Take Good Care

Description

In a time when tens of millions of people provide care for family members, older adults, and people with special needs, we should all be experts at it. Instead, we often struggle with caring for others while taking care of ourselves. "Cynthia Orange's newest award-winning gem is a rare combination of inspiration and information that invites us to examine our behavior and feelings with an open heart, free from judgment, as we care for others and ourselves. Take Good Care offers valuable care suggestions throughout-from how to navigate difficult conversations to what contact numbers to post on the refrigerator." -Lisa Sue Woititz, author of Unwelcome Inheritance: Break Your Family's Cycle of Addictive Behaviors In Take Good Care, author Cynthia Orange brings together compelling testimonies from a wide range of caregivers, advice from leading experts in the field, and her own hard-won wisdom to capture the subtle differences between caretaking and caregiving. With a foreword by Susan Allen Toth, the critically acclaimed author of No Saints around Here: A Caregiver's Days, this book shows us how and why caring for each other can be a mutually rewarding experience. It's easy to become overinvolved in another person's life and needs when giving care. Feeling burdened with expectations and resentments in a codependent relationship hinders a sense of joy, purpose, and engagement. Relationships require empathy and boundaries; with them, a codependent caretaker can transform into an intentional, self-aware, and compassionate caregiver.

Cynthia Orange is the author of two Nautilus Award-winning books: Shock Waves: A Practical Guide to Living with a Loved One's PTSD and her newest title Take Good Care. The facilitator of a caregivers' support group, Cynthia-along with her husband, a Vietnam combat veteran-often speaks to audiences about the effects of trauma. Her work has been published throughout the United States, and she has written hundreds of articles about addiction, recovery, parenting, post-traumatic stress disorder, and caregiving

This wise and thoughtful book by Cynthia Orange offers a rich array of directions, resources, and practical approaches for those who find themselves, or wish to, in caregiving. Her long experience and personal encounters with caregiving and its missteps give her writing a gravity and a commonsense character so welcome in books of this kind. Full of personal stories the ideas and claims she makes take on a concrete realism and remind us of people and situations we know. I love the lists of things to do and the resources for evaluating situations in which caregivers find themselves. An accessible read, do not miss this opportunity to learn from a real pro in the work of caregiving. -Tex Sample, Robert B. and Kathleen Rogers Professor Emeritus of Church and Society, Saint Paul School of Theology -- Tex Sample, Robert B. and Kathleen Rogers Professor Emeritus of Church and Society, Saint Paul School of Teology