Opening Up - by Anne Peretz (Paperback)

About the Book

a book about Parenting Journey's story and the organization's hopes for the future. It tells the story of how the core program, Parenting Journey I, developed, and it also tells the stories of brave and challenged families from low-income neighborhoods who have encountered the toxic intergenerational stressors of their surroundings, family histories, systemic inequalities, and internal pain, and who have struggled to get beyond them.

Book Synopsis

a book about Parenting Journey's story and the organization's hopes for the future. It tells the story of how the core program, Parenting Journey I, developed, and it also tells the stories of brave and challenged families from low-income neighborhoods who have encountered the toxic intergenerational stressors of their surroundings, family histories, systemic inequalities, and internal pain, and who have struggled to get beyond them.

Including a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Opening Up is a chronicle of the struggles and triumphs of families suffering the internalized stresses from poverty, domestic abuse, racism, and neighborhood violence, among other challenges. Through Parenting Journey these families resolve harmful habits and identify their strengths to raise their children in a healthier environment.

Anne Peretz tells the story of this bold organization and flagship therapeutic group program that takes a different approach to helping families in need. Told through the perspectives of the families who have participated over the decades, Opening Up challenges readers to think differently about family. These stories view symptoms of stress, fear, and hopelessness that extend throughout generations as remediable and how even the severely traumatized can regain stability.

This book is a testament that with mutual respect, compassion, and openness, together we can address the personal and systemic injustices that are at the roots of many of these patterns and together we can rebuild these communities.

Review Quotes

"Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, insightful, informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking, Opening Up: The Parenting Journey is particularly suited to the needs of parents in these troubled times."
- Midwest Book Review

"Anne Peretz masterfully depicts families desperately in need of understanding and guidance. With vivid and compelling narratives, this book both educates and inspires the reader, showing where true hope is to be found in homes where we often see only despair."
- Jerome Groopman, MD, Recanati Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of Anatomy of Hope

"Anne Peretz shares the approach I have seen work wonders in my own community in Burundi. She has such a beautiful way of getting people to talk about uncomfortable issues and emerge with hope and effective thinking. The human connection found in Opening Up is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. Anne Peretz's analysis of families' perils and their hopes should be required reading for anyone interested in the human condition."
- Deogratias Deo Niyizonkiza, subject of Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains

"Opening Up is not a book of facile guidelines or pat recipes. It's the beautifully told story of a set of journeys--the journeys of people struggling to stabilize their families, the journey of the trail-blazing organization The Parenting Journey, and the author's journey of life-long learning, generosity, and open-hearted dedication to the question 'what helps?' Essential reading for anyone interested in the helping professions."
- Doug Stone, author of Difficult Conversations and Thanks for the Feedback

"Anne Peretz's book is taught in my Harvard Law classroom because it helps all people--students, parents, and advocates--to have meaningful conversations that teach empathic and intimate communications to resolve real and created crises."
- Charlie Nesson, William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School