Opening Up

Anne Peretz is a family therapist who, while working in two housing projects in the mid-1980’s, founded a program now known as Parenting Journey to assist struggling families who lacked the necessary resources to face great challenges. Peretz found she had a gift for reaching across generations, as well as across class, race, and ethnicity. With a talented team, she created innovative techniques and therapeutic interventions which were successful enough to be taught to a wider audience. Parenting Journey expanded its training program and carefully crafted curricula to over five hundred locations, reaching thousands of families and several thousand facilitators in the United States, Burundi, and Guatemala. Peretz has received awards and distinction from prestigious organizations such as The Alliance for Mentally Ill of Massachusetts, Phillips Brooks Housing Association, Harvard University, On The Rise Inc., and from the cities of Somerville and Cambridge.

"Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, insightful, informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking, Opening Up: The Parenting Journey is particularly suited to the needs of parents in these troubled times."- Midwest Book Review "Anne Peretz masterfully depicts families desperately in need of understanding and guidance. With vivid and compelling narratives, this book both educates and inspires the reader, showing where true hope is to be found in homes where we often see only despair.”- Jerome Groopman, MD, Recanati Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of Anatomy of Hope “Anne Peretz shares the approach I have seen work wonders in my own community in Burundi. She has such a beautiful way of getting people to talk about uncomfortable issues and emerge with hope and effective thinking. The human connection found in Opening Up is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. Anne Peretz's analysis of families' perils and their hopes should be required reading for anyone interested in the human condition.”- Deogratias Deo Niyizonkiza, subject of Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains “Opening Up is not a book of facile guidelines or pat recipes. It’s the beautifully told story of a set of journeys—the journeys of people struggling to stabilize their families, the journey of the trail-blazing organization The Parenting Journey, and the author’s journey of life-long learning, generosity, and open-hearted dedication to the question ‘what helps?’ Essential reading for anyone interested in the helping professions.”- Doug Stone, author of Difficult Conversations and Thanks for the Feedback “Anne Peretz’s book is taught in my Harvard Law classroom because it helps all people—students, parents, and advocates—to have meaningful conversations that teach empathic and intimate communications to resolve real and created crises.”- Charlie Nesson, William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School