Parent Pointers for December

I think I might have been a little lax in sharing my articles for Sage Ministries. You can see my December article here on ways to think outside the gift box this year and really teach your children the blessing of blessing others during the Christmas season.

We Have a Winner!

Congratulations to Susan J Reinhardt for commenting on last Monday's review of Erica Vetsch's The Bartered Bride!

I just emailed you for your snail mail addy. You're going to love the book!

Thanks to everyone for stopping by and participating. :) Hope everyone is recovering from Black Friday shopping.

Black Friday Fits with Yesterday's T3

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! I did, although I missed my family so incredibly much. Only a few more days before my little girl will be here, though!

Wish me luck today at 11 a.m. Pacific Time. I'm going to be doing a walk-through of the house I hope my family will be living in! Haven't seen the inside, but everything else looks and sounds fantastic!

If you missed yesterday's Therapeutic Thought, you can click over to The Character Therapist to read up on Schizoid Personality Disorder. Interesting that it fell on Thanksgiving...I doubt that any person with Schizoid was particularly excited about the holiday.

Anyway...hope you enjoy all the Black Friday shopping sales!

Treatment Tuesday - Meeting An Absent Father

Neither knew the other existed for 24 years. One's still in the dark. Check it out at The Character Therapist.

The Bartered Bride Book Review and Giveaway!

Debut author Erica Vetsch nailed her first book, people. Nailed it. I really enjoyed reading this one....so much so, we're going to have a giveaway! (Just leave a comment in the comment section with your email address to be entered.)

First, a bit about the book from the back cover:

Jonathan Kennabrae is furious when his grandfather informs him that his future has been decided. He will marry Melissa Brooke or lose his inheritance. Jonathan has invested years of his life in Kennabrae Shipping, but heaven help him if Grandfather decides to take it all away for this.

Melissa, too, is devastated when her parents make their announcement. As little more than a bargaining chip in her father's business maneuvers, she feels her secure world slipping away. Engaged to marry a man she has never met--someone "considerably older" than herself? What have her parents done?

Can Jonathan and Melissa find a way out of this loveless marriage, or must they find a way forward together?

You have to love the immediate conflict and high tension from a premise like this. What a great title to capture that conflict. But that's not all that's great. Erica's writing is succinct and tight, with every scene moves the plot forward....very little fluff. But there are some lighthearted moments that make you smile....and the first kiss is so swoon-worthy it certainly won't disappoint. Hel-lo Jonathan! Big *sigh* for all you romantics out there. :)

One thing Erica did particularly well was her use of metaphor. Often she drew from nautical terms for scenes with Jonathan, whose life was immersed in shipping. She always found verbiage to fit the mood of the scene so well.

Donning the therapist cap for a moment...Erica's book covers some intense topics like women's suffrage and arranged marriages and parental expectations. During a time where women were expected to be seen, not heard....certainly not to make a fuss about a marriage or about the right to vote. I think Erica captured young Melissa's plight very well...getting us into her head and heart and how she feels.

Her main characters face the problem of staying true to themselves while trying to be obedient to their parental authority. The pang of disappointment many of us have as adults when we realize our parents aren't perfect...but are, in fact, flawed (sometimes severely so). Because of this, I think just about anyone reading this book could relate to the predicament the characters find themselves in. (Maybe not about an arranged marriage....but we all have received pressures to do things we don't want to do in various forms.) There does come a critical juncture where you have to do what you know is right, to follow your beliefs and live out your faith. Jonathan and Melissa both face to this to a degree. (But you'll have to read it to find out how it all works out for them!)

It's a page-turner...one for the book shelf. So don't forget to leave a comment to be entered in the drawing!

Click over to Erica's blog, On the Write Path, for some great posts about writing. Definitely want to follow her if you aren't already.

Blessings!

T3 - Avoidant Personality Disorder

What do they avoid and why? Find out by clicking over to The Character Therapist.

Treatment Tuesday - Childhood Trauma

What are the long-lasting effects? How can you treat it? I give some inside details at The Character Therapist.

Starting My New Job!

Starting my new job today! I'm so excited that I feel like it's the first day of school. ;)

Please be praying for the rest of my luggage to come in...they made me check on a carry-on in Phoenix and indicated that the final destination was L.A. So my bag is out there somewhere...and I had some important information ad electronic equipment on this bag. Would appreciate the prayers.

Blessings to you all this week!

Erratic Posting and T3

Erratic Posting and Borderline Personality Disorder

I guess by now everyone who even still reads this blog realizes that my posts have been erratic. If you missed my update on life, see this post here. I'm starting a new job, moving cross-country BACK to California (without my family for a few weeks) and house hunting. This all starts on Saturday!

