What happens when after ten years of what you thought was a happy and normal family life your wife suddenly turns your world upside down and leaves, leaving you, heartbroken and in shock and with two expectant young children to care for and raise? First you hit the bottle, get seriously drunk and hit a downward spiral in free fall, heading for certain disaster. Then, once you've hit rock bottom, you take stock of the situation, pick yourself up, dust yourself down and begin the long and difficult climb out of the abyss, putting life together again piece by arduous piece. This is what happened to Brian Rowlands and this is his true story. Beginning with the end of his marriage, this book charts his and his children's journey along the long and very rocky road they encountered as they struggled to re-build their shattered lives and put some kind of stability and substance back in place. Filled with many highs and lows and told in an honest and open manner this book charts the last ten years in this single parent family's remarkable life. From heartbreak to happiness, through disastrous relationships, difficult medical problems and eleven different homes in five years, their story will entertain, enthrall and shock. Drawing the reader in, once started it is a book that the reader will want to go on reading, page after page, leaving you begging for more and wanting to know just what happens next.

This powerful and unusual story contrasts The Bicknells, a wealthy and influential family in Rosedale, Toronto, Ontario, into which I was born out of wedlock, with a farm couple from near Brockville, Ontario who adopted me in 1935. At the age of sixteen I began to feel unsettled and lost. Eighteen years later I finally acted on that feeling and began the search for my lost parents. Using documents I found in a box in the closet of my adoptive mother after her death, I have retrieved the moment when a sleek limousine emerged from the dust of a gravel road delivering me to my new parents. The book follows that limousine back as I searched for my birth mother, taking me into mystery, intrigue and cover-up by the legal system but bringing me finally to a supper dance in the Crystal Ballroom of the historic King Edward Hotel in Toronto, where by chance, my birth parents were reunited. The memoir is a story of loss and recovery but it is also a story of love, strength and redemption

We parents are plagued with doubt. In an ever-changing world our children must adapt constantly to the demands of the modern world - and we as parents do too. From social media pressures, generational expectations, and with a mental health crisis sweeping the younger generation, parenting can be a challenging and uncertain journey through uncharted territory. Dr Shefali, a therapist who has worked with thousands of parents - and is a parent herself - is here to provide a helping hand. Empowering parents with her revolutionary conscious parenting method, The Parenting Map will lead you on an exciting path of growth, helping you to disrupt unhealthy belief patterns and overcome deeply ingrained fears so you can find an authentic connection between yourself and your children. Following a step-by-step plan to navigate everyday challenges, Dr Shefali will teach you how to shift your focus to a new consciousness, transform your mindset, and improve your communication within the parenting dynamic. Your entire relationship with your children - and with yourself - will change, resulting in deeper bonds and healthy, thriving, well-adjusted children. Featuring hands-on practical advice which question and empower you, as well as case studies to help you day to day, The Parenting Map is the ultimate manual for the modern-day parent. 'In this essential work, Dr. Shefali shares the wisdom of her generous heart and deep insights gleaned from decades of clinical experience. The result is an easy-to-follow, illuminating, and eminently practical guide to making conscious parenting an every-day reality for our children and ourselves.' GABOR MATE, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Myth of Normal 'Break free from the destructive patterns of your past. For parents with kids of all ages, The Parenting Map is the solution-oriented guide you have been looking for to raise independent, authentic, and happy children.' GABBY BERNSTEIN, New York Times bestselling author of The Universe Has Your Back 'The Parenting Map is a must-have for all stages of the parenting journey. It offers insight on self-aware parenting, which teaches us that when we heal ourselves, we become our children's best possible caretakers and champions. We can all use these gentle tools to be the engaged, empathetic parents our children need.' KATHERINE SCHWARZENEGGER PRATT, mother, New York Times bestselling author, and advocate 'Raising children in our crazy world has never been harder. Dr. Shefali's classic The Conscious Parent was a game changer that introduced me to the idea of intentional and self-aware parenting. And with The Parenting Map, she has done what seemed impossible, she's given us the playbook!' EVA LONGORIA BASTON, actor, director, and mom

