Tag Archives: family

About the Brilliant Love of a Good Family

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By Books Writer Denise Turney

picture of family of birds love in tree
Wikimedia Commons – Picture by Touhid biplob

The ongoing rewards and peace that come from growing up in a good family are immeasurable. There’s this sense of safety that, though possible to be found in other places, rarely is. Also, because loved ones supported you as you were maturing, catching you before you fell, you may have the ability to trust. You may even be open to taking smart risks that lead you into relationship, social, business and community successes.

Growing Up in a Good Family

Of course, there are instances when good family relationships start late. For example, years may pass before you meet a biological sibling, a brother or sister who becomes your best friend. But if the connection is strong, within months or just a few years, the bond that your sibling and you share may be unbreakable.

It’s these strong family bonds that can help you get through life’s toughest challenges, hard times you may not see coming. Grow up in a good family that practices honesty and you can also be entrusted with your parents’, grandparents’ and aunts’ and uncles’ real-life stories of failure, resolve, trust and success.

You’ll carry your ancestors’ stories with you everywhere you go, for the remainder of your physical expression. At times, their stories will surface in your memory like long lost gifts.

Family Past That Gets You Thru Tough Challenges

My great-grandmother’s story of failure, tenacity, persistence and eventual lifelong success inspired me to keep going during one of the toughest times of my life. In fact, just knowing that a woman in my family had overcome a trying early adulthood convinced me that I could get through whatever came my way.

It’s due to family goodness that Portia doesn’t quit after her family doctor, a physician Portia has known since she was a kid, long before she became a successful Chicago defense attorney, tells her that she has breast cancer. And, before she turns forty, Portia ends up needing her family more than she realizes.

Fortunately, Portia shares rich, rewarding experiences with her relatives. Her mother is a respected secondary school teacher who works at a school on Chicago’s South Side. Even more, her father has a history of putting courage into action.

Family Love That Last

Throughout the 1960s, Portia’s father was active in the Civil Rights Movement. He stood on local and national front lines when doing so put a leader’s life in danger. He didn’t even back down after other Civil Rights leaders were threatened and attacked.

By the time the 1980s rolled around, the work that her father did was paving a way for Portia. In fact, it’s the Civil Rights organizing that her father engaged in that inspired her to become a defense attorney. But it’s the love she received from her family that sustains her during the lowest points of her life.

No way could Portia’s ancestors have known that their love, care and kindness for Portia would suffice, would actually be enough, as Portia faced mortality, as she faced the potential end of her physical experience. How good for Portia that they loved her at a time in her young life when it appeared as if hers would be a traditional life, free of intense struggle.

Read Portia – A Book About the Power of Good Family Love

And who could blame them. By the time Portia was a teenager, the 1960s were beyond her. In fact, her family appeared to have turned a corner, a long arduous corner. But life in this world is filled with ups and downs, highs and lows.

How fortunate Portia is to have received love from a good family. There would come a time when the love of a good family would seem like all she had. Who knows? Maybe that time comes for more than we imagine.

Read Portia to explore the power of good family love. Let yourself be inspired to be there for your family. One day you may need the family stories that you create with your relatives. They just might help get you through your life’s greatest challenges, hard times that you don’t even see coming.

Long Lasting Harm of Abusive Childhood

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By Books Author Denise Turney

child abuse awareness ribbon
Wikimedia Commons – Image by TraumaAndDissociation

Left untreated, effects from an abusive childhood endure. Child abuse appears in different forms. However, physical abuse may be the more widely considered form. Yet, as horrible as physical abuse is, emotional and psychological abuse, including neglect, leave deep, long lasting scars. The trauma is so pervasive that it’s been reported that child abuse actually alters a person’s DNA.

Facing an Abusive Childhood

In fact, Reuters reports that, “Trauma has lasting effects on mental and physical health that may stem from changes to DNA which undermine a person’s ability to rebound from stress, according to new research.” Recent studies on child abuse, like the study conducted by Seth Pollak that’s referenced by Reuters, shed more light on child abuse’s far reaching effects.

Unfortunately, child abuse still doesn’t get the attention that it needs to encourage the right consistent action that’s required to ensure no child is ever abused again. Will people care more about child abuse, report it each time they witness it or have suspicion that it’s occurring, after they become aware of the long-lasting harm of an abusive childhood?

