by jphilo | Aug 17, 2015 | Book Updates
The advance copies of my newest baby book, Does My Child Have PTSD? What to Do When Your Child Is Hurting from the Inside Out have arrived. As you can tell from the picture, meeting this 9″ X 6″, 186 page, soft-covered beauty made me very, very happy.
But I feel a little guilty about its arrival, too. Since it’s the third baby book to arrive in less than a year, the poor little tyke didn’t receive the undivided attention my firstborn book did. Truth be told, the box sat on the dining room table for three days before I got around to opening it. Then it received only a cursory once over and didn’t have an in-the-box picture taken for two more days.
I keep meaning to do a happy dance, but taking care of the other four kids blogging about and marketing my other four books keeps distracting me. And to add insult to injury, this baby can’t go out in public for two more months the official release date won’t arrive for two more months, though it can be pre-ordered on Amazon now.
In addition to feeling guilty about the lack of attention the new baby book has received, I’m consumed by worry. Because, as the book makes clear, neglect can be very traumatic for children. So I’m not even practicing what I preach to other parents.
Therefore, I am taking steps to rectify the situation. Step one is to make regular eye contact with the baby book, so it learns to trust its mother author.
Step two will be to sit down with the baby book on my lap and read it from cover to cover as soon as time allows. Because as I also learned during my pregnancy during my researching and writing, babies and very young children who have experienced trauma can experience great healing when they have a loving and consistent primary caregiver to provide security and reassurance.
Which means that in the next few months, given a choice between spending time with our three grandchildren, all under the age of three, and reading or marketing my latest bouncing baby book, I’ll choose the grandkids every single time.
by jphilo | Oct 27, 2014 | Reviews
I suspected, when asking Mary Potter Kenyon for a review copy of Refined by Fire, that it would be a hard book to put down. Once I opened the book, my suspicions proved to be absolutely true. The book was nearly impossible to put down for two riveting reasons.
Refined by Fire: Two Reasons It’s Hard to Put Down
First, the author tells a heartbreaking story of loss. In the span of a few years, Kenyon lost her mother Irma and then her husband David. Just as she discovered writing as a way to regain her emotional footing, her young grandson Jacob died of cancer.
Second, she makes the story more compelling by being transparent. She lays her journey of grief before the reader, refusing to hide her emotional pain, her tears, her anger, her loneliness, and her doubts. We see grief take its toll on her relationships and especially on her youngest daughter, Abigail, who was just 8 when her father died.
Refined by Fire: Snapshots of Grief
Though overwhelmed by grief and shedding tears every morning for years, Kenyon somehow writes her way through her grief. Throughout the book, excerpts from her blog and daily journals are featured:
Grief at Ten and a Half Weeks
The First Holiday
Grief at Twenty Weeks
Grief at Five Months
Each entry is a word picture, a snapshot of grief frozen in time. Between those entries, the reader sees grief melt and morph and reform as Kenyon questions God and hears him answer in sweet and unexpected ways. Though devastated by her losses, she begins to see God at work in her life. Her heart is still broken at the end of the book, but thanks to her determination to cling to God, she is also stronger and more capable than before.
Refined by Fire: A Grief Handbook
Kenyon’s Refined by Fire is essentially “grief handbook” for those dealing with loss, something Kenyon wished for as she grieved. It is also a useful tool and resource for pastors, grief support group leaders, hospice workers, funeral home directors, and anyone working with people dealing with grief.
Refined by Fire Give Away
I have a copy of Refined by Fire to give away. To enter the drawing, leave a comment in the box below between now and midnight on November 1, 2014. To increase your chances of winning, sign up for the Gravel Road’s RSS feed at the top, right side of this page and leave another comment saying you did so by midnight on November 1, 2014.
Mary Potter Kenyon graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with a BA in Psychology and is the Director of the Winthrop Public Library. She wrote several of the devotions included in the NIV Hope in the Mourning Bible released by Zondervan in 2013. Mary writes a weekly couponing column for the Dubuque Telegraph Herald and conducts writing and couponing workshops for women’s groups, libraries, and community colleges. Mary is also the author of Coupon Crazy: The Science, the Savings, and the Stories Behind America’s Extreme Obsession and ChemoTherapist: How Cancer Cured a Marriage.
