Your turn for care: Surviving the aging and death of the adults who harmed you

by Laura Brown

Your Turn is the first book for adults who were abused and maltreated by older family members who are now faced with the aging and death of those abusive elders. This book discusses the reasons that this normal life passage has become especially difficult for adult survivors, drawing on psychological research about the long-term effects of childhood maltreatment. It then addresses how adult survivors can move through this time of time and make it into an opportunity for their own healing. Specific suggestions for self-care and strategies for decision-making are presented. An extensive list of written and on-line resources on a variety of related topics is included in the book. Your Turn is the only book that speaks to the special concerns of adult survivors of childhood maltreatment who are at this juncture in their lives.

Genres: Psychology

183 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 30, 2012

About the author

Laura Brown is the founder of LB Media, and the chair of (RED)’s Creative Council. She sits on the boards of (RED), The Fashion Trust US, and me too. Movement, and Foot Soldiers Park, Selma. Previously, she was editor-in-chief ofInStyle, executive editor of Harper’s Bazaar, and senior editor at W. She earned her BA in arts and communication from Charles Sturt University in New South Wales, Australia. She lives in Manhattan with her husband.

Reviews

[Ella]

This is a book about relating to elders, caregiving, and death for people whose personal childhood story was a horror movie, not a Hallmark card.

For those adults who are pursuing relationships with and/or becoming caregivers to elders who were reasonably loving, decent, and honorable in their relationships with you, those complications are difficult in and of themselves...

There is a group of adults whose dilemmas in dealing with the aging, illness, and death of elders are complex beyond the norm. This book is for those folks—for adults raised in families that were frightening, confusing, dangerous, sometimes criminal in their treatment of their children. The elders in these families are...people who...behaved in vicious, venal, abusive, and/or neglectful ways to those children. You are those children, grown into adults confronted with cultural and social demands to relate to those elders, and sometimes to step into the caregiver role.

This is an almost one-of-a-kind resource, since nobody seems to have put together two clear facts: a huge number of children are abused in childhood, and [in the US] a full 60% of elderly people are being cared for solely by family. That number increases to 95% if we include family taking any role in caregiving for a family member. So it is clear that many people who were abused in childhood are now caring for that abusive parent/primary caregiver in their elderly years.

Surprisingly, there was nothing in the self-help literature (and there seems to be little or no scholarly research finished or even in process) for those adult children who are now either feeling pressured to care for their former abusive caregiver or who are already doing so.

Obviously this can be problematic on a number of levels.

I'm only writing this review so others will know of this resource. Written in a very open and non-prescriptive style, readers can take what they need and ignore the rest. For those who want much clearer "do this" and "don't do that" guidance, this may feel somewhat nebulous. The bottom line comes down to "you do not have to care for this person who harmed you when you were the vulnerable one."

There is tremendous personal and societal pressure to take on the role of caregiver to an elderly person, but that may be a very bad idea for a number of reasons -- both to the adult child and to the formerly abusive older person. (And not every abusive person becomes lovely and kind in old age. They may continue some abusive patterns throughout life.)

Unfortunately, the US medical system doesn't much care if this person terrorized you, they will assume you either should or must take on this new project. Armed at least with one resource, hopefully we can avoid everyone feeling like they must be the primary caregiver to the person who failed so horribly in this role years before.

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learning self-compassion is a big task of adulthood - truly caring for the vulnerable child that remains at our core throughout our lives.

[Zev · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wavered on how many stars to give the book, just now. Three and a half for no particular reason. I mean, I have my reasons. I'm so glad I read this, and that it was written, but as is another book of Dr Brown's I read, it is so broad. I expected more from it than it gave me. I saw myself in only three paragraphs in the entire book, and was really hoping for solid advice and certain kinds of validation. That didn't happen. This book is still important.
I had a much stronger reaction to the book than I expected, which doesn't affect my rating. Normally I am more coherent than this, but I just spent an hour thinking on this.
When I set this book down, I abruptly removed all the bookmarks I'd just stuck in the book. I got really frustrated and agitated, and ate the rest of the chocolate I'd been trying to hold off on. I paced, grumbled, and then cried for a bit. I was able to name some of the feelings and themes that came up, and--this overall helped.
My dad is early-fifties, and my mom is late-forties. I am watching them age and it's bizarre. I'm late-twenties (my mom was barely nineteen when I was conceived, possibly younger). I started to feel really old, all of the sudden, when I was twenty-seven. I feel like I'm sixty due to stress, so it's kind of no wonder I'm suddenly preoccupied with my parents aging too. They have health issues. So do I. Anyway, people should read this book. It just brought up stuff for me and I'm glad it did. I feel like I can do something about it maybe. At least I'm aware of it.

[Havebooks Willread · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had mixed thoughts on this one.

Things I really liked: 1) the self-assessments to figure out where the reader is and how varying aspects of aid will affect the reader's life and resources, 2) the last chapter about reactions to death, especially when the death of a parent is exacerbated by the death of hope, especially of the parent ever changing, 3) the author's realization that cultural expectations influence a person's expectations from oneself.

What I didn't like: it was definitely coming from a different worldview than my own, so I think a reader has to constantly be discerning and deciding if the flesh is being validated.

It wasn't a pleasant read, but it certainly was thought-provoking. My copy is paperback and I don't feel like figuring out how to change it from the default of Kindle.

[Chelsie Gillum · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s important to note that this is basically the only book I could find that specifically deals with the death of an abusive/neglectful/otherwise maltreating elder; this apparently just isn’t a topic with a ton of literature out there yet (and as such is mostly a footnote or a small passage within books on other topics of childhood trauma). With that being said, I did find this book enormously helpful and empowering when it comes to thinking about the aging and eventual death of my personality-disordered father. The author speaks very directly to the anxious voice in my head that doubts the details of my childhood, put there externally by years of gaslighting and manipulation, to remind me concretely: I am no longer held to a contract of care because the elder in my life broke this contract when I was a child. That is definitely something I benefited from reading multiple times. Overall this book was what I hoped it would be, dealing directly with many of the various possibilities of circumstances that may arise in caring (or choosing not to participate in the care of) for this elder, arguing for different ways for adult survivors to become more powerful in their own choice making behaviors. I will say the author seems to mostly have treated survivors of sexual abuse, as this is the primary anecdote category referred to, and in this same vein there are a few places in the book where one or two sentences of details from said anecdotes should not have been included. I imagine that survivors of this type of abuse would likely find some of these details triggering rather than centering, as I found them upsetting even without being a survivor of that particular type of abuse. My general approach to reading this type of text is to take good care while doing so, and that advice holds true here, even while the overall message is healing and validating.