WHEN MAMA CAN’T KISS IT BETTER is the raw account of a true story that shocked the nation in 2010. Gertz was America's most hated mother when news of a decision to place her adopted child in another family broke in the media. Called out by many as an unfit mother and an evil woman who threw away her child, she was catapulted into the national and international media. Her daughter, Emily suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, reactive attachment disorder, bipolar disorder, and other disorders. She had never bonded with Lori, her father or her siblings and had begun a spiral of self-destruction that often involved running into traffic and other dangerous behaviors. While Gertz recalls feeling isolated, accounts like hers are not rare. Stories like When Mama Can’t Kiss it Better are not told terribly often because of the stigma and finger pointing. She writes, “The mother is always blamed first when a child suffers from extreme behavioral disabilities.” There are millions of parents who are struggling to raise children with behavioral disabilities, who feel misunderstood, unheard, and judged, and who want to be reassured that there are others like them. With one in four Americans struggling with mental illness (NIMH) every year everyone in this country either lives with mental illness or knows someone who does. The greatest tragedy is that 60% of the adults and 50% of the children suffering from mental disorders will receive absolutely NO services or support for their mental illness. WHEN MAMA CAN’T KISS IT BETTER covers: * The adoption of their daughter Emily, early signs of trouble, their birthmother's suicide, the truth about her pregnancy and warnings about how to avoid what happened to the author and her family * Raw and honest details about her daughter's rages, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations * The turmoil that living with mental illness causes for everyone in the home and how it affects siblings and marriages * The difficulty in receiving support from physicians, educators, & clinicians * The author’s increasing desperation to find answers and help as rages and impulsivity became safety issues * Being judged by doctors, schools, and outsiders as "the problem" while her daughter collected diagnosis after diagnosis * The painful decision to place her daughter in another family and how she came to accept that she had to do the unthinkable * Parents worldwide waging verbal attacks on her since if the fault belonged to Gertz alone, it couldn't happen to anyone else Note from the Author: I spent the better part of six years writing this book, which began as the only way I could cope with what was happening in our lives. I just couldn’t believe the lack of resources there were when I reached out for them so vociferously and started documenting what was happening inside our family if not only to maintain my sanity. I am passionate about telling my story to help increase understanding of the enormous challenges parents of special needs children face in a culture that believes that motherly love and perseverance can cure all ills. For those on similar paths, the story of my journey to a sense of peace within the context of facing unrealized dreams, human limitations, broken hearts, and the unfair circumstances of life may help them find that same place of peace in the tough decisions within their own lives. I pray this book will bring attention to the need to better support parents and kids with mental illness and other invisible disabilities and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to call attention to such pressing societal issues. Keywords: Parenting, Disabilities, FASD, Mothering, Mental Illness, RAD, Bipolar, Memoir, Special Needs, Fetal Alcohol, Syndrome
WHEN MAMA CAN’T KISS IT BETTER is the raw account of a true story that shocked the nation in 2010. Gertz was America's most hated mother when news of a decision to place her adopted child in another family broke in the media. Called out by many as an unfit mother and an evil woman who threw away her child, she was catapulted into the national and international media. Her daughter, Emily suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, reactive attachment disorder, bipolar disorder, and other disorders. She had never bonded with Lori, her father or her siblings and had begun a spiral of self-destruction that often involved running into traffic and other dangerous behaviors. While Gertz recalls feeling isolated, accounts like hers are not rare. Stories like When Mama Can’t Kiss it Better are not told terribly often because of the stigma and finger pointing. She writes, “The mother is always blamed first when a child suffers from extreme behavioral disabilities.” There are millions of parents who are struggling to raise children with behavioral disabilities, who feel misunderstood, unheard, and judged, and who want to be reassured that there are others like them. With one in four Americans struggling with mental illness (NIMH) every year everyone in this country either lives with mental illness or knows someone who does. The greatest tragedy is that 60% of the adults and 50% of the children suffering from mental disorders will receive absolutely NO services or support for their mental illness. WHEN MAMA CAN’T KISS IT BETTER covers: * The adoption of their