The Extended Hand is a "contemplative memoir" that covers two seemingly separate lives. When Robert answers the phone, he has trouble understanding his neighbor's question: "What do you mean, there's a notice in today's paper listing our condo for sale?" Through the kitchen windows, he can see the ocean waves rolling in toward the Maui beach. Surely there must be a mistake. But when he calls his wife Marti on the eastside of Seattle, he learns the truth: "Yes, I filed for bankruptcy." Once, as a child, Marti fell through an open manhole into a sewer and was rescued by the extended hand of a caring man. Now, even though her business mistakes have wiped out the assets of a thirty-year marriage, Marti Eicholz discovers that her husband is another man capable of extending a hand to someone in need. The Extended Hand is the first-person story of how I came to that point of having to tell the man I loved that I had lost all our worldly goods, without giving him a warning. Only in retrospect did I understand why I, the daughter of a charismatic fundamentalist preacher with a need to control his family, was driven to excel and perform perfectly. As an adult, I found it hard to love myself--when my first marriage ended, after ten years, I was still a virgin--and went into a web-based business venture when the Internet was still a novelty, unable to acknowledge that I was in an emotional black hole. My story is also that of one preacher's daughter who learns to accept the extended hand of the living Jesus cleansed of the rules and exclusions imposed on it by a narrow, fundamentalist view of the bible's truths. My marriage is alive and thriving today because I have finally learned to accept the gifts that are yours when someone extends their hand in love, and you accept it, in humility and gratitude.
When Mary Turner entered the world, she was already her parents' least-favorite child. Filled with ambition but always seeming to be lacking some crucial skill, Mary left home immediately after graduating high school and set her sights on the endless horizon before her. Mary had had a difficult childhood; when she was young, her grandparents had died in a tragic accident that left the entire family--especially her father, Kenneth--shrouded in a heavy grief. Once on her own, Mary kept her eyes fixed on the future, and soon that future came to include a man named Adam. Though Adam and Mary had a difficult relationship, they eloped in Las Vegas and returned home a (mostly) happily married couple; it wasn't much later that they became first-time parents. After Scotty was born, however, Mary began exhibiting concerning symptoms. She struggled to bond with her child and experienced increasingly volatile emotional swings. Soon after, Mary was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Mary struggled to cope with her mental illness, and as the years passed, she began turning to drugs and alcohol to soothe her aching mind. She began neglecting, and eventually abusing, Scotty, and the family quickly started to deteriorate. Eventually deciding that Adam and Scotty would be better off without her, Mary packed up her car and ran away to Las Vegas, where she made the bulk of her money by moving illegal drugs. Her time there was a thrilling and dangerous whirlwind, but Mary knew it had to come to an end eventually. Next, she landed in Sedona, Arizona, where she led a quiet, peaceful life, nothing like the one she'd left behind in Vegas. Still, Mary knew she would need to return home and reconnect with the family she'd abandoned. Instead of finding Adam, Mary found Luke, an old friend and fellow addict. Once reunited with Luke, Mary quickly fell in love with him and agreed to help him smuggle drugs out of the country. She was caught at the Dublin airport, however, and sent to prison, where she learned she was pregnant with Luke's child. Her child was taken from her to live with her father. Petals also offers a deeply poignant and introspective look into the many facets of mental illness, substance abuse and recovery, death, heartbreak, joy, and forgiveness. It is through its diverse cast of characters that the reader is allowed a look into the minds and senses of all those touched by Mary's journey. Best suited for readers who enjoy fast-paced action combined with a deeply emotional and introspective narrative, Petals is a multi-generational story of everyday humans who must learn to cut their own paths amid the wild, yet heartbreakingly beautiful, garden that is life.
