Grownupedness

Grownupedness

Clarissa P. Green

Grownupedness is a personal memoir, rich with the insight of Clarissa P. Green’s decades-long career as a university professor and family therapist working with aging parents and their mid-life children. In finding that the search for authenticity and the desire to appear and act “grown up” was shared among those families that she counselled, Clarissa brings to life her stories, insights and personal family experiences—making her deep understanding of aging and family life available to all families or individuals struggling with age and family relationships. Using her own similar family struggles and sharing the deeply personal process of her family’s history and future interlocking through time, Clarissa explores when and how “grownupedness” emerges and evolves, what threatens or cobbles it, and what it looks and sounds like in action over time.

Editions:

Paperback:
ISBN: 9781989467244 (paperback). Price: $19.95 CDN, $17.95 USD
Size: 5.5 x 8.5 inches
Pages: 196

Available via your local bookstore, Chapters/Indigo. and Amazon
Distribution in the UK via Gazelle Book Services

ISBN: 9781989467251 (eBook). Price: $9.99 CDN, $7.99 USD Available via Bookbaby or Amazon Kindle.

Book Cover Image

Reviews / Testimonials:

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. If you have ever been a parent, or had one, grown old or can see that you will, this wise and funny book will illuminate the path to an interconnected and loving maturity.
— Ethel Whitty
Author of The Light a Body Radiates

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

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
Author of Pathologies: A Life in Essays

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

Media Related:

Recently release book review from the Vancouver Sun article can be read here.

 

 

ISBN: 9781989467244
196 Pages
CDN/USD

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 at the University of British Columbia, Green’s Continuing Studies Programs “The Widowed Journey” and “The Mid-Life Daughters’ Workshop” ran successfully for more than a decade. Green was a founder of Teaching and Academic Growth (now the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre), and she has received numerous teaching awards including the Killam Teaching Prize from UBC and the prestigious 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.

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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 at the University of British Columbia, Green’s Continuing Studies Programs “The Widowed Journey” and “The Mid-Life Daughters’ Workshop” ran successfully for more than a decade. Green was a founder of Teaching and Academic Growth (now the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre), and she has received numerous teaching awards including the Killam Teaching Prize from UBC and the prestigious 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.