The Sharing Love Abundantly Online Study is Coming Your Way

by jphilo | Dec 15, 2020 | Books and Resources, Different Dream, The 5 Love Languages® for Special Needs Families

The Sharing Love Abundantly Online Study is Coming Your Way

The Sharing Love Abundantly online study for caregiving families is set to kick off January 2021 with a bang! Registration for this free, 4 week study is already underway with the help of my friends at Key Ministry.

We’ll meet on Zoom for an hour every Thursday in January at 11 AM Central Standard Time.

During the first half of each session we’ll dig into the book, discussing ways to use the love languages with every person in a caregiving family–spouses, kids with special needs, typical siblings. We’ll also examine how the love languages can help extended family members, medical professionals, and educators support our families effectively.

Each week special guests will join us for the second half of each meeting. The guests are family members who shared their experiences in Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families. Here’s who will be joining us:

January 7: Joe and Cindi Ferrini
January 14: Matt and Ginny Mooney
January 21: Colleen Swindoll-Thompson
January 28: Stephen “Doc” Hunsley

I can’t wait for you to meet these friends, listen to their wisdom, ask your questions, laugh together, and maybe even cry together.

The study is free, but you will need a copy of Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families to participate fully. You also need to register beforehand by visiting this link. After you register, you’ll receive an email with more details.

If you have any questions about the Sharing Love Abundantly online study, you can leave a comment below or click the contact link at the top of the page. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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Threats to Caregiving Marriages and How to Fight Them

Threats to caregiving marriages can loosen the emotional glue that keeps couples together. The second chapter of Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities discusses seven threats that are unique to caregiving spouses and partners. Here’s a quick run down of what’s on the list.

Time constraints. As in the time required to care for our kids doesn’t leave much time for connecting with a spouse.
Financial strains. Medical bills. Doctor appointments. Therapy sessions. Adaptive equipment. Who has money left over for date nights or babysitters?
Guilt and grief. Parents love their kids with special needs. Even so, they grieve the loss of the child they thought they would have and may feel guilty about their grief.
Isolation. Medical conditions, behavioral issues, and crazy schedules make staying home with kids easier than going out with friends. The more we say “no” to invitations, the fewer invitations are extended. We end up isolated together and overly dependent on one another.
Geographic separation during treatment. My husband stayed home and work while our son and I spent much of his first 3 months at a hospital 750 miles away. It’s an all-too-common scenario for caregiving spouses.
Worry about the future. We worry that our kids may die young. And we worry about who will care for them if they outlive us. That’s a lot of worry.
Lack of support. While extended family, friends, and church family have good intentions, they often have no clue of how to support us. We don’t have time or energy to educate them, so they support us less and less. It’s a vicious circle.

What a depressing list of threats to caregiving marriages! Dr. Chapman and I wrote Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families to encourage you as you invest in your relationship. Chapter 2 ends with a look at the Hebrew word hesed. Hesed is a merciful, intentional love that intervenes on behalf of loved ones and comes to their rescue. The next two installments of this series are all about how parents can use the love languages to practice hesed with a spouse or partner. You can also Or you can purchase the book at your favorite bookstore or on Amazon if you want to learn about how to fight these threats to caregiving marriages before then.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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Basic Love Language Concepts to Ease Stress and Increase Joy in Caregiving Families

Basic love language concepts are tools caregiving families can use to ease stress and increase joy. And who doesn’t want that? Here are three basic love language concepts that can help you get less of the first and more of the second.

Basic Concept #1

Dr. Gary Chapman, with whom I co-authored Sharing Love Abundantly: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, developed his love language theory in the 1990s. He believes that humans express love in five different ways.

Words of Affirmation: This language uses words, spoken or written, to affirm and encourage people.
Quality Time: A person with this love language want your undivided attention and time.
Receiving Gifts: Individuals with this love language feel most loved when they receive gifts.
Acts of Service: People who appreciate actions more than words gravitate to this love language.
Physical Touch: For these people, nothing speaks love more deeply than appropriate touch.

Basic Concept #2

The second basic love language concept consists of 3 simple statements.

Everyone has a primary love language, and many people have a secondary one.
We feel most loved when others use our love language.
To make others feel loved, we have to know their language and learn to use it.

So how can you discover your primary language and the languages of others? By taking the short and easy love language quiz. They are included at the end of the first chapter of Sharing Love Abundantly and in online versions at the 5 Love Languages website.

Basic Concept #3

The final concept to explore is the love tank. We are all born with a love tank that requires filling for our emotional to develop and mature. Heavy doses of love spoken in our primary and secondary languages can keep our love tanks full. When our tanks are full, we’re better able to use the love languages of other people and fill their tanks.

These basic love language concepts are discussed in greater detail in the first chapter of Sharing Love Abundantly. Other chapters in the book explain strategies for determining the love languages of kids who who have conditions that make the quizzes hard to use with them. So hang tight! I’ll be blogging about those strategies as this series continues. Or you can purchase the book at your favorite bookstore or on Amazon if you want to learn about them right away.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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The Love Languages and Special Needs Families: A Good Combination

The love languages and special needs families are a really good idea. Such a good idea that the love languages guy, Dr. Chapman, and I collaborated on a book called Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families: the 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities.

