Although most of us lose a mother or father in later life, few of us are psychologically prepared for the experience. This book explores the uncharted territory each of us enters when a parent leaves us, and offers a blueprint for positive change in every aspect of our lives. It demonstrates through powerful stories (including the author's own revelatory experience) how parent loss is the most potent catalyst for change in middle age and can actually offer us our last, best chance to become our truest, deepest selves. Psychotherapist Safer challenges the conventional wisdom that fundamental change is only for the young, and that loss must simply be endured or overcome. Filled with moving and engaging stories of real men and women re-imagining themselves after a parent's death, this is a fresh, impassioned, and sophisticated look at self-transformation in later life.--From publisher description.