THE BRAIDING OF DIVERSE LIVES: The Story of Mitsy Fisher focuses on friendship, loneliness, loss and love. At the story’s outset, Luke looks on as a culmination of Mitsy’s lifelong dream, her refuge for homeless, abused, and orphaned children, goes up in flames. Luke recalls his relationship with Mitsy and these streets during his adolescence. Now, Mitsy is gravely injured when she rushes back inside the burning building to save her beloved dog, Blackie. As she lies in a hospital bed in a medically induced coma, her future uncertain, her current boyfriend, Andy, revisits her past, reading to Mitsy from a series of notebooks and journals she has been keeping since she was a young girl. As Andy reveals more and more of Mitsy’s past---the death of her mother and brother when Mitsy was young, her complicated relationship with her father, the scholarship that took her to a special school in New York City as a teenager, the harrowing experience that tested her love of music, and her unyielding faith. He can only hope that the difficult life she’s lead will give her the strength to recover. Will Mitsy succumb to her injuries, or will love and faith carry her through, as they always have before?
Every day as you guide and nourish, you have new chances to get things right, to sow seeds of love, acceptance, appreciation, encouragement and confidence." Although the parent-child relationship is perhaps the most obvious example of care giving, opportunities for this type of support and guidance abound in everyday life. By taking time to reflect and consider our own childhoods, we may become better equipped to understand and relate to others--especially children--as they navigate their own unique challenges. This learning experience explores techniques and guidance for doing just this. The first chapter outlines four parenting styles--both the strengths and weaknesses inherent to each--and considers how these natural tendencies can be leveraged and expanded to create an optimal child-rearing environment. By better understanding our own behaviors, we can achieve improved balance in our relationships with others. Next, through a comprehensive list of children's common grievances, the author presents tactics that parents may use to identify sources of conflict, close these gaps and better relate to their children and their unique issues or needs. These skills are essential in parent-child relationships, but they may also be extended outward to create stronger interpersonal relationships more generally. Working through our own childhood struggles can help us relate to others with more impact and grace. To this end, a guided meditation leads us through a series of reflections in which the reader is invited to revisit his or her own childhood and to confront any difficulties encountered there. By learning to evoke to our inner child, we may become better equipped to relate to all children. The meditation also makes us more aware of how our caregivers influenced us, and how we in turn might influence others. Finally, we consider the components of a happy family--both what it means, and what it takes to achieve. The final chapter provides suggestions and clear guidelines for fostering a healthy family life, referring back to the personality types outlined earlier in the manuscript in order to create a cohesive scope and approach. Ultimately, the author contends, we all have a responsibility for each other, and learning how to skillfully navigate this challenge can result in a brighter, deeper and more fulfilling life for everyone.
Are you frustrated with the pace at which you live and despite the rapid pace, you don't seem to be getting any closer to your dreams? Do you exhibit any of these classic symptoms that indicate a life out of balance: anxiety, depression, irritability, insomnia, hopelessness, and even chronic physical ailments. Are you wishing to establish a healthy lifestyle that will last a lifetime? Then you are ready to hear the messages of the giant oak tree. The giant oak has witnessed great strength, limitations, fears, courageous moments, love, hate, and disappointments. The giant oak offers wisdom and solace. It buffers and shades from the storms of life. It has experienced the beginning phases of life and has endured, has flourished, and has triumphed over adversity. This healthy oak tree is a loving presence that will lead you on an adventure, tapping the rich realms of your heart, mind, body and soul and guiding you toward balance, health, harmony, and love into your life. Bring with you, nothing more than a pair of ears for listening, a mind willing to learn and an open heart. You will be given ongoing inspiration and the practical tools you need for the adventure. Be prepared for stunning surprises and wondrous awakenings.
An Angel with Secrets is a novel, dealing with human experience and imaginary characters. When Mary takes the fall for her boyfriend Luke and goes to jail, she has no idea her fate is not the only one at stake. She's pregnant, and she gives birth to her daughter Angel behind bars, where Mary raises her for the first eighteen months of Angel's life, until Luke takes Angel from the prison. However, Angel quickly discovers that living with Luke and his girlfriend Sophia has its own problems, as she is frequently caught in the crossfire of their fractious relationship. Luke, ultimately, leaves Sophia and Angel alone. Although she is only six years old Angel is convinced Sophia would be better off without her. She runs away and eventually finds herself in a group home for children run by Mitsy, a warm and loving woman with a large community of friends and family who all take part in raising her. They name her Angie and help shape her destiny. Although she struggles to adjust, this extended makeshift family supports her as she grows into a young woman, encouraging her to follow her dreams. As Angie puts together the puzzle pieces of her life, she must decide if she can truly move forward without revisiting the past and truly putting it to bed. A moving story of love, family, and survival, "An Angel with Secrets" follows one very special girl as she grows into a woman who thrives and flourishes against all odds.
