INPERSON
Building a Bridge Home
Bethel Park author pens book on having important discussions with your parents.
BY PAUL GLASSER
Local author Lori Hedderman wrote her second book to help individuals have important discussions with their aging parents.
“ Don’ t throw away the time you have left with those you care about,” she urges.“ Maybe you don’ t have the relationship with your parent you would like, but you need to make peace with what it is and your contribution to it.”
Hedderman, of Bethel Park, published“ Remembering Together: A Guidebook for Meaningful Conversations with Your Aging Parents” last year. It includes a workbook with activities and ideas to help children ask questions and have conversations with their parents. For example, a child could ask his or her parents about people who played a significant role in their life or how certain experiences affected them.
“ You can talk to someone for years and really not know about their life or how they grew into the person they are today,” Hedderman says.“ Maybe your parent neglected to share certain aspects of his or her life with you, whether on purpose or by oversight. Maybe there are questions a child had not thought to ask an aging parent.”
Hedderman has taken her own advice to heart and has made it a point to share more stories and anecdotes from her own childhood with her son. She also started asking her parents more about how they grew up.
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