Parents serve as their children's first teachers. What they learn at home helps them build on their learning and education at school. In A Parent's Guide to a Peaceful Home, author Patricia Braxton provides a guide to helping parents manage their home in a peaceful, loving way in order to ensure success for their children at home and at school. This handbook presents Braxton's TAD (Toward Affective Development) model, which gives practical advice to help parents teach their children responsibility, respect, discipline, and other positive character traits. It also teaches parents how to relate to each other properly and how to affect change from within. Through TAD, Braxton works to change the face of families in a positive way. The steps detailed in A Parent's Guide to a Peaceful Home can facilitate an atmosphere where love, compassion, respect, and other virtues are taught by example and reinforced to produce a lasting, peaceful home.

If you have an adult child, you know that parenting doesn't stop when a child reaches the age of eighteen. In many ways, it gets more complicated. Both your heart and your head are as involved as ever, whether your child lives under your roof or rarely stays in contact. In Doing Life with Your Adult Children, parenting expert Jim Burns helps you navigate the toughest and the most rewarding parts of parenting your grown kids. Speaking from his own personal and professional experience, Burns offers practical answers to questions such as these: Is it OK to give advice to my grown child? What's the difference between enabling and helping? What boundaries should I have if my child moves back home? What do I do when my child doesn't seem to be maturing into adulthood? How do I relate to my grown child's significant other? What does it mean to have healthy financial boundaries? How can I support my grown children when I don't support their values? Including positive principles on bringing kids back to faith, ideas on how to leave a legacy as a grandparent, and encouragement for every changing season, Doing Life with Your Adult Children is a unique book on your changing role in a calling that never ends.

With socio-economic and demographic changes taking place in contemporary societies, new patterns of family relations are forming partly due to significant family changes, value shifts, precariousness in the labour market, and increasing mobility within and beyond national boundaries. This book explores the exchange of support between generations and examines variations in contemporary practices and rationales in different regions and societies. It draws on both theoretical perspectives and empirical analysis in relation to new patterns of family reciprocity. Contributors discuss both newly emerging patterns and more established ones which are now being affected due to various opportunities and pressures in contemporary societies. The book is split into two parts, the first (Chapters one to four) reviews key theoretical and conceptual debates in this field, while the second (Chapter five to nine) offers insights and an understanding of exchange practices based on case studies from different regions and different relationships.

A heart-warming, fresh and original story about family and friendship from brand-new picture book author, writer and performer Jordan Stephens. Sunny loves jigsaw puzzles - the bigger the better. When she completes one, she gets a warm, happy honeybee buzz. One day, her Gran gives her a ONE-THOUSAND-PIECE puzzle. Piece after piece, all by herself, she puts together the picture, until ... DISASTER! The final piece is missing. Sunny may be small, but she is very determined - so she sets off to find it. As the day whizzes by in a whirl of new places and friends, Sunny discovers that looking for something is every bit as fun as finding it, and that perhaps the missing piece was there all along ...

"When A Father Fails" is the life story of an urban pastor who was a public image but a private failure. Follow his journey as he honestly shares the reasons for his failure and his struggle to overcome his past transgressions. This book was written as a salute to all children who strive to overcome their father's own failures in their life. This book is also intended to lift the spirit of those wounded by life and to encourage every invisible father to pursue reconciliation with their children today.

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 & Sons is an exploration of fatherhood, masculinity, authenticity and family.

