Grownupedness

by Clarissa P Green

Overview

Pivotal events in Clarissa P. Green's childhood altered the trajectory of her family relationships, personal life and career. Within the course of one year, her youngest sister passed away within seven months of her birth, and both her father and grandmother suffered near-fatal heart-attacks. In the 1950s, silence was considered an appropriate response to tragedy. Green writes, "my parents believed the right way to handle misfortune was to 'turn the page.' This meant they didn't talk with their children about our sister's death or any of the other awful events around that time. It's taken me most of my life to understand how this crisis changed my family so profoundly, how it shaped my future." It took a move from New York to Florida to bring the family back together.

In her twenties, Green was drawn to study the ins and outs of family crisis. In graduate school, and then as a professor in Vancouver, British Columbia, Green began to help grieving families regain balance -- comforting the parents of premature newborns and helping families whose wives or mothers were diagnosed with life-threatening illness. Her support of these families led to a decades-long career in clinical therapy, working with aging parents and their mid-life children.

Green writes, "The lengthy journey through aging involves numerous reasons to stumble -- burdensome caregiving, coping with illness, sibling strife, money dynamics, unfinished business... No matter what they were particularly upset about, mid-life children and old parents alike wanted to be seen as adult, to act grown-up in front of one another. Parents' aging, especially illness, called for responsible approaches to tough situations, respect for differences in perspective, authentic and open conversation, boundaries."

An award-winning teacher and advocate for the power of a learner's personal connections in making theory and research meaningful, Green listened to her clients stories. As the storyteller of her own family, in Grownupedness Green weaves together her personal experiences alongside those of her clients -- in humorous and touching detail -- to make her deep understandings of family and aging available to all.

In Part I, Green explores what it means to be an "elderly young girl," breaks down the anatomy of a crisis, and shows how the influence of past trauma stays with us as we age. Part II dives deeply into Green's own personal experiences as she shares with the reader the challenges of supporting loved ones as they and their partners face growing old, illness and end of life. In Part III, Green delves into what she has learned as a daughter, a sibling, a wife, a mother, a teacher and a therapist.

Coupled with stories and lessons learned from her clients and family, she brings together stories and advice on difficult conversations -- finance, dementia, touch, independence -- and shares with vulnerability how she herself navigated the changing relationships with her own adult sons. Finding humor in difficult situations, Green manages to find humanity in experiences that are simultaneously personal and yet universal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781989467244
Publisher:	Granville Island Publishing Ltd.
Publication date:	07/21/2020
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Clarissa P. Green has spent her life exploring and teaching how family relationships are changed by aging, illness and death. In her decades-long career as a therapist, Green has helped families reconfigure their relationships and conceptions of self in the face of trauma and aging. An associate professor emerita at the University of British Columbia, Green's continuing-studies programs, The Widowed Journey and The Mid-Life Daughters' Workshop, ran for more than a decade. Green was a founder of what is now the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, and she has received numerous teaching awards, including the Killam Teaching Prize from UBC and the 3M National Teaching Award. Green's belief that personal experience is necessary for learning and growth developed naturally alongside a lifelong passion for storytelling. Green completed the Simon Fraser University Writer's Studio program in 2007, and her short fiction piece The Coin won first prize at the Vancouver International Writer's Festival in 2009. Green's numerous works have been published in anthologies, Geist magazine, and The Fieldstone Review.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Part One

Anatomy of a Crisis 1

The Search for My Elderly Young Girl 17

Notes on Music 27

Part Two

The Change 43

Hurricane Days 49

Lost and Found 61

Driving Lessons 71

Voice-Over 85

River of Loss 95

Part Three

Follow the Money 105

How Touching 119

It’s Never Just About the Hair 129

Grownupedness 139

Acknowledgements 185

Editorial Reviews

Green left childhood behind at age ten, a year of "pandemonium" a reminder that "terrible things do happen to good people." She shares, with honesty and humour, a chronicle of crisis and change, a brilliant legacy of wisdom to anyone who has been bewildered by their family.
-- Alex Fancy, professor emeritus, Mount Allison University, 3M National Teaching Fellow

In Grownupedness, Clarissa P. Green blends her professional and personal experience to help the reader navigate painful choices with loving clarity.
-- Leslie Hill, author of Dressed for Dancing: My Sojourn in the Findhorn Foundation

These probing and reflective essays show us that there's no free pass -- aging is rarely easy, and renegotiating the terms of our relationships with loved ones as we all grow older requires us to reckon with old demons, to examine outgrown assumptions, to acknowledge and respect our losses. Honest, moving, yet hopeful.
-- Susan Olding, Aathor of Pathologies: A Life in Essays

Part memoir, part analysis of the human condition, Green's brilliant book holds you in its warm embrace and says, "It takes courage to grow up." From the first chapter when you begin to understand the author's lifelong commitment to understanding how crisis restructures families and personalities, until you arrive at the final chapter, you'll laugh, weep unexpectedly and be caught off guard by moments of insight.
-- Ethel Whitty, author of The Light a Body Radiates

With unflinching curiosity for the complexities of the human journey, she shares naked emotions and truths she discovers along the way. Poignant, visceral, humorous, insightful and inspiring -- a must read for anyone living a life.
-- Jane Mortifee, singer and author of Out of the Fire

Her personal stories will move you. Her professional wisdom will give you hope that the inevitable tensions brought about by aging can also provide rich experiences worth the effort.
-- Sally Halliday, MA, RCC, CCC, registered clinical counsellor specializing in mid-life changes and former CBC journalist

In her astounding Grownupedness, Green banishes clichés and psychobabble. She tells disquieting life stories. Green's book confronts us with lurid details about getting old and about living with people getting old. We are all headed that way. Green dares us to pay attention.
-- Guy Allen, professor, director of the Professional Writing and Communication Program, University of Toronto

From the Publisher