Good Reads

Working Daughter: A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Parents While Making a Living

By Liz O’Donnell Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Kindle, print

Working Daughter is a revelatory look at who’s caring for our aging population and how these unpaid family caregivers are trying to manage caring for their parents, raising their children, maintaining relationships, and pursuing their careers.

It follows the author, who was enjoying a fast-paced career in marketing and raising two children when both of her parents were diagnosed with terminal illnesses on the same day. In the challenges she faced and the choices she made, readers will learn how they can navigate their own caregiving experiences and prepare for when they are inevitably called on to care for their parents.

Working Daughter sparks the conversation we so desperately need to have about women and the workplace. With 10,000 people turning 65 every day and a shortage of caregivers predicted in the next few years, it’s time we talk about how family caregivers and their employers will face the impact of a rapidly aging society.

There are plenty of books about managing career and children, but little advice on how to balance career and parents — along with children, marriages, and friendships. Working Daughter provides a blueprint for women and a call to action for business leaders and policy makers.

This book is for women who want straight talk and real advice about the challenges of eldercare, the choices they will need to make, the aspects of caregiving they can control, and that which they cannot. And finally, Working Daughter shows family caregivers how they can achieve the caregiver’s gain — the underreported but well-documented upside to caring for an aging parent.

Caregiving While Keeping Your Job

By Karen Owen-Lee Kindle, print caring for aging loved ones in declining health. The stress and hours spent in caregiving result in employees who are emotionally drained, late to work, and missing work altogether.

Six out of 10 caregivers are full-time employees. Caregivers are caught between fear and anxiety for their loved one and the fear of getting fired from their job.

Corporations need to address their lost revenue and productivity while the caregiver must address their stress and demands of keeping their job. Where do caregivers turn for help? What community resources are available?

Caregiving While Keeping Your Job addresses: • The secrets to managing a parent’s finances, legal, and medical matters • How to determine how much leave time you’ll need to assess your senior’s condition and needs • Informative ways to conduct sensitive talks with senior family members • How to include other family members by creating a family action plan to care for your aging family member • How to plan for a future that will allow you to be a caregiver while staying employed

Role Reversal: How to Take Care of Yourself and Your Aging Parents

By Iris Waichler, MSW, LCSW She Writes Press Kindle, print

Designed to help caregivers understand how to cope with and overcome the overwhelming challenges that arise while caregiving for a loved one — especially an aging parent — Role Reversal is a comprehensive guide to navigating the enormous daily challenges faced by caregivers.

In these pages, Waichler blends her personal experience caring for her beloved father with her 40 years of expertise as a patient advocate and clinical social worker. The result is a book offering invaluable information on topics ranging from estate planning to grief and anger to building a support network and finding the right level of care for your elderly parent.

Soul of Caregiving: A Caregiver’s Guide to Healing and Transformation

By Edward M. Smink, Ph.D. Soul of the Wounded Healer Kindle, print Who are the caregivers? We all are, for at the heart of being human is the capacity to care, to reach out to others, and to explore the relationships we build. The Soul of Caregiving is about us and how we, as caregivers, serve, even sacrifice, for those in need. Explore how we have the opportunities to partake in a kind of pilgrimage along the path of our experiences as caregivers.

Who will be your guide on this journey? Unlike other pilgrims who have a guide assigned to them, you will soon discover it is your own soul guiding you. Professionally skilled as we may be to meet the needs of others, a fundamental core component of our busy lives as caregivers is the necessity to stop and rest. It is not a waste of time, but rather a luxury of time, to ponder, reflect, and grow from our experiences. This is not an easy endeavor in the midst of a whirlwind of activity.

We, as caregivers, experience vulnerability, helplessness, fears, and pain over the traumatic events we experience because we care. We care about those whom we are called to serve. Compassion fatigue comes about because we care.

The Unexpected Journey of Caring: The Transformation from Loved One to Caregiver

By Donna Thomson, Zachary White, and Foreword by Judy Woodruff Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

With a foreword by Judy Woodruff, The Unexpected Journey of Caring is a practical guide to finding personal meaning in the 21stcentury care experience.

Personal transformation is usually an experience we actively seek out, not one that hunts us down. Becoming a caregiver is one transformation that comes at us, requiring us to rethink everything we once knew. Everything changes: responsibilities, beliefs, hopes, expectations, and relationships.

Caregiving is not just a role reserved for “saints” — eventually, everyone is drafted into

the caregiver role. It’s not a role people medically train for; it’s a new type of relationship initiated by a loved one’s need for care. And it’s a role that cannot be quarantined to home because it infuses all aspects of our lives.