Being a caregiver is a difficult role. It requires pateince, tenderness, selflessness, and hard work. Providing care for another human being, whether a parent, loved one, or as a professional requires a level of self love and self care as well that can not be ignored. While it may be a rewarding experience to care for a loved one, it can also be a stressful, both emotionally and mentally. It is easy to get caught up in taking care of someone else that you forget to take care of yourself and your own physical and emotional well being as well. How do you navigate your role as caregiver without losing yourself? Conscious Caregiver can help readers navigate caring for their loved one, whether that means full-time in house caregiving or hiring support from outside services. With information on talking to their loved ones about their situation, how to handle the emotional stress, practical information on medical needs and finances, and how to take time away to care for themselves, Conscious Caregiver can help them care for their loved one and themselves at the same time.

"Grandparents Cry Twice: Help for Bereaved Grandparents" is a book about grandparents' dual sorrow when a grandchild dies. They cry for their lost grandchild and they also cry for the terrible grief they see their own child having to bear. The author, Mary Lou Reed, writes of her experiences when her beloved grandson, Alex, died. Through her personal story she touches the universal in all grandparents' grief.

Do you have a self-absorbed or narcissistic parent who's made you feel rejected, unloved, or unworthy? Being a parent is usually all about giving of yourself to foster your child's growth and development. But what happens when this isn't the case? Some parents dismiss the needs of their children, asserting their own instead, demanding attention and reassurance from even very young children. This may especially be the case when a parent has narcissistic tendencies or narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). This fully revised and updated edition of a self-help classic offers a step-by-step approach to resolving conflict and building a meaningful relationship with a narcissistic parent. Children of the Self-Absorbed offers clear definitions of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder to help you identify the extent of your parent's problem. You'll learn the different types of destructive narcissism and how to recognise their effects on your relationships. Packed with proven techniques, you'll realise that you're not helpless against your parent's behaviour, and that you don't have to give up on the relationship. Instead, you'll find realistic strategies and steps for setting up mutually agreed upon behaviours, so you can fulfil your own emotional needs. In this new edition, you'll discover: *Skills for managing intense emotions *Tools for building character, self-esteem and self-acceptance *How kindness and gratitude can promote self-healing *How to build trust and empathy with others If you're ready to begin healing from the pain of growing up with a self-absorbed parent and establish the boundaries you need to thrive - this book will guide you, one step at a time.

This is the book that every grandparent (or parent) has always meant to write for their children....but has never found the time to do so. In short, John D. Spooner has been carefully crafted a series of essential life lessons that every young person just out of college or high school needs to read before they embark upon their own life's adventures. Told in friendly and reassuring tones, Spooner relates wonderful stories to illustrate and gently guide the next generation of what they can expect when searching for a job, how to know if you've found the right spouse, insights on how to plan for one's financial future, how the internet has changed our lives, dealing with adversity in life, and much, more more. NO ONE EVER TOLD US THAT condenses all of this key information into one volume - and it's presented in a clear-eyed way that only a loving grandparent can. For decades, John D. Spooner has been one of America's leading financial advisors. Now, as his own grandchildren are on the frightening cusp of adulthood, Spooner has chosen to impart his wisdom to them - and to readers everywhere - in the form of old-fashioned letters.

Whether you're a veteran grandma or a Nana-to-be, this collection of stories will warm your heart and make you laugh about the universal experiences of being a grandmother.

My Mother, My Daughter, My Self is a significant self-revelatory work which chronicles the separation process between mother and child, focusing most specifically on the mother/daughter relationship. The book asks a core question for all mothers and adult children: how do we perform the perplexing, sometimes terrifying act of separation from our mothers and our children while simultaneously marching toward the unknown terrain of individuality? How do we yield to this inevitable process of emotional separation from that which was once our own self? The author uses her own experiences as a daughter, as a mother of a newly-adopted baby, and as a psychoanalyst to explore an essential truth: that our relationships with our mothers affect our other significant love relationships, our values, our self-esteem, and our sense of satisfaction, often throughout the whole of our lives. She also uses the experiences of some of her patients, taken from her forty years as a practicing clinician, to provide further fascinating insights and illustration.Readers are gifted with both an internal parenting 'guide' as well as a deeply profound memoir about the internal process of being a mother that is so crucial, yet rarely looked at so intently.

