"The death of your parents can be the best thing that ever happened to you."

That's a startling statement to introduce a book, but having plowed through the weighty matters in Jeanne Safer's Death Benefits, I wholeheartedly recommend it. A psychotherapist of 35 years, Safer's audience are people who have lost one or both parents. Her premise, that the death of a parent creates "unique opportunities for growth", offers a much needed fresh perspective to the grieving process of orphaned adults. Her illustrative anecdotes show that contrary to the age-old wisdom of learning to let your loved ones go, there are myriad benefits to be had by survivors who continue to work on their relationships with their parents, even from this side of the grave.

Many of Safer's accounts are quite painful. The list of parental maladies ranges widely: from being hard to please and domineering to being physically and sexually abusive. One woman describes her depressive mother as "...like a virus—she walks into the room and you catch it." A son cowed by his overbearing father's dissaproval of divorce suffers nearly two decades of a failed marriage before finding the strength to leave. Death Benefits focuses on people who have found that strength—the strength to separate one's own voice from the crushing cacaphony of The Parental Voice.

With an analyst's insight, Safer offers necessary objectivity to recover benefits from some of the most damaged parent-child relationships. Her advice can help uncover revelations far beyond the trite "take the good, leave the bad" advice too frequently offered to children when an abusive parent dies. In fact, some of the most powerful rewards were derived from a parent's worst traits. Instead of making us wade through volumes of theories and case studies, the plan for discovering your own death benefits is outlined on the back cover of this short book. But to not read it is to miss its redemptive quality!

In Safer's analyses, love overcomes hate. Through a continuous internal dialog that even death cannot stop, lifelong rifts are healed, we learn to accept the dichotomy of relief that accompanies grief, and we are granted a better understanding of our parent's humanity, and the courage to define our own.