When the Death of a Parent Changes Your Life

Usually I don’t recommend books about life and family because I don’t consider myself an expert. But family issues come up for almost all my clients. They put off career change and even take a leave from their own businesses. And they’re frozen with grief.

But I ran across a book, Death Benefits by Jeanne Safer, Ph.D. I can relate to it (although my parents died quite a while ago). I have watched my friends and clients go through loss. Nearly all seem to have a mixture of relief and guilt at feeling this relief.

The subtitle is, How Losing a Parent Can Change An Adult’s Life – For the Better. So it’s a little awkward to recommend this book to friends. “Here’s a book that…um…helps you realize how much you’re freed up when your parents die.” But the book is so good it’s worth the social risk.

Safer writes well and she keeps the book focused, with a clear theme. She doesn’t sugarcoat the message or urge people to look for kindness and goodness inept parents. Her exercises are few and simple. They’re more like coaching than what I think of as therapy, but I suspect they’re very powerful.

It’s hard to pick out the highlights because (rare for me!) I really liked every chapter. I would call a reader’s attention to the chapter on “the last taboo,” noting that many people are embarrassed to admit their feelings about the loss. The chapter on religion is particularly sensitive to two diverse responses — turning away from a parent’s religion or returning to a faith that was once abandoned.

In the section on disposing of “stuff,” I could note that you don’t have to do this yourself. You can hire people who will go through furniture and clothing, sorting out what can be sold, what is valuable ad what should be given away. Look under “estate sales” or advertise for help on craigslist.

Safer is a psychologist, so she doesn’t explore the broader implications of our new understanding of parent-child relationships. Our society is still set up to demand contributions — financial and psychological — from children, even when parents have been indifferent, incompetent, or even abusive. Company policies and legal systems support and even demand parent-child relationships. We need to recognize that families are not what they used to be, and probably they never were.

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Fear of career change? Take action.

It’s a vicious cycle.

Fear ==> paralysis ==> catastrophizing ==> more fear ==>

==> do nothing ==> more fear ==> hide in the closet….

We’ve all been there.

You’re ready to make a big career change. You really want to get going. But you’re held back by fear. So you wait…and wait.

(1) Recognize consequences of doing nothing.

You really hate your job and you’re long overdue for a change. But you like the security of a pay check. Maybe you have family (and dogs) depending on you.

Hang on long enough and you’ll probably start sabotaging your own security. You’ll find yourself making dumb mistakes, missing deadlines, losing important documents and more.

Some people handle this sort of thing better than others. Some live for 20 years with jobs they despise with no outward appearance of problems. My theory is (a) you just don’t see what’s going on — doctor visits, anti-depressants, stomach trouble, family grief, or more; (b) they don’t hate their job as much as they say; or (c) they were born with a certain temperament with high tolerance for frustration.

(2) Do some reality testing.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” is a good first question. Once you have the answer you can often create plans to cover your worst case scenario. Here’s where a career coach can help: not someone who administers a handful of tests, but someone who knows the ins and outs of careers.

(3) Take a small 10-minute step.

What should you do? It doesn’t matter. Take just 10 minutes to deal with your frustration.

Action means getting off the couch. It doesn’t include introspection (“what do I really want”), reciting mantras and affirmations (although you can do that too) or talking to friends on the phone. It doesn’t mean reading books, even those I’ve written (list here).

Examples of action include phone calls to people who can help (such as experienced professionals in your field), attending meaningful networking events (not mechanically attending lunches), and meeting contacts for coffee. If you can’t think of a single action step, or you’re taking steps but aren’t seeing results, find a professional who can help. The sooner you get moving, the faster your fear will dissipate and the faster you’ll find yourself in a good space.

Just one note. Sometimes you’ve just been through a traumatic experience: a death of someone close to, the loss of a career you loved, break-up of a relationship, sale of a business or loss of your biggest customer. Any of these experiences require time for recovery. Each person will handle loss differently: formulas (even the famous Kubler-Ross stages) do not apply to everyone. In general, don’t make any big moves or take any big risks for at least 30 days…perhaps as long as six months. But at some point, you really do have to get off the couch and spring into action.

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