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 lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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
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