Dr. Lorraine Mangione’s Daughters, Dads, and the Path Through Grief: Tales from Italian America helps women cope with the loss of their fathers
Keene, NH –Dr. Lorraine Mangione, clinical psychology professor at Antioch University New England (AUNE), has co-authored the book, Daughters, Dads, and the Path Through Grief: Tales from Italian America (Impact Publishers 2015), with AUNE graduate Dr. Donna DiCello. The new book, on sale now, is also a finalist in the 2014 USA Book News Awards in the category of Health: Death & Dying. Losing a father is devastating to a daughter, but until recently, few books have been available to help women cope with this loss. The comprehensive, often poignant guidebook explores the powerful father-daughter relationship, and provides real-life tools to get through the grief process.
Mangione and DiCello, who both lost their fathers, interviewed 50 Italian American women of various ages and socio-economic backgrounds about their memories of their fathers, and the overwhelming pain they experienced at their passing. Their heartfelt stories are woven throughout the book with a variety of hands-on activities for the reader to facilitate healing, including writing exercises, interviewing family members, and even dream work.
The book is focused on Mangione and DiCello’s own Italian-American culture, but its insight and advice about the value of the father/daughter relationship through the lifespan, and grief recovery after the loss of the father, transcends to all women.
“The many stories of love and loss related in the book remind us that the path through grief is long,” said Dr. Mangione. “It is really the path of growing, being, relating, loving, losing, and finally finding our fathers in a whole different way.”
A clinical psychologist, Dr. Mangione is a longtime core faculty member in the clinical psychology department at Antioch University New England. She recently stepped down after a decade as chair of the Massachusetts Psychological Association Training Committee. In the past several years, she’s chaired regional conferences that brought together the New England academic and clinical training communities with national leadership to address national level changes and initiatives in professional psychology education. She is also very active in the National Council of Schools and Programs of Professional Psychology, particularly in research about internships.
Dr. Mangione’s primary scholarly interests include psychodynamic theory, the supervisory relationship, adult development and creativity, ethics, and epistemologies. She frequently presents and speaks at regional and national conferences on topics within an Italian American framework including, father/daughter relationships, loss and grief, creativity, spirituality, and identity development in women.
For Dr. DiCello, writing this book was a labor of love and a testament to all Italian American fathers: “What stunned me about the stories contained in this book is the power of narrative to heal. Even for the women who were well into their eighties, the bond with their fathers transcended his physical absence, giving credence to our assertion that relationships continue, and can even be nurtured, long after death” said Di Cello.
Dr. DiCello has been practicing counseling and psychotherapy for 30 years. She is currently in full-time private practice in New Haven and Wallingford, CT, where she sees many Italian American clients. In her practice she focuses on issues related to stress; anxiety; depression; life transitions, particularly concerns of young adults; relationship concerns; menopause; bereavement and grief; gifted children; creativity; mindfulness practice; and women’s issues (including postpartum depression). Dr. DiCello has also published and presented widely at both regional and national conferences on the topic of Italian American mental health and grief and bereavement issues. She currently has an appointment as an assistant clinical professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, and is the former associate director at the Graduate Institute of Professional Psychology, Department of Psychology, at the University of Hartford. In that capacity, she was involved in the training of doctoral students for thirteen years. In addition, she provides self-care and compassion fatigue workshops for community agencies.