Due to life circumstances, my commitment to writing has waned, much less blogging, although I'm staying up-to-date over at my other blog, The Character Therapist. I've got a fairly long queue of authors who have written in, and I'm not going to let them down. Plus, doing research into disorders and the like keeps me on my toes professionally, so it's a win-win.

Feel free to follow me on that blog if you're interested in the character assessments and therapeutic thoughts I post on Tues/Thurs. Occasionally, I'll have book reviews (and giveaways...like Erica Vetsch's The Bartered Bride on Nov. 23rd!) or some other life news on this blog...but until I can get into some sort of a routine, I'm going to have to stay low on other posts and comments on your blogs. It doesn't mean I don't love all of your blogs, it just means I love my family more. :)

God's been good to me. He's taking me into a new season where writing is going to have to take a backseat to providing for my family by working full-time again, and that's okay. I'm excited about it, actually. Still, I've got my next "killer idea" already brainstorming away...and it's going to be awesome. *sigh* If only I had time to work on it!

The next installment of the Personality Disorder parade will be up Thursday morning. Just click this image below to check out Borderline Personality Disorder.


I'll be around...kind of like an apparition...fleeting in and out of the blogosphere. Oh no, wait. I'm confusing my latest client's delusions with reality.

See you all around!

Treatment Tuesday - Death of a Parent

What are some typical reactions a young child might experience? Get in on the discussion at The Character Therapist.

Win A Kindle!

Lisa and Laura are giving away a free Kindle. Yep. Click to visit their blog for details!

Enjoy your weekend! I'll be busy packing and saying goodbye to my brothers who are coming to see me off!

T3 - Paranoid Personality Disorder

Is everyone really out to get them? Find out over at The Character Therapist.

Treatment Tuesday - Torture 101

Stop by and audit the class at The Character Therapist.

Job Update

Thanks for being patient...I've been having some problems with Blogger, apparently. :)

But for the REAL job update:

Recently I flew to California for a week for two interviews and an informal lunch that turned into a job offer. That particular job was in a city a little far away from the school my husband will go to to really be feasible for us. But getting this job offer did take the pressure off. We now had a way to get back to California!

My first interview was directly after that lunch...and let's just say it was about two steps ahead of where I am administratively. Amusing, I suppose, because when I got home, I got a postcard in the mail that let me know my "rank" amongst the other job seekers. (I'm not sure how many there were, but my rank was 20, which was hardly high enough to give me a job! You had to be in the top 6 to get a second interview.)

So now we get to the God-part of the story. Seriously...good stuff. There was this job at Redwood Community Action Agency that I had seen weeks ago and applied for. The time to apply was ending on my birthday, Tuesday, Oct. 20th, which was when I was IN California. So I got a call asking if I could come in for an interview that Friday. So I did. The interview was really, really long (over an hour) and then I thanked them and walked outside to my friend's truck I was borrowing. The human resource director actually lifted up a window to ask me to come back inside! So I knew it was either going to be really good or really bad!

AND IT WAS GOOD! They offered me the job on the spot. I had prayed before I went in to the interview that if this was the job that the Lord wanted me to have, he would just sling doors wide open. And He did! They told me they didn't want to interview anyone else, but that they had never done this before. They felt I had just dropped into their laps, but I knew better. God had orchestrated it all.

So, beginning Nov. 16th, I will be RCAA's new Clinical Services Coordinator! I'm excited about this job, people. I haven't worked full-time in almost 2 years (since my daughter was born), but I'm ready to get back into it. This job will have some counseling and some supervising, but mainly I will be overseeing all the mental health at RCAA's Youth Service Bureau and Family Services Division (there are links on the main page). This is an administrative job, but with aspects I'm extremely familiar with so I'm comfortable assuming this additional responsibility.

Now on to prayer requests. Since I'ms tarting Nov. 16th and my husband doesn't finish up his semester until Dec. 11, there are some inherent scheduling problems trying to be a family from 3200 miles away (give or take a 100 or two). The best solution we could come up with is for me to fly by myself to California, live with a friend, and start the job. By the time my husband can come, I should have found a house (which is a prayer request--we need one within our range limit) by then. My mother will be bringing my little girl over after about 2 1/2 weeks. My daughter will stay in Cali while Mom returns to MS. My husband will then travel cross-country with the moving van and be in CA by Dec. 17-18, somewhere around there. So we won't se each other for 5 weeks, but I'll have my daughter most of that time. Still, 2 1/2 weeks without her will be extremely difficult. My husband is transitioning into the role of the primary caregiver, and this also needs prayer. Maddy isn't taking to it too well right now, but we hope that once I'm gone to CA and she doesn't really have a choice as to who's going to put her to sleep, put her in her high chair, etc, then it won't be quite so dramatic.

But that should fill you all in on me! I will COVET your prayers during this time as I get ready to leave my family and start a new job. Posts will be irregular, I'm sure, except I will be posting regularly on The Character Therapist. My assessment queue is getting fairly long!