: Clarissa P. Green
: Grownupedness
: Granville Island Publishing
: 9781989467251
: 1
: CHF 8.30
:
: Ratgeber
: English
: 206
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Pivotal events in Clarissa P. Green's childhood altered the trajectory of her family relationships, personal life and career. Moved by the struggle between aging parents and their mid-life children in the face of grief and loss, Green began a decades-long career as a therapist and university professor concentrating on these families. She found that parents and children alike wanted to be seen as adult, to act grown-up in front of one another. Sharing her personal experiences alongside those of her clients, in humorous and touching detail, Green makes her deep understandings of family and aging available to all.
Anatomy of a Crisis
Mom. Father. Sister. Brother. Grandmother. Grandfather. Dog. Tricycle.
Snip. Snip. Snip. Curve scissors around, carefully. Snip.
As soon as I could manoeuvre scissors, I grew fascinated, used my new skill to carefully cut on dotted lines to release paper dolls from booklets Mom bought me. Pages of people, clothes, pets, toys, furniture. After I cut out a family, I dressed them, laid them out side by side on the blue carpet in my bedroom.
Mom also gave me Sears catalogues and old magazines. In those pages, aunts, uncles, cousins, a school and teacher, friends, cars, dolls, a church, a mountain, a streetcar.
“There.”
Then, “Once upon a time . . .”
When my six-year-old story line wandered beyond the figures between my knees on the floor — as it had when my next sister was born a year before — I searched for what I needed to illustrate the story unfolding: baby, bassinette, stroller, babysitter, new doll. Began to carefully cut again.
“That’s better. Now, everything is all right . . . all over again!”
Upheaval made me search for what would make everything feel okay again; I needed to feel safe, or I felt afraid, hesitant, wanted to run, hide. I sifted through what people, groups, places could make me feel more stable.
Because I’d been able to figure this out so far, I didn’t yet know what happened if I couldn’t.
That happened when I was nine years old.
Then, after the birth of my youngest sister, Maudie, the eighth child, my family couldn’t rebalance. Everything felt tangled, crazy. Everyone seemed stiff and silent, or all over the place and noisy. Mom and Dad made decisions that made no sense to me.
That time was my primer for how crisis emerges when a family can’t access what they need to restabilize.
Not long before the summer Maudie was born, my father had a heart attack and was taken away in an ambulance. For months after, he lived at a neighbour’s house, not at home. Mom said it was too noisy with seven children and five dogs; Daddy neededrest. Then my grandmother also had a heart attack. She took to her bed, stopped