by jphilo | Mar 14, 2016 | Current Events
Pat Conroy, one of my favorite authors, died a little more than a week ago. I’ve been sad ever since. Conroy wrote about the South Carolina coastland like a man head over heels in love. His affection for the ocean and the marshlands where he grew up made readers fall in love with shrimp fishing and boating and southern living. He brought places and people alive with his lush descriptions. He painted word pictures of sunsets vivid and beautiful and vivid enough to make readers cry when the sun slipped behind the horizon.
His stories of abusive, military, larger-than-life fathers and eccentric, brilliant mothers made me cringe as their lives of wild abandon damaged the children in their care. Reading or listening to his novels, all of them biographical, felt like sinking into a frightening and joyful world.
My two favorite books were not his novels, but his memoirs. In My Reading Life, he paid tribute to his mother who nurtured in him a love of reading and of words. A 2011 Gravel Road post details the power and influence the book holds. The audio version is particularly enthralling.
Conroy’s memoir and final book, The Death of Santini, is another favorite. It’s a hard book to read or listen to because Conroy is very frank about his difficult childhood and the devastating affect it had on him and his siblings. Perhaps it resonated deeply with me because I listened to it while writing Does My Child Have PTSD? Truly, he could have been my book’s poster child.
But the memoir was about more than a difficult childhood. It was also about facing demons and transforming pain into stories of grace, forgiveness, and beauty. The memoir was about imperfect and reckless lives that are both cautionary and triumph tales.
Thank you, Pat Conroy, for blessing our lives with your stories and your written words. May they live long and touch hearts for generations to come.
by jphilo | Feb 26, 2016 | Daily Life
This week I’m preparing to speak about mental illness at our church on Sunday. No wonder this post, written four years ago this month while doing research for a book on PTSD in children, caught my eye. This post is as apropos now as it was then.
The Danger of Self-Delusion
During January and February, my days were consumed with research for a new book proposal about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in kids. Consequently, I learned just enough about several mental illnesses to endanger my own state of mind. All this new information sent me into a tizzy of worry and self-diagnosis, resulting in the following list:
- The great pleasure I find in the order and symmetry of the picture above is a sure sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- My penchant for list making could be another sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or it could be a coping mechanism I employ to hide early onset Alzheimer’s.
- I probably have an eating disorder because one of the marks of an eating disorder is obsessively thinking about food. And I think of food at least three times a day, sometimes more.
- Kids can be traumatized in many ways, and one of them must have happened to me during childhood so I must have PTSD.
- Taking out all the garbage, cleaning the bathrooms, doing the laundry, and emptying the dishwasher before going on vacation points to a yet undiscovered, reverse housecleaning phobia which I hope they name “Philophobia” after me.
- The desire to name a mental illness after myself pretty much proves I have a narcissistic complex.
- All this worrying about having a mental illness points to an anxiety disorder, don’t you think?
Believe me, that list is only the tip of the mental illness iceberg. If everything I’ve self-diagnosed was on that list, you’d think I was crazy. But I’m not.
8. Time to add self-delusion to the list.
by jphilo | Mar 23, 2015 | Book Updates
Can it possibly be that Jane last made an appearance along this gravel road in July of last year? Yes, sorry to say, it’s been that long. And since that post’s report of on the sad lack of progress of the mystery novel bearing her name, Jane and her cast of characters has been almost completely neglected.
Poor Jane. Poor, poor Jane.
Mind, you the reasons for this shameful neglect are all good ones. First, I had to research and write a book about PTSD in children to meet the publishers November 30, 2014 deadline. A week later a month long Camp Dorothy commenced, and I was too busy keeping track of Vanna White and Judge Judy to write much. No sooner did that end, than our second grandchild was born and Mom moved into assisted living. Oh, and did I mention that The Caregiver’s Notebook released on November 1, 2014?
Poor Jane. Poor, neglected Jane.
To add insult to injury, all my time since 2015 began has been spent going to see the grandkids and completing edits on Every Child Welcome, along with a B-I-G rewrite of the PTSD book. That book, by the way, has finally been named Does My Child Have PTSD? What to Do When Your Child Is Hurting from the Inside Outs.
Poor Jane. Poor, traumatized Jane.
Because, as Does My Child Have PTSD? makes very clear, neglect over a long period of time can cause PTSD in children, especially babies. And Jane is most certainly my baby, even though she’s a young, independent woman living in the wilds of South Dakota. And my baby will most likely remain sadly neglected for at least 2 more months, maybe 3…until the final edits of the PTSD book are done, my daughter’s baby is born, and my spring speaking schedule clears up.
Poor Jolene Jane. Poor, poor Jolene Jane.
She misses her imaginary romps in northwest South Dakota and writing school teacher detective scenes where glitter becomes the ultimate weapon. She misses writing about nasty weather on the big prairie without having to experience it first hand. So to give Jolene Jane and anyone else who misses the short grass prairie a taste of what they’re missing, here’s a clip from KOTA news in Rapid City offers a taste of life out west. Complete with heat, indoor plumbing, and two of the strongest Harding County women I’ve had the pleasure to meet.
Just wait, Jane. Wait, Jane, wait!
by jphilo | May 16, 2014 | Current Events
The past few weeks have been filled with a buzz of activity at our house. Hiram’s siding the garage and reprising his Man of Steel role in preparation for Dam to Dam in a few weeks. My time’s been divided between correcting proofs for The Caregiver’s Notebook and conducting interviews for a book about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children. Throw high school graduation season into the mix and, like I said, things are buzzing around here.
No time for sitting around and eating bon bons.
And hardly time, as has been mentioned in other blog posts this week, for writing new blog posts either. But enough time to contemplate yesterday’s guest post by Maggie Gale over at www.DifferentDream.com, my website for parents of kids with special needs.
Maggie’s post is an amazing story about her daughter Lois.
Lois had a TE/EAF repair shortly after birth, the same anomaly and repair our son had. In her post Maggie describes how Lois remembered and grieved about those early events. Ten years ago, I would have poo-pooed her story, but not anymore. Not after our son was treated for PTSD caused by his early medical experiences.
Kids remember more and further back than we think.
Traumatic memories remain especially vivid and affect our children more than we want to believe. Which is why my days are filled reading books about PTSD ink kids, with interviews of parents who have kids with PTSD, and of experts who treat kids with it.
Even though I’d rather be eating bon bons and writing funny blog posts.
So today, instead of an original and finely crafted post, I’d like to direct you to Maggie Gale’s guest post, Do Kids Experience Grief about Their Special Needs. It’s more disturbing than funny. More heart-wrenching than hilarious. And important enough to the well-being of children to make bonbon and blog posting sacrifices seem as insignificant as they really are.
Photo Credit: John Kasawa at www.freedigitalphotos.net
by jphilo | Apr 17, 2014 | Three Thoughts for Thursday, Top Ten Tuesday
- After a week that included school stabbings in Pennsylvania and shootings at Fort Hood, my resolve to educate the public about PTSD in children is stronger than ever.
- A study shows that as birth rates in our country have decreased, female ownership of small dogs has increased. I am so thankful for two children whose potty training escapades eradicated any lingering desire to spend my empty nester years cleaning up after small animals.
- Three questions I want to ask the women who approached the empty tomb and saw the risen Lord: How long until you could believed what you saw? What was it like to go from abject despair to indescribable joy? Could you sleep that night or did you stay up talking to one another?
What questions do you want to ask? Leave a comment.
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