You are a grandparent with a passion to impact your grandkids for Christ, but sometimes you struggle to find fun and meaningful ways to disciple them and leave a lasting legacy of faith. Help is at hand in Discipling Your Grandchildren: Great Ideas to Help Them Know, Love, and Serve God, in which grandparenting expert Dr. Josh Mulvihill has compiled dozens of suggestions and strategies to help you do just that. With an assortment of actionable ideas--from pragmatic tips on how to better connect with your grandchildren to fun, age-appropriate activities--Discipling Your Grandchildren is an invaluable tool chest for grandparents who want to build a biblical foundation, lead by example, and point their grandchildren to Christ. Practical yet powerful, the information, ideas, and best practices shared by Mulvihill can be implemented and adapted in ways that work for your unique grandparenting situation, whether your grandkids are two or twenty, around the corner or across the globe.

This book explores the development of a new path of transition between adolescence and adulthood in recent generations. Whereas traditionally the transition into adulthood was marked by a clear and irreversible change in condition, we are now seeing a continuance in the role and influence of the family on the young adult. What consequences does this have for our society? Is the persistence of emotional bonds which previously loosened during adolescence, inhibiting young people from developing into full adulthood? The authors present a clear and in-depth analysis of the theoretical framework surrounding the transition into adulthood both from a generational point of view and a relationship-centred perspective. The findings of international research are presented and compared across generations, gender and geographical location within Europe. The different research methods of 'family related research' and 'family research' are also distinguished and analysed. This volume offers an original and multi-faceted review of this topic. The family is considered as an organization, and the interdependencies and interconnections between its members, the generations and genders investigated. It offers a unique contribution to the current literature and will appeal to an international audience of researchers, policy makers and educators both in academic and professional spheres.

Margaret Nelson investigates the lives of single, working-class mothers in this compelling and timely book. Through personal interviews, she uncovers the different challenges that mothers and their children face in small town America--a place greatly changed over the past fifty years as factory work has dried up and national chains like Walmart have moved in.

This is a book which seeks help those going through the process of mid-adolescence - either from the point of view of the adolescent or their families - it attends to the serious strains that may have to be borne if the picture portrayed is to have any realism. 'Youth culture' may idealize the adolescent and vilify parents; but, as we shall see, the paradoxical expectations placed on both adolescents and their parents arise from the creative tension between the desire to progress and the desire to regress as mid-adolescents consolidate the move out of childhood and prepare for adulthood. No easy task for the mid-adolescent and those responsible for them.

Give Grandpa the perfect gift this Father's Day: the gift of his story.

Grandfather, I Want to Hear Your Story is more than a journal―it's a heartfelt invitation. A space for your grandfather to look back, reflect, and pass down the moments that made him who he is. From the playful mischief of boyhood to the hard-won wisdom of later years, each page captures a piece of the man your family knows and loves.

With over 300 carefully crafted prompts by bestselling author Jeffrey Mason, this newly expanded edition makes it easy―and meaningful―for him to share his story in his own words. Whether it's a favorite memory, a quiet lesson, or a laugh-out-loud moment, every entry adds to a legacy your family can treasure forever.

Here's why Grandpa (and you!) will love it:

In the '40s and '50s many men from Denmark traveled to Greenland to work. Here they met Greenlandic women-which more than once resulted in pregnancies. Many of these men then returned to Denmark, which meant that the children grew up as illegitimate children without even knowing their fathers. One of these children was Anne Sofie Hardenberg, who was teased all through her childhood for having a Danish father-and an absent one at that. By the age of 17 she gathered the courage to write to her father. To her surprise he was very glad to hear from her, and wished to make her a part of his family. Unluckily they only got three weeks together-then he died in a car accident... This book is Anne Sofie's memoir accompanied by photos and letters between her and her Danish family. Today, still, there is a problem with the legal rights of this generation of "fatherless" children.