Author (right) with her mother, Caroline
Jamieson Haverkampf knows the frustrations, struggles and successes of caregiving for ill, aging, and dying parents first hand. In her early thirties, Ms. Haverkampf and her sister supported and advised their 61-year-old father with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma through eleven months of chemotherapy, radiation, a stem cell transplant and a clinical trial at M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital. After their father’s death in 2001, Ms. Haverkampf and her sister shifted gears to assist their fifty-six-year-old mother through the heart-wrenching and decision loaded journey of unexpected widowhood.
Along her caregiving journey, Ms. Haverkampf hunted for books with resources and advice to help her navigate her new role as a “surrogate spouse” of a newly widowed parent. Additionally, Ms. Haverkampf needed tools to balance her own life with changing family dynamics and new responsibilities. She found many books about bereavement, grief, and loss written to counsel widows or widowers, but most of these books didn’t address the modern needs of busy adult sons and daughters of these widows or widowers who end up guiding—and in some cases making— many decisions for their widowed parent. Ms. Haverkampf’s quest for a resource guide to assist adults with a newly widowed parent ended in 2004 when she realized the book she so urgently needed didn’t exist.
As she gathered her own helpful resources, advice and strategies to use with her widowed mother, Ms. Haverkampf wanted to help the more than twelve million people who lose a parent every year with this information she accumulated. Mom Minus Dad: The Essential Resource Guide for Busy Adults with a Newly Widowed Parent is a compilation of her best hands-on tips, 500+resources, and advice for other adult sons and daughters struggling to balance life and find assistance in ten common caregiving areas after the loss of a parent.
Mom Minus Dad has been recognized with four awards from the Mom’s Choice Awards, Writer’s Digest Magazine, Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards, The Indie Book Awards. Ms. Haverkampf was a nominee for the 2009 Georgia Author of the Year by GWA.
Ms. Haverkampf has been featured on web communities, magazine, newspapers, newsletters and TV and Radio shows such as Living With Loss,the National Funeral Directors Association’s newsletter, Caring.com, Writer’s Digest Magazine, ElderLawAnswers.com, Centering Corporation, Atlanta Hospital News, Canada’s Rehab and Community Care Medicine Magazine, Ladies Who Launch Magazine, Southern Seasons Magazine, Wesleyan Christian Advocate Newspaper of Georgia, Atlanta LIVE,The Parent Care Radio Show , Elder Talk with Miles Hurley and AspireLifeCoaching.com. Ms. Haverkampf is certified as a Grief Recovery Specialist through the Grief Recovery Institute. She lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia, with her dog Fritz curled up snoring peacefully under her desk.