Meaning in Mid-Life Transitions

Meaning in Mid-Life Transitions
Author: Edmund Sherman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 1987-01-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1438419848

This book contributes to an understanding of the nature of mid-life transitions and crises by focusing on the unique personal meaning of the transitional experience for the individual. There is an implicit structure to the way in which such a transition is experienced by the individual, and this can be made explicit by the techniques and methods of the approach outlined and illustrated in the book. The value of making this structure explicit is that it enables us to understand and assess the nature and dimensions of the transition, whether or not it will reach crisis proportions, and to assess possible intervention strategies. Meaning in Mid-Life Transitions should be of interest to human service practitioners as well as teachers and students of human development and behavior. It evidences an integrative approach and structural framework, including a series of in-depth clinical and research studies.

Meaning in Mid-Life Transitions

Meaning in Mid-Life Transitions
Author: Edmund A. Sherman
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 1987-01-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780887063848

This book contributes to an understanding of the nature of mid-life transitions and crises by focusing on the unique personal meaning of the transitional experience for the individual. There is an implicit structure to the way in which such a transition is experienced by the individual, and this can be made explicit by the techniques and methods of the approach outlined and illustrated in the book. The value of making this structure explicit is that it enables us to understand and assess the nature and dimensions of the transition, whether or not it will reach crisis proportions, and to assess possible intervention strategies. Meaning in Mid-Life Transitions should be of interest to human service practitioners as well as teachers and students of human development and behavior. It evidences an integrative approach and structural framework, including a series of in-depth clinical and research studies.

Life Is in the Transitions

Life Is in the Transitions
Author: Bruce Feiler
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1594206821

A New York Times bestseller! A pioneering and timely study of how to navigate life's biggest transitions with meaning, purpose, and skill Bruce Feiler, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Secrets of Happy Families and Council of Dads, has long explored the stories that give our lives meaning. Galvanized by a personal crisis, he spent the last few years crisscrossing the country, collecting hundreds of life stories in all fifty states from Americans who’d been through major life changes—from losing jobs to losing loved ones; from changing careers to changing relationships; from getting sober to getting healthy to simply looking for a fresh start. He then spent a year coding these stories, identifying patterns and takeaways that can help all of us survive and thrive in times of change. What Feiler discovered was a world in which transitions are becoming more plentiful and mastering the skills to manage them is more urgent for all of us. The idea that we’ll have one job, one relationship, one source of happiness is hopelessly outdated. We all feel unnerved by this upheaval. We’re concerned that our lives are not what we expected, that we’ve veered off course, living life out of order. But we’re not alone. Life Is in the Transitions introduces the fresh, illuminating vision of the nonlinear life, in which each of us faces dozens of disruptors. One in ten of those becomes what Feiler calls a lifequake, a massive change that leads to a life transition. The average length of these transitions is five years. The upshot: We all spend half our lives in this unsettled state. You or someone you know is going through one now. The most exciting thing Feiler identified is a powerful new tool kit for navigating these pivotal times. Drawing on his extraordinary trove of insights, he lays out specific strategies each of us can use to reimagine and rebuild our lives, often stronger than before. From a master storyteller with an essential message, Life Is in the Transitions can move readers of any age to think deeply about times of change and how to transform them into periods of creativity and growth.

Narrating Midlife

Narrating Midlife
Author: Christine Elizabeth Kiesinger
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 149858411X

Narrating Midlife: Crisis, Transition, and Transformation is rooted in a discussion about why it is important to address the midlife years in ways that challenge and interrogate the myths that surround this phase of life. Although readers are free to construct their own meaning after reading each narrative, they are encouraged to attend to the ways in which each narrative reveals how the author grapples with their particular issues communicatively. More important, readers are invited to see the power of narrative re-framing as authors seek to understand, interpret and “live” midlife change(s) in ways that are empowering and life affirming. In this book, contributors spin compelling and meaningful narratives about change at midlife. The empty nest, the surprise discovery of cancer, re-defining one's life at midlife and re-imagining long term commitment after divorce are just some of the topics explored in this book. Auto-ethnographically crafted, the narratives presented throughout the book aim to show how managing and living through change at midlife is very much a communicative endeavor.

Elderhood

Elderhood
Author: Louise Aronson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 467
Release: 2019-06-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1620405482

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction A New York Times Bestseller Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner of the WSU AOS Bonner Book Award Winner of the 2022 At Home With Growing Older Impact Award As revelatory as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson's Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we've made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that's neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy--a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself. Elderhood is for anyone who is, in the author's own words, "an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being."

