As a parent of a missionary you may feel that missing your child and your grandchildren signals a lack of faith. Please realize your conflicting emotions have real causes that can and should be talked about. It is possible to stay connected with your missionary and your grandchildren in meaningful ways and you can sustain and build those relationships despite the miles that separate. Not only can you survive as a POM--you can thrive. Whether you're the parent of a missionary recruit or a parent of an experienced missionary, you'll benefit from the authors' research and personal experience as they present a comprehensive plan for understanding missionary life, navigating the holidays, grandparenting long-distance and saying good-bye well. Parents of Missionaries equips you with the understanding, attitudes and skills you need to forge a vibrant new identity as a POM. Combining a counselor's professional insight and a parent's personal journey, plus ideas and stories from dozens of missionaries and POMs, Parents of Missionaries is a valuable tool for missions mobilizers and educators as well as parents. The authors contend that proclaiming the gospel and making disciples was not meant to eclipse the loving family bonds God ordained.The POM experience amounts to a journey through change, pain and adjustment. Wherever you are on that journey, Parents of Missionaries will encourage you and help you thrive and stay connected with your children and grandchildren serving cross-culturally.

Out of the Crazywoods is the riveting and insightful story of Abenaki poet Cheryl Savageau's late-life diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Without sensationalizing, she takes the reader inside the experience of a rapid-cycling variant of the disorder, providing a lens through which to understand it and a road map for navigating the illness. The structure of her story-impressionistic, fragmented-is an embodiment of the bipolar experience and a way of perceiving the world. Out of the Crazywoods takes the reader into the euphoria of mania as well as its ugly, agitated rage and into "the lying down of desire" that is depression. Savageau articulates the joy of being consort to a god and the terror of being chased by witchcraft, the sound of voices that are always chattering in your head, the smell of wet ashes that invades your home, the perception that people are moving in slow motion and death lurks at every turnpike, and the feeling of being loved by the universe and despised by everyone you've ever known. Central to the journey out of the Crazywoods is the sensitive child who becomes a poet and writer who finds clarity in her art and a reason to heal in her grandchildren. Her journey reveals the stigma and the social, personal, and economic consequences of the illness but reminds us that the disease is not the person. Grounded in Abenaki culture, Savageau questions cultural definitions of madness and charts a path to recovery through a combination of medications, psychotherapy, and ceremony.

In Cheryl Savageau's new book of poetry, Mother/Land, she radically re-maps New England as Native American space. Savageau retells and re-imagines creation stories, revealing a landscape of trees, ponds, rivers and mountains rich in meaning for Abenaki people, and weaves traditional, personal and family stories, with stories of colonization and resistance. Savageau's "unhistory" tells the stories of her people without privileging the moment of contact with Europe as the defining moment for viewing the culture. Mother/Land is beaded with gems from her mother's jewel box-poems that tell stories of her mother's life, and the complexities of survival and love in a family of mixed heritage. Savageau's work signals the reemergence of a people who have been described as "hiding in plain sight." In contrast to stereotypical associations of Native Americans with "Mother Earth," this poetry highlights the bittersweet complexities of the relationship between a woman and her homeland, whose bodies seem to be constantly under siege.