Book Review of Hand-Me-Down Dreams: How Families Influence Our Career Paths and How We Can Reclaim Them by Mary Jabobsen

Book Review: Hand-Me-Down Dreams: How Families Influence Our Career Paths and How We Can Reclaim Them by Mary Jacobsen
by Marilyn Edelson

Mary H. Jacobsen, a therapist practicing in Arlington, has written an insightful, practical book that could be very helpful for all adults, especially people unhappy in their careers. Individuals who are involved with coaching, either as coaches or as clients, will particularly benefit from reading Hand-Me-Down Dreams.

One might assume that Hand-Me-Down Dreams focuses on people whose parents run a family business and expect them to take it over, or that the book focuses on individuals with parents who constantly pressured them to live out their unfulfilled dreams of becoming a doctor, lawyer, actor or artist. While Ms. Jacobsen does discuss these situations, she emphasizes that a parent’s dream for their child can be much less obvious or specific.

Using her own life as an example, Jacobsen discusses how her grandmother’s premature death, which was devastating to her mother, shaped her mother’s hopes and dreams for her daughter. Mary Jacobsen’s mother hoped for a reunion with her own mother through Mary, who, not surprisingly, was named for her grandmother. Mary grew up feeling it was her duty to save lost souls, specifically to save her mother. When she realized only her mother could to save herself, she became liberated to pursue her own dreams. Jacobsen states "if the goals are impossible, the dreams merely hand-me-down fulfillments for someone else, we will never find our own happiness."

Jacobsen emphasizes that all families have unfulfilled dreams that are handed down to the next generation, whether parents want to or not. The purpose of the book, she says in the introduction, is to explore the "nature of this communication, its complexity and [its] power."

Jacobsen has written the book in an easy-to-follow outline form. In Part One she defines what hand-me-down dreams are, how the cycle of dreams starts, and the impact of living out someone else’s dream. In Part Two, "Family Dynamics", Jacobsen explains what a family system is, its web of relationships, and how one can re-define family love and loyalty as one learns to break the cycle of hand-me-down dreams. Part Two also discusses the influence of sibling order and gender on family dynamics and work. Part Three focuses on work, success and money, and how the value our families place on these ideas work both for us and against us. One chapter, called "Exorcising Family Ghosts that Haunt the Workplace" clearly explains how family roles can contribute to workplace conflicts around authority, teamwork and leadership. In Part Four, Jacobsen gets down to business, leading the reader through seven steps to reclaim a career. Each chapter has a series of exercises in which readers answer questions about their families and career experiences. This portion of the book involves significant time and effort by the reader—it is, in both senses, a workbook. The last step, step seven, "Make Realistic Plans," gives the reader a method of putting all the previous work into action—fulfilling their own dreams. An important final chapter discusses how the nature of work is changing daily and how each of us must become the CEO of our own lives.

Hand-Me-Down Dreams is not just another self-help book. It addresses one of the most important and time-consuming parts of our lives—work—and examines its numerous links with another huge and influential part of our lives—family. Jacobsen shows us how much happiness can be found in a satisfying work life that expresses our unique and creative selves.