Caregivers today find themselves in need of a crash course in new and unfamiliar skills. They must not only care for a loved one, but also access hidden community resources, collaborate with medical professionals, craft new narratives consistent with the changing nature of their care role, coordinate care with family, seek information and peer support using a variety of digital platforms, and negotiate social support — all while attempting to manage conflicts between work, life, and relationship roles.

The moments that mark us in the transition from loved one to caregiver matter because if we don’t make sense of how we are being transformed, we risk undervaluing our care experiences, denying our evolving beliefs, becoming trapped by others’ misunderstandings, and feeling underappreciated, burned out, and overwhelmed.

Informed by original caregiver research and proven advocacy strategies, this book speaks to caregiving as it unfolds, in all of its confusion, chaos, and messiness. Readers won’t find wellintentioned clichés or care stereotypes in this book. There are no promises to help caregivers return to a life they knew before caregiving. No, this book greets caregivers where they are in their journey — new or chronic — not where others expect (or want) them to be.

What To Do About Mama? Expectations and Realities of Caregiving

By Barbara G. Matthews and Barbara Trainin Blank Sunbury Press Everyone is a potential caregiver — a role for which we are often ill prepared and which can overwhelm us. Where do we turn for assistance? What to Do about Mama offers guidelines to present and future caregivers, based on the “real-life” experiences of the co-authors and many other caregivers who have openly and honestly shared their challenges, their heartaches, and their joys in caregiving.

It’s not a book by experts, but by people in the trenches. It will help you develop realistic goals and achievable expectations. Whether these stories come from those who are caregiving now or will in the future, they will resonate with you.

Weary Joy: The Caregiver’s Journey

By Kim Marxhausen Concordia Publishing Kindle, print Caring for a loved one with memory loss is full of harsh realities ... and unexpected joys.

Caregivers often live in the shadow of their loved one’s needs with little time for themselves. They may feel isolated, lonely, and exhausted, and their own needs are left unmet.

Every caregiver needs a caregiver. Weary Joy assures caregivers that they are not alone. The stories, explanations, tips, and devotional connections remind caregivers that they walk this journey with others and that their loved ones’ actions are part of their disease and not their personalities. Most important, caregivers will be reminded that even if their loved ones forget, their heavenly Father always remembers.

Weary Joy helps caregivers do a better job of caring for themselves. Short, easy-to-read chapters cover a variety of topics that are common to caregiving situations. Discussion questions make a good starting point for conversations in a support group or with family members. And a checklist helps assess and navigate the caregiving journey.

Alzheimer’s Through the Stages: A Caregiver’s Guide

By Mary Moller, MSW, CAS Althea Press Kindle, print Alzheimer’s Through the Stages shows you what you can do for your loved one — and yourself — every step of the way. This book’s detailed descriptions of all seven stages of the disease are both helpful and comforting.

With each section divided into three parts — what to expect, what to say, and what to do — this is one of the easiest-to-use Alzheimer’s books for caregivers.

Alzheimer’s Through the Stages includes: • A Complete Guide – Go beyond other

Alzheimer’s books as you learn what’s happening and what you should do during all seven stages of the disease. • Easy-to-Use Advice – Detailed guides and sample dialogues help you handle everything from doctor visits to mood swings — making this one of the most useful Alzheimer’s books. • Self-Care for Caregivers – Discover the importance of your own well-being and how taking care of yourself is critical to successful caregiving.

Discover one of the only Alzheimer’s books that lets you concentrate on what matters most: caring for both your loved one and yourself.

Coffee with Mom: Caring for a Parent with Dementia

By Mike Glenn B&H Books Kindle, print

Sometimes, life takes you places you don’t want to go.

Dementia and Alzheimer’s is a journey no one wants to take, yet life doesn’t give us a choice. Author Mike Glenn’s mom didn’t want to be sick, and while she couldn’t overcome the devastation of disease, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

She fought the illness, denying its presence. She fought the doctors, “Who were these idiots anyway?” And she fought him, “How come you think you’re in charge now?”

Coffee with Mom is a book about a mom’s fight with dementia and the struggle of a son who wanted to help but didn’t always know how. Most of their conversations — and sometimes battles — happened during morning coffee.

This book isn’t about knowing all of the answers. It is one son’s journey with his mom — a mom with Alzheimer’s and a son who did the best he could, and who wrote this story in hopes that you’ll find a few laughs for your journey, realize you’re not alone, and find the courage to do the best you can.

So, pour yourself a cup of coffee, and join us on the journey. You’ll find yourself in the laughter and tears of not knowing what to do next and making a decision that you hope works out, knowing it’s the best you can do in the moment.

In the end, that’s all that matters. “Do the best you can” is all love requires.