Every day as you guide and nourish, you have new chances to get things right, to sow seeds of love, acceptance, appreciation, encouragement and confidence." Although the parent-child relationship is perhaps the most obvious example of care giving, opportunities for this type of support and guidance abound in everyday life. By taking time to reflect and consider our own childhoods, we may become better equipped to understand and relate to others--especially children--as they navigate their own unique challenges. This learning experience explores techniques and guidance for doing just this. The first chapter outlines four parenting styles--both the strengths and weaknesses inherent to each--and considers how these natural tendencies can be leveraged and expanded to create an optimal child-rearing environment. By better understanding our own behaviors, we can achieve improved balance in our relationships with others. Next, through a comprehensive list of children's common grievances, the author presents tactics that parents may use to identify sources of conflict, close these gaps and better relate to their children and their unique issues or needs. These skills are essential in parent-child relationships, but they may also be extended outward to create stronger interpersonal relationships more generally. Working through our own childhood struggles can help us relate to others with more impact and grace. To this end, a guided meditation leads us through a series of reflections in which the reader is invited to revisit his or her own childhood and to confront any difficulties encountered there. By learning to evoke to our inner child, we may become better equipped to relate to all children. The meditation also makes us more aware of how our caregivers influenced us, and how we in turn might influence others. Finally, we consider the components of a happy family--both what it means, and what it takes to achieve. The final chapter provides suggestions and clear guidelines for fostering a healthy family life, referring back to the personality types outlined earlier in the manuscript in order to create a cohesive scope and approach. Ultimately, the author contends, we all have a responsibility for each other, and learning how to skillfully navigate this challenge can result in a brighter, deeper and more fulfilling life for everyone.
An educator from Indiana moves to California, a new culture, to start a new life. She soon finds she is ill-equipped for her new surroundings, but rises like a storm to overcome or conceal any deficiencies. She is arrogant and self-confident, becoming a high society lady hosting lavish events and outlandish parties. She and her husband travel world-wide. They have multiple homes. They care for their family. They entertain their friends. They give back to their community. They support various charities. They never ever discuss their own needs, wants and providing for their future. In all the excitement and pleasure, they neglect themselves and the spiritual divine spark that brought them together. This story is one of having wealth, going through a calamitous downfall, collapse and failure and coming out the other side with simplicity and contentment. It is a life filled with abundance, affluence, some would say, “a life being lived in the lap of luxury.” It is a life filled with languish, distress, misery, desperation, wretchedness and dashed hopes. It is a life filled with sorrow, remorse, penance, sack cloth and ashes. It is a life filled with recovery, redemption, atonement and satisfaction. It is life filled with love, praise and forgiveness.
This is the story of a child born into a conservative fundamentalist preacher's family in Indiana. Her journey through thirty tumultuous years was: *within the strict regulations of the church community *within the confines of a love-starved home *within an unbelievable marriage During the journey, she: *moved quickly through school, graduating and becoming a teacher at age 19 *became a leader in the educational community *found the true love she had sought and been denied for so long
This book will help you find the secrets of your innermost self. Following a set of practical exercises you'll discover the actual traits that make you unique. Then you will evaluate those traits to decide if your profile represents your ideal self--the self you seek to be. Knowing Yourself...or Not explains; What makes you special. What makes you not so special. Why you act the way you do. How you like to be treated. What settings make you most comfortable. Personal traits that may be limiting your success.
