What is it like to live with a chronic illness? How can counselors support those living with one? Allan Hugh Cole Jr. offers answers to these two questions and so many more in Counseling Persons with Parkinson's Disease. In ten succinct chapters, Cole offers a glimpse into life with Parkinson's and presents an insightful approach to counseling someone living with a chronic illness. Cole was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 2016, and-though it hardly happened overnight-he has since discovered a new passion and drive for life. A teacher of social workers and counselors for many years, Cole has unique insight into chronic illness and the care required to help someone diagnosed with one. He delves into the importance of accepting a chronic illness and how this can create an opportunity for personal transformation, newfound meaning, and rejuvenated purpose. In addition to emphasizing the importance of self-reflection, he also offers evidence-based approaches to counseling. Cole's approaches to counseling draw on task-centered social work practice. Throughout the book, he engages with five purposeful actions tied to principles of constructivism, Aristotelian thought, American pragmatism, and theories of interpretation (hermeneutics). At once informative, realistic, humorous, and hopeful, this is a thoughtful guide for clinicians who give counsel, educators who teach counseling, people supporting someone else, and anyone living with a chronic illness.

Drawing on research and case studies, three pastoral care experts argue that one of the primary contexts in which the faith formation of teenage boys takes place is in their relationships with other adolescent males. Written by the authors of "Losers, Loners, and Rebels: The Spiritual Struggles of Boys," this book is an important resource for anyone interested in helping adolescent males navigate years often marked by isolation and loneliness to develop a meaningful spiritual identity.

The early years of adolescence are a tumultuous time, full of challenges and opportunities that can shape one's whole life. In recent years several books have analyzed this period of life for girls, but this is the first book that investigates the interior life of boys as they develop their sense of self and begin the spiritual journey that will carry them throughout their lives. The authors contend that adolescent boys often experience themselves at various times as losers, loners, and rebels. As self-defined losers, boys begin to realize self-awareness; as loners they begin to understand their own relatedness to the larger world; as rebels they gain a sense of self-sufficiency. Through these common experiences of life, boys gain self-awareness, self-transcendence, and self-sufficiency, concepts that take root in the spirituality that will last their lifetime.

Allan Cole Jr. offers insights on the topic of prayer, explaining prayer and describing its spiritual and physical effects. This book is for those who are not comfortable with prayer or who have reached an impasse in their prayer lives. Cole demonstrates different kinds of prayer, helps the reader find ways to pray in various situations, and provides sample prayers. The volume includes questions for reflection at the end of each chapter.

In this brief book Allan Hugh Cole explains the process of grief and what loss can do to us, identifies ways of coping, and reminds us of the hope that we can find in mourning. Ultimately, Cole offers a plan of "good mourning"--a way to work through the loss and rebuild life with new strength. Cole describes what it takes to be engaged in good mourning instead of endless suffering and demonstrates how faith and prayer can be practical tools in rebuilding life after loss.