Barbara Jaffe
When Will I Be Good Enough: A Replacement Child’s Journey to Healing
When a family suffers the death of a child, the reverberations can extend beyond the immediate period of bereavement. When a child is born into a family that has suffered such a loss, there is concern that the new child might be compromised in his or her development. Such a baby is often described as a “replacement child,” a substitute or replacement for the child who died. This baby is at risk for later psychological difficulties because of an inability to form an identity separate from that of the dead child. When parents are unable to fully mourn the death of their child, it may compromise the next child’s mental health by imbuing it with the qualities and characteristics of the dead sibling, thereby continuing to mourn the earlier death.
In Dr. Jaffe’s beautiful memoir she reveals her own struggles as the replacement child and how with hard work, therapy and determination she was to overcome her feelings of inadequacy and less than.
You will be moved as you read her story of growing up a replacement child. She has learned that while she can never undo all the negativity that she lived with, she can learn to tame those damaging voices to a barely audible level. She teaches you that it takes time to build inner strength over a shaky foundation, but with diligence and introspection, we can replace our imbalances.
Bio
Barbara Jaffe completed her B.A. in Linguistics, her M.A. in Applied Linguistics, and her doctorate in Education, all from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Jaffe was a Tenured Professor of English in California and retired after four decades as a college professor at El Camino College. Her focus was helping students find their own unique writers’ voices and also helped other instructors in their teaching of writing through her national workshops. Barbara received awards for Outstanding Woman of the Year and Distinguished Teacher of the Year at her college. Her doctoral research focused on teacher training for basic writing instructors that combined writing pedagogy with personal success strategies. She recently retired as a UCLA Fellow in the Department of Education, where she worked for 19 years, working with doctoral students as they craft their dissertation proposals.
Reading and writing have always been Barbara’s passions, with a focus on non-fiction and meaningful reflections of life and all its beauty as well as its challenges through memoir. Barbara feels to live is to observe and to observe most deeply is to write. Only in the depth of our reflections can we truly learn and grow through any of our limitations. A fourth-generation San Franciscan native, she has spent her adult life living in Los Angeles with her husband, three sons, four grandchildren, and her very sweet fury love Molly. In 2017, Barbara’s memoir and self-help book was published: When Will I Be Good Enough? A Replacement Child’s Journey to Healing.
