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Helping Families Understand and
Heal After the Loss of a Child
Judy L. Mandel is an author and expert on how families and individuals cope with the loss of a family member. She is an authority on the little-known "replacement child" syndrome whose work speaks to everyone who has ever lost a loved one.
While researching her memoir Replacement Child, Judy uncovered the little-known 'replacement child syndrome' that seemed to explain many of the issues she had faced throughout her life. She started writing the book as a tribute to her recently deceased parents and living sister, who had all survived the plane crash that had taken the life of the eldest daughter. After that child was killed, her parents conceived her intentionally to "fill the chair at the grey Formica table." She was literally born to heal the family, a "salve on the burns."
"I always felt a responsibility to be the easy one to take care of, to be the fixer in the family--and to live up to the promise of my sister's short life," Judy says.
If she was so wanted, she wondered, why had she always felt 'less than' and somehow with the responsibility to live up to the promise of her lost sister? And, could any of this explain why she seemed to seek out the wrong mates time and time again? What she eventually discovered was that not all had been what it seemed in her childhood or her parents' lives. The tribute she set out to write turned into more. Uncovering truths that eventually would set her free.
Not just her particular story of recovery and healing, Replacement Child reaches out to many of those who may be replacement children, and to parents who have lost a child.
Read more about Replacement Child at www.replacementchild.com.
