiring stories—a including a historian whose luminous, consoling dream of his dead mother’s loving arms helped him to rediscover his childhood faith; a shy teacher who was able to claim her true vocation as an actress only after she lost her self-involved, demanding mother; and a publicist whose possessive father had to die before she could fall in love and marry.

            Safer also provides a wealth of practical advice on how to create a blueprint for meaningful change in every aspect of life in the wake of bereavement—from thinking systematically about the unfinished business between you and your parent to learning how to investigate your parent’s personality. Death Benefits will show you how to:

• Think systematically about your dead parent’s impact on your life and the unfinished business between you
• Construct a narrative of your parent’s life history
• Conduct a Psychological Inventory of your parent’s personality, determining which traits to keep or discard

Breaking the final taboo, Death Benefits challenges the conventional wisdom that fundamental change is only for the young and that loss must simply be endured or overcome. It is a fresh and impassioned look at self-transformation at midlife and beyond. Although 5% of the population loses a mother or father every year, few of us are psychologically prepared for the experience. Death Benefits is the guide for the growth that every adult can and should discover after the grieving stops—our last, best chance to become our truest, deepest selves.

What Readers are Saying about Death Benefits

"My mother passed away in February of this year after a short illness. I was her caretaker for 8 years while she was in a nursing home (more realistically, her caretaker for the 44 years that I have been her daughter.) I was given Death Benefits as a gift.

Your book is simply miraculous! I am deeply moved by your writing and honesty. I have had several friends mention that I am already "blooming" and coming into my own as a result of her passage. Your book gives me permission and encouragement to do so. I loved my mother deeply, but as you mention, this depth of love often limits the daughter in her own life.

I wish you every blessing multiplied for the countless people--especially the daughters--that your inspiration and writing will help heal."

Sincerely,

Janice T., Atlanta, Georgia

“Were you reading my mind? I just received your book Death Benefits, and I want to thank you. Your stories hit a chord that is not easily found in most books on death of a parent.  I am thirty-nine years old and lost my mom five years ago to a lifetime of illness. I have journeyed into my mom’s past to find my solace. In the five years since her death I have learned so much about her and with these discoveries found some peace. It is a long and painful journey at times, but one that I believe will (I hope) help me to be the present mom I aspire to be for our kids.

 Thank you for bringing these stories to light. I believe this book will be pivotal for many people who continue to grieve and want to understand how to live with the loss.”

 --Meredith N., Des Moines, Iowa

"I recently bought your book Death Benefits for my boyfriend and I. We both thought our mothers died too young. My mother died of cancer when I was in my early 20s,and I took time out of my life to care for her at home. His mother died two years ago, and he's still grieving and processing....

Your book has helped us both more than I can say. I plan to buy ALL of your books in the near future. Thanks you for being sane and reasonable and especially for touching on topics that can be so hard to approach, or taboo, or not "PC"--however you want to say it. You are making the world a better place one reader/listener/viewer/person at a time. (In this case, 2 people at a time.) And I love it that you're OUT THERE!"

Respectfully,

Diane L., Pasadena, California

A psychotherapist writes:

"What a refreshing new slant on the personal gains after a mother's death for adult daughters who have experienced a constricted life while their mothers were alive. You masterfully capture in Death Benefits the simultaneous pull/release reaction for a daughter at her mother's passing, resulting in a liberated passage for the daughter into healthier self-approval, self-applause, and self-definition, unencumbered by her (and especially by her mother's) palpable need for suffocating involvement while her mother was alive. I have already recommended your book to my psychotherapy clients."

What Reviewers are Saying about Death Benefits:

"Safer offers...helpful exercises for adult children to begin to heal from emotional wounds inflicted by their parents....[Those] seeking to free themselves from ties that have bound too tightly will welcome Safer's message: there's no need to feel guilty about a sense of freedom and finding one's true self after a parent's death."

--Publishers' Weekly

"This optimistic book breaks a powerful taboo. It may be used as a guide through guilt, grief and --dare I say it?--rebirth."

--Alice Graves, St. Petersburg Time