A refreshingly simple manual that offers comfort to its audience in the form of actionable, workable steps.
A wide-ranging guide that offers tips and tools for caregivers, whether their patient is a client or a loved one.
Although Green differentiates between the roles of family caregivers and frontline caregivers, much of her advice applies in either capacity. The manual begins by introducing seven major tenets to practice as a long-term caregiver: self-care, empathy, empowerment, kindness, patience, communication awareness, and active listening. Green breaks each one down into subsections that rarely run longer than a paragraph or two; these short paragraphs are densely packed, however, and often include bullet points or small charts for maximum visual impact. The book’s second part consists of what might be considered the most difficult aspects of caregiving (appropriately titled “The Things No One Tells You”), including ways to handle patients who may be suffering from panic attacks, depression, or senses of isolation, guilt, or regret. The third part moves on to a personal account of Green’s own grief and coping mechanisms after her father died, as well as healthy ways to approach a sense of loss and fear. All chapters are interspersed with stories of interactions between caregivers and patients that help illustrate the points at hand, and they often provide practice scripts, complete with sample dialogue, showing how to work through situations that may be particularly complicated. Each chapter concludes with a handful of questions and prompts meant to get readers thinking more deeply about Green’s lessons, such as “Write one to three positive self-talk statements that you can refer to when you are distressed.”
Green largely keeps her advice simple, clinical, and easy to understand; as such, those beginning their caregiving journeys will feel just at home with this manual as those who’ve been doing it for years. That said, sometimes this results in information that feels obvious, such as advice on ways to show kindness: “Kindness is demonstrated when you display a genuine interest in the feelings and well-being of your loved one or client. You can practice kindness by being friendly, generous, and considerate.” At other times, though, Green offers insight into areas that most readers won’t have considered, such as the downside of having an overabundance of patience when asking for help: “You may feel so frustrated with your lack of control or the dependence that you have on another person that you simply say, ‘Forget it!’ and put the task aside.” The author smartly uses an array of informational tools to help readers visualize her advice, including color coding patience levels for easy reference: bright red for feelings of impatience and anger; orange for when patience is “being tested”; yellow to show room for improvement; green for healthy strategies to help maintain patience; and dark red for overabundant patience. Green’s unfussy language and gentle encouragement makes this a comforting read—not in an overly sentimental way, but in a manner that will have readers feeling more prepared to take on their assignments.
A refreshingly simple manual that offers comfort to its audience in the form of actionable, workable steps.Pub Date: May 22, 2024
ISBN: 9798375805887
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Green Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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