'There is so much aching love in this book, such pain and beauty. Behold, and rejoice.' - Tim Winton, author of Cloudstreet Was he thinking, do I have to be this kind of boy to survive? Is this what being a boy is? As a boy growing up on the south coast of England, Howard Cunnell's sense of self was dominated by his father's absence. Now, years later, he is a father, and his daughter is becoming his son. Starting with his own childhood in the Sussex beachlands, Howard tells the story of the years of self-destruction that defined his young adulthood and the escape he found in reading and the natural world. Still he felt compelled to destroy the relationships that mattered to him. Saved by love and responsibility, Cunnell charts his journey from anger to compassion, as his daughter Jay realizes he is a boy, and a son. Most of all, this is a story about love - its necessity and fragility, and its unequalled capacity to enable us to be who we are. Deeply thoughtful, searingly honest and exquisitely lyrical, Fathers and Sons is an exploration of fatherhood, masculinity, authenticity and family.

Like a photo shoot, pictures flashed in Anthony's head as he reflected on the first time he heard the horrifying clank of the barred door that was now staring at his back, he vividly recalled, his face smashed against the dusty police car, bright red and blue Lights blindly flashing in his eyes. Everything was a blur! His heart beating so fast and pounding so hard he could hardly hear the cop as he repeated his words... "Do you understand your rights!" A preacher's son on the way to a place deemed worse than hell! Just a teenaged boy when he was facing those bars, now a man 7 years later who has made a promise to himself to rectify his wrongs. Read this captivating story about a young man's journey into manhood down a twisted road through tragedy and triumph.

Do you long for a closer bond with your son? Do you want the kind of relationship that will honor God and be a blessing to both of you for the rest of your lives?

In Fathers and Sons Angus Buchan explains how fathers can foster a rewarding and God-honoring relationship with their sons.

Through topics like humility, love, appreciation, grace and respect Angus inspires men to be the godly fathers God has ordained them to be and reminds them that it is never too early or too late to nurture the special and blessed relationship between a father and his son.

'I've seen many parents and adult children grappling with these issues, and this is exactly the book they have all been waiting for.' - Lori Gottlieb Has your adult child cut off contact with you? How can you heal the pain and start to build a bridge back to them? Labelled a silent epidemic by a growing number of therapists and researchers, estrangement is one of the most disorienting and painful experiences of a parent's life. Popular opinion typically tells a one-sided story of parents who got what they deserved or overly entitled adult children who wrongly blame their parents. However, the reasons for alienation are far more complex and varied. As a result of rising rates of individualism, an increasing cultural emphasis on happiness, growing economic insecurity, and a historically recent perception that parents are obstacles to personal growth, many parents find themselves forever shut out of the lives of their adult children and grandchildren. As a trusted psychologist whose own daughter cut off contact for several years and eventually reconciled, Dr Joshua Coleman is uniquely qualified to guide parents in navigating these fraught interactions. He helps to alleviate the ongoing feelings of shame, hurt, guilt, and sorrow that commonly attend these dynamics. By placing estrangement into a cultural context, Dr Coleman helps parents better understand the mindset of their adult children and teaches them how to implement the strategies for reconciliation and healing that he has seen work in his forty years of practice. Rules of Estrangement gives parents the language and the emotional tools to engage in meaningful conversation with their child, the framework to cultivate a healthy relationship moving forward, and the ability to move on if reconciliation is no longer possible. While estrangement is a complex and tender topic, Dr Coleman's insightful approach is based on empathy and understanding for both the parent and the adult child.