From very early childhood, Mitsy longs for closeness with others--a free-flowing acceptance, approval, rapport, and respect that ideally should exist in the "perfect family." Somehow, Mitsy realizes she does not have a "perfect family." She lives a solitary, friendless, and lonely life. Peering out her bedroom window and seeing the hustle and bustle of activity in the town square only heighten her desire to be a part of it all. Grandmother Fisher starts teaching a very young Mitsy about friendship and what makes a good friend. Mitsy learns that relationships are basic life skills that must be mastered and nurtured. From age two, Mitsy's life consists of starting, developing, and ending relationships. Some, she is thrown into; others, she chooses. However they develop, relationships are an inescapable part of her life. Mitsy's relationships bring her great joy, deep sorrow, persistent problems, and devastating disappointments. This book is a collection of Mitsy's stories based on her relationships--grandparents, parents, her first friend, best buddies, colleagues, love interests, and her relationship within. As you read, try to gain insights into your own relationships. Relish the ideas, memories, and feelings that arise. Connect with your emotions; express your feelings. Heal a wound Forgive a hurt. Share a thought or idea. Savor moments of joy, and revel in your own successes.
What are you deep down inside? What changes would you like to make in your personality? This book reveals the secrets of your innermost self. Follow a set of practical exercises and you'll discover the personality traits that make you unique. Then evaluate those traits to decide if your profile represents your ideal self -- and is an expression of your highest potential."--Page 4 of cover
Are you interested in developing a deeper understanding of relationships? Have you ever wondered why there are natural affinities between some people and static between others? Why some have great rapport while others have considerable conflict? What creates your instant reaction to another person? This unique book provides simple, practice-proven methods that examine reasons for the variations in which people relate to each other. Included are invaluable techniques that will help to improve interactions with everyone in your life, including romantic partners, family members, bosses, coworkers, neighbors and friends. Compatibility issues arise with almost every person you come in contact with. By utilizing these proven methods your ability to relate to people will transform your daily existence, creating more happiness and success in both your personal and professional life.
What is your child, or the children around you saying? Everywhere, every day, a child is speaking to you, sharing their thoughts, feelings, dreams, yearnings, hurts and disappointments. Sometimes these voices are loud, at times soft, and many times silent. A Child Is Speaking presents some of those messages. Some are joyful and others are cries for help. As you relate to children, "listen" carefully to the thoughts that are expressed aloud and to the many silent ones shared through their actions. Use this book as an awakening to the wide variety of expressions that may be harbored within the mind of a child. "Listen" and "never" under estimate the magnitude of the problems a child may be experiencing, you will discover many new things about yourself, your child, and the children around you. Utilizing these actions will help you create a relationship in which you and your child realize your greatest potential as human beings. Take time to recharge and nurture your own spirit and develop self-awareness, which will help develop awareness in the children around you. You hold the power to create the relationship you want with your children!
This guide to nurturing of the soul, mind, body and spirit aims to help the reader find an exhilarating life in order to find the desire and energy to encourage, strengthen and nourish others.
You spend more time with colleagues than anyone else in your life. Now it's time to find out who they really are. Uncover what really makes your team work-the unique strengths of each member. Based on twenty years of proven research into interpersonal dynamics, this book is a hands-on manual designed to improve your team's productivity.
An educator from Indiana moves to California, a new culture, to start a new life. She soon finds she is ill-equipped for her new surroundings, but rises like a storm to overcome or conceal any deficiencies. She is arrogant and self-confident, becoming a high society lady hosting lavish events and outlandish parties. She and her husband travel world-wide. They have multiple homes. They care for their family. They entertain their friends. They give back to their community. They support various charities. They never ever discuss their own needs, wants and providing for their future. In all the excitement and pleasure, they neglect themselves and the spiritual divine spark that brought them together. This story is one of having wealth, going through a calamitous downfall, collapse and failure and coming out the other side with simplicity and contentment. It is a life filled with abundance, affluence, some would say, “a life being lived in the lap of luxury.” It is a life filled with languish, distress, misery, desperation, wretchedness and dashed hopes. It is a life filled with sorrow, remorse, penance, sack cloth and ashes. It is a life filled with recovery, redemption, atonement and satisfaction. It is life filled with love, praise and forgiveness.
