Welcome to Wherever We Are: A Memoir of Family, Caregiving, and Redemption

Product Description

Recommended Book in Domestic Violence by DomesticShelters.org

How do you go about caregiving for an ill and elderly parent with a lifelong history of abuse and control, intertwined with expressions of intense love and adoration? How do you reconcile the resulting ambivalence, fear, and anger?
 

Welcome to Wherever We Are is a meditation on what we hold onto, what we let go of, how we remember others and ultimately how we’re remembered. Deborah Cohan shares her story of caring for her father, a man who was simultaneously loud, gentle, loving and cruel and whose brilliant career as an advertising executive included creating slogans like “Hey, how ‘bout a nice Hawaiian punch?” Wrestling with emotional extremes that characterize abusive relationships, Cohan shows how she navigated life with a man who was at once generous and affectionate, creating magical coat pockets filled with chocolate kisses when she was a little girl, yet who was also prone to searing, vicious remarks like “You’d make my life easier if you’d commit suicide.”
 
In this gripping memoir, Cohan tells her unique personal story while also weaving in her expertise as a sociologist and domestic abuse counselor to address broader questions related to marriage, violence, divorce, only children, intimacy and loss. A story most of us can relate to as we reckon with past and future choices against the backdrop of complicated family dynamics,
Welcome to Wherever We Are is about how we might come to live our own lives better amidst unpredictable changes through grief and healing.

(https://d3tto5i5w9ogdd.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/11140346/Cohan_Discussion.docx)
 

Review

“With scrupulous honesty, and what Deborah so beautifully calls “tender curiosity,” this is a journey toward reconciliation with the ambivalence she felt towards an emotionally abusive father. She winds up with love. Her memoir is an inspiration.”
— Abigail Thomas ―
author of What Comes Next and How to Like It: A Memoir and A Three Dog Life

“Cohan’s beautifully-nuanced book is an important addition to a distinctly American strain of memoir that seeks to fully explore family dynamics with all of its complications, glories, travails, and facing of mortality. This is a slice of life that is both wide and deep.”
— Sue William Silverman ―
author of Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

“Welcome to Wherever We Are is a memoir of a difficult family, a relationship between a father and a daughter. It involves abuse, dislike, love and a great deal of caring. It is a memoir, but one guided by the sociological lens of writer Deborah Cohan. She offers us a personal story set in the context of complicated family relationships in contemporary American society.”
— Barbara J. Risman ―
co-editor of Families as They Really Are

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Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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Real Simple

“Love the sinner, hate the sin: thus, unfurls Cohan’s memoir. Fractional love and uncomfortable rage toward her father blend with her longing for his abusive behavior to disappear and leave only the often extraordinary father. Cohan’s crystalline honest prose brings the reader inside the dilemma of caring for an aging parent who brought her torment laced with love and magic–what is it like to adore, fear, and protect yourself from the father you feared and cherished?”
— Randy Susan Meyers ―
author of The Murderer’s Daughters and Waisted

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Medium

“Deborah Cohan has written a brave and beautiful memoir….not ‘beautiful’ in the sense of pretty or lovely or sugarcoated in any way. Beautifully written, yes, but also beautiful in its raw, graphic honesty—that is, in the sense that truth is beauty. There is much hard-won wisdom in these pages–wisdom gleaned from Cohan’s years of caregiving for an abusive parent–and it will benefit those who find themselves navigating that rocky terrain. But this is also a story about life and death, love and loss, and the compl