It was released in August of 2019. Caregiving families responded to it enthusiastically. They began sending emails and direct messages about how they were implementing its ideas for adapting the love languages for their unique circumstances. Disability support groups formed book studies about it.

Then COVID happened.

It’s been seven months since the pandemic first complicated our lives. Since then several things have become increasingly clear.

The pandemic is going to be with us a while longer.
Caregiving families need support and resources to survive and even thrive during the pandemic.
The easiest ways for families affected by disability to find resources is online.

This once-a-month series featuring ideas from Sharing Love Abundantly is my way of reaching caregivers and their families. My way of passing along information from the forty families who, by trial and error, devised amazing love language strategies while raising their own children with a wide variety of special needs and disabilities.

Here’s an overview of what’s to come in the next few months.

A guide to the love languages and how to determine them.
How the love languages counteract seven threats to caregiving marriages.
Speaking love to your caregiving spouse.
The unique needs of children affected by disability.
Speaking love to children with disabilities and special needs.
Speaking love to typical siblings.
Ways extended family and friends can speak love to caregiving families.
How to communicate love language information to professionals.
Wisdom from experienced caregivers.

I hope the strategies you’ll learn in the next few months convince you that the love languages and special needs families are a good combination. I hope they help you and every member of your family survive and thrive during this pandemic and long after it fades away.

Other posts in this series:
Basic Love Language Concepts to Ease Stress and Increase Joy in Caregiving Families

Threats to Caregiving Marriages and How to Fight Them

Fostering Communication and Connection Between Caregiving Parents

Love Is a Child’s First Language

Determining the Love Language of a Child with Special Needs or a Disability

Ways to Speak Words of Affirmation and Quality Time to Kids with Special Needs

Speaking Healthy Physical Touch to Kids with Special Needs

Using the Love Languages with Siblings of Kids with Special Needs and Disabilities

Extended Family Members Can Use the Love Languages to Encourage Caregiving Parents

Communicating Your Child’s Love Language to Medical Professionals

Communicating Your Child’s Love Language to Educators

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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My Great Love Languages Adventure Began One Year Ago This Week

My great love languages adventure began one year ago this week when I boarded a train bound for the Windy City.

All by myself.

That’s right.This small town woman spent several days in Chicago after being invited by the publisher of Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities which they released on August 6, 2019.

Caregiving families loved the book.

My great love languages adventure didn’t end that week. I was invited to speak at special needs conferences and at churches about how parents could adapt the love languages for their children with disabilities. Radio stations and podcasters asked for more interviews. Parents signed up for book studies. They sent emails about how helpful the book was.

It was wonderful.

Because I raised a child with special needs. I know families like ours desperately need the encouragement and practical tools found in Sharing Love Abundantly as they care for loved ones. To know that the book was reaching the parents it was written for was deeply satisfying.

Then the coronavirus hit.

Parents had to figure out how to do school at home and shelter in place. COVID-19 was the only thing radio shows and podcasts talked about for months.

It was a weird time.

It’s still a weird time, and what Sharing Love Abundantly has to offer caregiving families is as vital as ever. While this small town woman can’t board a train for Chicago to promote the first anniversary of the book’s release, I’m determined to do what I can.

Starting with a book give away.

To enter the drawing for a free book, leave a comment below about how you plan to use it–for your family, as a gift to a friend, to donate to a public library or to your church. Just leave your comment by midnight on September 3. To sweeten the deal, I’ll give away a free book for every 10 people who enter.

How’s that for an anniversary celebration?

My great love languages adventure began with a trip to Chicago one year ago this week. Despite the pandemic, the adventure is not not over. Not by a long shot. I have anything to do with it, the adventure won’t end in my lifetime. Because I raised a child with special needs. My desire is to support families like ours. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make that happen.

Coronavirus be damned.

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is the author of the Different Dream series for parents of kids with special needs. She speaks at parenting and special needs conferences around the country. She’s also the creator and host of the Different Dream website. Sharing Love Abundantly With Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages® for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities, which she co-authored with Dr. Gary Chapman, was released in August of 2019 and is available at local bookstores, their bookstore website, and at Amazon.

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Lightbulb Moments

Lightbulb moments have been few and far between in my life. My most amazing one came about in January of 2017 when a friend sent an email.

“Hey Jolene, when are you going to write the special needs version of the love languages book?”

She asked a good question. I was the author of 5 books for caregiving parents based on my experiences with our son who was born with a life-threatening medical condition and my father fought multiple sclerosis throughout my childhood. Even so my friend’s idea had never occurred to me. Perhaps my inability to see the obvious explains the dearth of lightbulb moments I’ve entertained.

My friend’s prompted me to email my agent, who emailed the acquisitions editor at Moody, the publishing house for the love languages books. Several months later Dr. Chapman and I signed a contract to write Sharing Love Abundantly in Special Needs Families: The 5 Love Languages for Parents Raising Children with Disabilities.

While researching and writing the book, I interviewed more than 40 caregiving parents about how they use the love languages to reconstruct their relationships with their spouses and their children, both those with special needs and those without. Their stories are the heart of this book. I was astounded by the creative ways they have developed to adapt the love languages to meet the needs of every member of the family.

To read the rest of this post visit the blog at Kim Harm’s website, Life Reconstructed.

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the monthly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

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Jolene Philo is a published author, speaker, wife, and mother of a son with special needs.

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