The Extended Hand is a "contemplative memoir" that covers two seemingly separate lives. When Robert answers the phone, he has trouble understanding his neighbor's question: "What do you mean, there's a notice in today's paper listing our condo for sale?" Through the kitchen windows, he can see the ocean waves rolling in toward the Maui beach. Surely there must be a mistake. But when he calls his wife Marti on the eastside of Seattle, he learns the truth: "Yes, I filed for bankruptcy." Once, as a child, Marti fell through an open manhole into a sewer and was rescued by the extended hand of a caring man. Now, even though her business mistakes have wiped out the assets of a thirty-year marriage, Marti Eicholz discovers that her husband is another man capable of extending a hand to someone in need. The Extended Hand is the first-person story of how I came to that point of having to tell the man I loved that I had lost all our worldly goods, without giving him a warning. Only in retrospect did I understand why I, the daughter of a charismatic fundamentalist preacher with a need to control his family, was driven to excel and perform perfectly. As an adult, I found it hard to love myself--when my first marriage ended, after ten years, I was still a virgin--and went into a web-based business venture when the Internet was still a novelty, unable to acknowledge that I was in an emotional black hole. My story is also that of one preacher's daughter who learns to accept the extended hand of the living Jesus cleansed of the rules and exclusions imposed on it by a narrow, fundamentalist view of the bible's truths. My marriage is alive and thriving today because I have finally learned to accept the gifts that are yours when someone extends their hand in love, and you accept it, in humility and gratitude.
Every day as you guide and nourish, you have new chances to get things right, to sow seeds of love, acceptance, appreciation, encouragement and confidence." Although the parent-child relationship is perhaps the most obvious example of care giving, opportunities for this type of support and guidance abound in everyday life. By taking time to reflect and consider our own childhoods, we may become better equipped to understand and relate to others--especially children--as they navigate their own unique challenges. This learning experience explores techniques and guidance for doing just this. The first chapter outlines four parenting styles--both the strengths and weaknesses inherent to each--and considers how these natural tendencies can be leveraged and expanded to create an optimal child-rearing environment. By better understanding our own behaviors, we can achieve improved balance in our relationships with others. Next, through a comprehensive list of children's common grievances, the author presents tactics that parents may use to identify sources of conflict, close these gaps and better relate to their children and their unique issues or needs. These skills are essential in parent-child relationships, but they may also be extended outward to create stronger interpersonal relationships more generally. Working through our own childhood struggles can help us relate to others with more impact and grace. To this end, a guided meditation leads us through a series of reflections in which the reader is invited to revisit his or her own childhood and to confront any difficulties encountered there. By learning to evoke to our inner child, we may become better equipped to relate to all children. The meditation also makes us more aware of how our caregivers influenced us, and how we in turn might influence others. Finally, we consider the components of a happy family--both what it means, and what it takes to achieve. The final chapter provides suggestions and clear guidelines for fostering a healthy family life, referring back to the personality types outlined earlier in the manuscript in order to create a cohesive scope and approach. Ultimately, the author contends, we all have a responsibility for each other, and learning how to skillfully navigate this challenge can result in a brighter, deeper and more fulfilling life for everyone.
This book will help you find the secrets of your innermost self. Following a set of practical exercises you'll discover the actual traits that make you unique. Then you will evaluate those traits to decide if your profile represents your ideal self--the self you seek to be. Knowing Yourself...or Not explains; What makes you special. What makes you not so special. Why you act the way you do. How you like to be treated. What settings make you most comfortable. Personal traits that may be limiting your success.
