Sustenance and Hope for Caregivers of Elderly Parents

This volume provides a practical exploration of one of today's most complex and challenging issues—the care of an elderly parent—with an innovative approach that emphasizes how rewarding the caregiver/care-receiver relationship can be.For anyone facing this often overwhelming situation, Sustenance and Hope for Caregivers of Elderly Parents: Bread of Angels offers a wealth of insights from experienced caregivers, extraordinary personal stories, and most importantly, reassurance and support. It is a refreshing new vision of the positive potential for caregiving and the rewards that come with evolving relationships between adult children and their parents.Gloria G. Barsamian’s remarkably perceptive new volume dispels the myth that caretaking is a thankless burden. Like no other work, it captures the emotions of today’s millions of caregivers, as well as care-receivers, spouses, and grandchildren. A longtime social worker, Barsamian shows how old ways of thinking about caregiving can be replaced with new, healthier possibilities that enrich the lives of caregivers and care-receivers.Appendices provide lists of print and online resources, a self-help directory, and practical advice on preparing for the financial toll of caregivingTwo chapters, "The Man with 10,000 Names" and "Betty Brillo's Diary" provide astounding true accounts of the difficulties and triumphs of parental caregiving

". . . a welcome resource created to support adult children of elderly parents in need of care. . . . In all, Bread of Angels provides a stimulating new focus for those who choose to face the challenges of caregiving with imagination, humility, grace and compassion. In so providing this multifaceted resource, author Gloria Barsamian has enriched all." - MBR Bookwatch, "For individuals caring for an elderly parent, this guide addresses essential issues in caregiving based on the author’s and other professionals’ experience and research. Barsamian discusses the caregiving relationship and how it is evolving, the impact on families, the effects of attachment, mother-daughter relationships, spirituality, dealing with anxiety and stress, and the impact of caregiving on the dying process, along with a diary of one women’s experiences. Barsamian, a retired social worker and medical health specialist, has focused on illness, medical ethics, and adult children of elderly parents in her research." - Reference & Research Book News

Gloria G. Barsamian is a retired social worker and medical health specialist from the Lahey Clinic Medical Center, Burlington, MA.