Take Good Care: Finding Your Joy in Compssionate Caregiving

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 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. This manual for living will enlighten any caregiver’s experience, and Cynthia holds your hand through the process as only she can." —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.