daughter Emily, early signs of trouble, their birthmother's suicide, the truth about her pregnancy and warnings about how to avoid what happened to the author and her family * Raw and honest details about her daughter's rages, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations * The turmoil that living with mental illness causes for everyone in the home and how it affects siblings and marriages * The difficulty in receiving support from physicians, educators, & clinicians * The author’s increasing desperation to find answers and help as rages and impulsivity became safety issues * Being judged by doctors, schools, and outsiders as "the problem" while her daughter collected diagnosis after diagnosis * The painful decision to place her daughter in another family and how she came to accept that she had to do the unthinkable * Parents worldwide waging verbal attacks on her since if the fault belonged to Gertz alone, it couldn't happen to anyone else Note from the Author: I spent the better part of six years writing this book, which began as the only way I could cope with what was happening in our lives. I just couldn’t believe the lack of resources there were when I reached out for them so vociferously and started documenting what was happening inside our family if not only to maintain my sanity. I am passionate about telling my story to help increase understanding of the enormous challenges parents of special needs children face in a culture that believes that motherly love and perseverance can cure all ills. For those on similar paths, the story of my journey to a sense of peace within the context of facing unrealized dreams, human limitations, broken hearts, and the unfair circumstances of life may help them find that same place of peace in the tough decisions within their own lives. I pray this book will bring attention to the need to better support parents and kids with mental illness and other invisible disabilities and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to call attention to such pressing societal issues. Keywords: Parenting, Disabilities, FASD, Mothering, Mental Illness, RAD, Bipolar, Memoir, Special Needs, Fetal Alcohol, Syndrome
Designed as a text for Criminal Justice and Criminology capstone courses, Toward Justice encourages students to engage critically with conceptions of justice that go beyond the criminal justice system, in order to cultivate a more thorough understanding of the system as it operates on the ground in an imperfect world—where people aren’t always rational actors, where individual cases are linked to larger social problems, and where justice can sometimes slip through the cracks. Through a combined focus on content and professional development, Toward Justice helps students translate what they have learned in the classroom into active strategies for justice in their professional lives—preparing them for careers that will not simply maintain the status quo and stability that exists within our justice system, but rather challenge the system to achieve justice.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, Aaron Burr, Faber Pencils, the atomic bomb, Paul Zindel, and David Johansen all have one thing in common: Port Richmond. Many Staten Islanders flocked to Richmond Avenue, known as the Fifth Avenue of Staten Island, to shop at Garber Brothers or at Tirone's Shoes or enjoy an ice-cream soda at Stechman's. The Ritz, Palace, and Empire Theaters hosted vaudeville shows, films, rock concerts, and roller-skating. More than a dozen places of worship have been founded in Port Richmond since the late 1600s, mirroring the community's ethnic diversity. Port Richmond traces the unique contributions of each new wave of immigrants to the neighborhood.
Unlock the power of informational text using proven, research-based strategies and techniques to support rich and rigorous instruction. Written by popular literacy expert, Lori Oczkus, this resource provides useful tips, suggestions, and strategies to help students read and understand informational text effectively and support the implementation of today's standards. It includes practical, concrete lessons with teacher modeling, guided and independent practice, and informal assessments that can be used in the classroom right away. this is a must-have resource for all teachers!
Through combinations of instructive prose and incantatory verse, liturgical rituals and herbal recipes, Latinate learning and oral tradition, the Old English remedies offer hope not only for bodily ailments but also for such dangers as solitary travel, swarming bees and stolen cattle. Hybrid healing works from the premise that the tremendous diversity of Old English medical texts requires an equally diverse range of interpretative methodologies. Through a case study approach, this exploration of early medicine offers a series of close readings tailored specifically to individual remedies, drawing from a range of fields including plant biology, classical rhetoric, archaeology, folkloristics and disability studies. Embracing the endless complexity of these Old English texts, Hybrid healing argues that the healing power of individual remedies ultimately derives from a dynamic and unpredictable process that is at once both deeply traditional and also ever-changing.
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