When Mary Turner entered the world, she was already her parents' least-favorite child. Filled with ambition but always seeming to be lacking some crucial skill, Mary left home immediately after graduating high school and set her sights on the endless horizon before her. Mary had had a difficult childhood; when she was young, her grandparents had died in a tragic accident that left the entire family--especially her father, Kenneth--shrouded in a heavy grief. Once on her own, Mary kept her eyes fixed on the future, and soon that future came to include a man named Adam. Though Adam and Mary had a difficult relationship, they eloped in Las Vegas and returned home a (mostly) happily married couple; it wasn't much later that they became first-time parents. After Scotty was born, however, Mary began exhibiting concerning symptoms. She struggled to bond with her child and experienced increasingly volatile emotional swings. Soon after, Mary was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Mary struggled to cope with her mental illness, and as the years passed, she began turning to drugs and alcohol to soothe her aching mind. She began neglecting, and eventually abusing, Scotty, and the family quickly started to deteriorate. Eventually deciding that Adam and Scotty would be better off without her, Mary packed up her car and ran away to Las Vegas, where she made the bulk of her money by moving illegal drugs. Her time there was a thrilling and dangerous whirlwind, but Mary knew it had to come to an end eventually. Next, she landed in Sedona, Arizona, where she led a quiet, peaceful life, nothing like the one she'd left behind in Vegas. Still, Mary knew she would need to return home and reconnect with the family she'd abandoned. Instead of finding Adam, Mary found Luke, an old friend and fellow addict. Once reunited with Luke, Mary quickly fell in love with him and agreed to help him smuggle drugs out of the country. She was caught at the Dublin airport, however, and sent to prison, where she learned she was pregnant with Luke's child. Her child was taken from her to live with her father. Petals also offers a deeply poignant and introspective look into the many facets of mental illness, substance abuse and recovery, death, heartbreak, joy, and forgiveness. It is through its diverse cast of characters that the reader is allowed a look into the minds and senses of all those touched by Mary's journey. Best suited for readers who enjoy fast-paced action combined with a deeply emotional and introspective narrative, Petals is a multi-generational story of everyday humans who must learn to cut their own paths amid the wild, yet heartbreakingly beautiful, garden that is life.
Are you frustrated with the pace at which you live and despite the rapid pace, you don’t seem to be getting any closer to your dreams? Do you exhibit any of these classic symptoms that indicate a life out of balance: anxiety, depression, irritability, insomnia, hopelessness, and even chronic physical ailments. Are you wishing to establish a healthy lifestyle that will last a lifetime? Then you are ready to hear the messages of the giant oak tree. The giant oak has witnessed great strength, limitations, fears, courageous moments, love, hate, and disappointments. The giant oak offers wisdom and solace. It buffers and shades from the storms of life. It has experienced the beginning phases of life and has endured, has flourished, and has triumphed over adversity. This healthy oak tree is a loving presence that will lead you on an adventure, tapping the rich realms of your heart, mind, body and soul and guiding you toward balance, health, harmony, and love into your life. Bring with you, nothing more than a pair of ears for listening, a mind willing to learn and an open heart. You will be given ongoing inspiration and the practical tools you need for the adventure. Be prepared for stunning surprises and wondrous awakenings.
THE BRAIDING OF DIVERSE LIVES: The Story of Mitsy Fisher focuses on friendship, loneliness, loss and love. At the story’s outset, Luke looks on as a culmination of Mitsy’s lifelong dream, her refuge for homeless, abused, and orphaned children, goes up in flames. Luke recalls his relationship with Mitsy and these streets during his adolescence. Now, Mitsy is gravely injured when she rushes back inside the burning building to save her beloved dog, Blackie. As she lies in a hospital bed in a medically induced coma, her future uncertain, her current boyfriend, Andy, revisits her past, reading to Mitsy from a series of notebooks and journals she has been keeping since she was a young girl. As Andy reveals more and more of Mitsy’s past---the death of her mother and brother when Mitsy was young, her complicated relationship with her father, the scholarship that took her to a special school in New York City as a teenager, the harrowing experience that tested her love of music, and her unyielding faith. He can only hope that the difficult life she’s lead will give her the strength to recover. Will Mitsy succumb to her injuries, or will love and faith carry her through, as they always have before?
What are you deep down inside? What changes would you like to make in your personality? This book reveals the secrets of your innermost self. Follow a set of practical exercises and you'll discover the personality traits that make you unique. Then evaluate those traits to decide if your profile represents your ideal self -- and is an expression of your highest potential."--Page 4 of cover
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