This seemingly simple but truly complex question" True or false: "My mother was a good woman." This item has appeared in one form or another on countless psychological inventories over the years. The culturally-prescribed answer is, of course, "True." Even the people most abused by their mothers tend to rise to defend "Mom." The rationale varies: "She was basically good"; "She was never cut out to have children"; "She simply had no idea how to be there for me"; "Perhaps if she hadn't had me..."; "Maybe it was I who turned her into a bad mother?" As early as 1954 in his work with abused children, psychoanalyst Ronald Fairbairn observed that a child acknowledging to herself or anyone else that she had a bad mother or that her mother was a bad woman was tantamount to admitting that the child was, by association, a bad person --and so it becomes an act of self-preservation to hold that one's mopther is good, never mind all evidence to the contrary. In Horrible Mothers, pshychotherapist Alice Thie Vieira takes us into the world of individuals who have endured devastating damage at the hands of society's most sacrosanst icon: the Mother. Vieira does so with four chief aims: 1. to label abuse so as to be able to acknowledge it; 2. to recognize that the sanctification of motherhood is a burden that society has foisted upon them; 3. to help mothers understand how their mothering may have hurt their children; 4. to help victims of horrible mothering grasp the unfairness of what was done to them, to comprehend how it affected their lives, and acknowledge what they have endured so as to break free from unhealthy attachments to their inadequate mothers, and thus move forward and better realize their potentiality.

Fathers, Prisons, and Family Reentry: Presencing as a Framework and Method asks scholars, policy makers, advocates, and practitioners to rethink family reentry in a new light, to seek to understand both the urgent and intolerable loss as well as the real and present potential of families. There are almost one million parents of minor-aged children currently serving time in U.S. prisons-most of them fathers. Based on post-phenomenological analyses, William Muth offers a new framework for conceptualizing family reentry as a present phenomenon. It seeks to reveal the intense ways incarcerated fathers and their families live their present-absence, and draws on these intensities to define a new role for researchers and practitioners: nurturing the potential of families in the here and now. The current situation is intolerable. A credible family reentry approach is urgently needed. This book is an attempt to address these families as they potentially are, and might become, if we would be willing to "meet them half-way," in the words of the poet Alice Fulton.

In 1905, the young and handsome Yalek left Baranovka, Russia, for the United States seeking a new way of life. He would work hard and save enough money to bring his family and his new bride, Riva, to America.

In "Obsessive Memories," author Clara R. Maslow tells the history of two close-knit families, raised in the same culture of intellectual Jews in Russia, who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. It is a story of a time of new political thinking and the flight of young families in Eastern Europe seeking to live in a democracy, away from the old czarist regimes, monarchies, and other forms of repressive governments.

With photos included, this memoir shares what it was like growing up as part of a Russian family in Trenton, New Jersey. It focuses on Maslow's father, Yalek, an intelligent man with exceptional talents in creative arts, architectural drawing, and construction. "Obsessive Memories" also explores Maslow's relationship with her father and seeks to find meaning in why he was unable to outwardly express his love for her or her family.

This is the story of a search for the causes of a father's early death and the consequences for his children. A Jamaican immigrant falls from a window to his death, leaving a wife and four young children grieving and poor in a Chicago slum. Why? When he begins high school the mother asks the youngest son to study the letters and papers his father left behind. He discovers that his father committed suicide but holds this secret for many years. He also uncovers the story of his father's twenty-year unsuccessful struggle to obtain a legacy his father left him in Jamaica. The son puts the fi les aside but retrieves them twenty years later and travels to Jamaica where he fi nds relatives and uncovers more family secrets. The story that unfolds reaches back to the middle of the nineteenth century and a Native American reservation. The impact of each generation on the next holds the answer to the question "Why?"

Many grandparents experience a surge of joy with the birth or adoption of a grandchild. For years afterward, time together is eagerly coveted, pictures are treasured and displayed, and multiple gifts along with various kinds of support are gladly provided. Richard Olson, a retired minister, professor of theology, and grandparent many times over, presents the unconditional love of a grandparent as indicative of a vocation, a calling from God. He explores the vocation of grandparent in all of its multiple dimensions of being and doing. Informed by a biblical perspective, the book explores the author's personal journey of grandparenting and includes conversations with a diverse set of other grandparents. Olson examines biblical examples of grandparenting and suggests that the grandparent vocation has possibilities that often go unnoticed. These include care, enjoyment, and response to issues throughout a grandchild's growth. He also addresses concerns for our grandchildren's future world, and how grandparents can engage in mutual conversation about faith, morals, and values in a changing world. In addition, Olson discusses increasingly common relationship types such as grandparents serving as primary caregivers, adults becoming step-grandparents through marriage, interreligious family systems, and grandparents handling children with special needs. The book includes questions for personal or group reflection.