Regeneration

Regeneration
Author: Jane Polden
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2002-01-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1441141502

The dramas of mid-life are dramas of abandonment and freedom, of highly charged sexual engagements in real time or in fantasy, and of sudden encounters with mortality and loss. The details are as varied as people's lives are diverse but similar themes reappear with unerring regularity over and over in mid-life. It is a time when everything - from the most fundamental questions of identity and meaning to the daily experience of our own bodies and sexuality - is thrown into upheaval, making mid-life transition for many people the most disturbing period since the onset of adolescence.Recognizing that many of us feel, sometimes very much to our surprise, that we have lost our way at mid-life, Polden explores compassionately and sensitively the origins and experiences of mid-life crisis. Regeneration is a fundamentally optimistic book that argues that, while deep-seated changes are often painful, there are great gains to be made at mid-life. By helping readers toward improved self-awareness and a better understanding of the demands and choices of mid-life, Regeneration shows how we can begin to lead lives more truly informed by the values that will serve us best in the second halves of our lives.

Transitions

Transitions
Author: William Bridges
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2019-12-17
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0738285412

Celebrating 40 years of the best-selling guide for coping with life's changes, named one of the 50 all-time best books in self-help and personal development -- with a new Discussion Guide for readers, written by Susan Bridges and aimed at today's current people and organizations facing unprecedented change First published in 1980, Transitions was the first book to explore the underlying and universal pattern of transition. Named one of the fifty most important self-help books of all time, Transitions remains the essential guide for coping with the inevitable changes in life. Transitions takes readers step-by-step through the three perilous stages of any transition, explaining how each stage can be understood and embraced. The book offers an elegant, simple, yet profoundly insightful roadmap to navigate change and move into a hopeful future: Endings. Every transition begins with one. Too often we misunderstand them, confuse them with finality -- that's it, all over, finished! Yet the way we think about endings is key to how we can begin anew. The Neutral Zone. The second hurdle: a seemingly unproductive time-out when we feel disconnected from people and things in the past, and emotionally unconnected to the present. Actually, the neutral zone is a time of reorientation. How can we make the most of it? The New Beginning. We come to beginnings only at the end, when we launch new activities. To make a successful new beginning requires more than simply persevering. It requires an understanding of the external signs and inner signals that point the way to the future.

Life Reimagined

Life Reimagined
Author: Barbara Bradley Hagerty
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2016-03-15
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1101622970

A dynamic and inspiring exploration of the new science that is redrawing the future for people in their forties, fifties, and sixties for the better—and for good. There’s no such thing as an inevitable midlife crisis, Barbara Bradley Hagerty writes in this provocative, hopeful book. It’s a myth, an illusion. New scientific research explodes the fable that midlife is a time when things start to go downhill for everybody. In fact, midlife can be a great new adventure, when you can embrace fresh possibilities, purposes, and pleasures. In Life Reimagined, Hagerty explains that midlife is about renewal: It’s the time to renegotiate your purpose, refocus your relationships, and transform the way you think about the world and yourself. Drawing from emerging information in neurology, psychology, biology, genetics, and sociology—as well as her own story of midlife transformation—Hagerty redraws the map for people in midlife and plots a new course forward in understanding our health, our relationships, even our futures.

The Middle Passage

The Middle Passage
Author: James Hollis
Publisher: Inner City Books
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1993
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780919123601

Title #59. Why do so many go through so much disruption in their middle years? Why then? Why do we consider it to be a crisis? What does the pattern mean and how can we survive it? The Middle Passage shows how we may pass through midlife consciously, rendering our lives more meaningful and the second half of life immeasurably richer.

Encyclopedia of Aging and Public Health

Encyclopedia of Aging and Public Health
Author: Sana Loue
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 852
Release: 2008-01-16
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0387337539

Americans are living longer, and the elder population is growing larger. To meet the ongoing need for quality information on elder health, the Encyclopedia of Aging and Public Health combines multiple perspectives to offer readers a more accurate and complete picture of the aging process. The book takes a biopsychosocial approach to the complexities of its subject. In-depth introductory chapters include coverage on a historical and demographic overview of aging in America, a guide to biological changes accompanying aging, an analysis of the diversity of the U.S. elder population, legal issues commonly affecting older adults, and the ethics of using cognitively impaired elders in research. From there, over 425 entries cover the gamut of topics, trends, diseases, and phenomena: -Specific populations, including ethnic minorities, custodial grandparents, and centenarians -Core medical conditions associated with aging, from cardiac and pulmonary diseases to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s -Mental and emotional disorders -Drugs/vitamins/alternative medicine -Disorders of the eyes, feet, and skin -Insomnia and sleep disorders; malnutrition and eating disorders -Sexual and gender-related concerns -And a broad array of social and political issues, including access to care, abuse/neglect, veterans’ affairs, and assisted suicide Entries on not-quite-elders’ concerns (e.g., midlife crisis, menopause) are featured as well. And all chapters and entries include references and resource lists. The Encyclopedia has been developed for maximum utility to clinicians, social workers, researchers, and public health professionals working with older adults. Its multidisciplinary coverage and scope of topics make this volume an invaluable reference for academic and public libraries.