Whether increased awareness will yield permanently good results, saving the lives of countless children, or not is yet to be seen. Right now, these stats are severely troubling. Each day about five children dies from child abuse, according to DoSomething. As many as 68% of children who are sexually abused are abused by a relative. Nearly three million child abuse cases are reported in the United States alone each year.

More Disturbing Child Abuse Stats

Even more, about 70% of children who die daily from child abuse in the United States is younger than three years old. One can only presume how many actual child abuse cases there are, considering cases that are never reported.

Among the deep, jarring hidden wounds of child abuse are genetic brain changes, stress, insomnia, constant feelings of being inadequate, low self-esteem, lack of confidence and ongoing fear. Painful shame, guilt and difficulties forming and maintaining healthy relationships are other hidden wounds of child abuse that time does not heal.

Fact is, it can take years of deep, focused inner work to begin to heal from child abuse. As an adult, people who were abused as a child may smile, laugh and communicate as if there had been absolutely no abuse during their early childhood.

Signs of Child Abuse

But, blending in doesn’t mean that the wounds aren’t there. To recover and learn to love yourself, psychotherapy, meditation, journaling and ongoing efforts at self-care and self-love may be required. Healing also comes through safe relationships like genuine friendships.

The sooner child abuse is spotted, reported, stopped and a child entered into safe places to begin to heal, the better. But, even then, there will be work for the child to do in order to heal.

Child abuse signs include:

  • Child being overly withdrawn
  • Terrified or extremely afraid of making a mistake
  • Unexplained injuries and bruises
  • Repeatedly flinching when someone simply raises her hand
  • Wears long sleeved shirts and long pants during summer to hide injuries
  • Difficulty sitting
  • Age-inappropriate sexual knowledge
  • Efforts to avoid a specific person
  • Misses school frequently
  • Self-harm

Few, if any, long to look upon the ugly part of humanity. But look we must. To stop child abuse, we also must act, reporting instances of this vicious crime. We must be there for children and adults healing from abuse, even if, at the very least, we meet children and suffering adults with sincere kindness and ample patience to give the abused time and room to adjust to a new, better life.

Offering encouragement – Love Pour Over Me – the story of a man raised by a father with untreated alcoholism. An inspirational love story written to help readers heal.

Growing Up A Motherless Child

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candle lit for motherless child

By Book Author Denise Turney

Growing up a motherless child leaves a lasting imprint. It doesn’t matter how or why your mother left. Lose your mother and you just lost an entire half of the coupling that helped to bring you into physical being. Even if you are emotionally or psychologically detached, the loss of your mother will leave a lasting and powerful impact on you. How do I know? My mother exited this world before I turned eight years old.

Struggles Motherless Children Face

Abandonment issues are just the start. Should you not receive sufficient nurturing from your father and other women (e.g. aunt, grandmother), you may spend the rest of your physical days seeking approval and validation. Months after your mother exits her body, you might identify someone (an entertainer, athlete, schoolteacher, neighbor, another adult or peer) to transfer your nurturing needs onto.

Signs that you have transferred the need for nurturing from your deceased mother to someone else include thinking that this person has been sent to you from God. Other signs of this transference include idealizing the person, overlooking or mentally erasing the person’s mistakes or wrongs and telling yourself that your life would be perfect or at least much, much better if this person were in it.

Unfortunately, even if this magical person came into your life, you wouldn’t feel whole or complete. You would still be a motherless child. Path away from the pain of being a motherless child could come through detachment.

Moving Away from Motherless Child Pain

If you detach, you may not feel sadness, anger or afraid. Detachment could last a lifetime. For example, you might struggle to feel deep, raw emotion if your father, grandparent, sibling or child exits her or his body. But that doesn’t mean that the pain of being in the world without your mother is gone. All you have done in this case is to push the pain down, to repress the pain.

This type of avoidance will show up in future relationships. You might have a difficult time connecting with lovers or a spouse. Your ability to deeply nurture your own children could also be hampered. Trouble developing deep, authentic friendships is another challenge that you may face as a motherless child who has detached from the pain of losing your mother.

The road to opening your heart may take you down even more painful pathways. These pathways could come in the form of a job layoff, a divorce, a broken friendship or the loss of someone you have developed a strong psychological or emotional attachment to.

Revisiting Your Mother’s Exit

Let this happen and you may have no choice except to revisit the day that your mother exited her body. You might have to work through that early trauma in a way that you never have before. This work might be done in a group setting, individual therapy sessions or during focused, internal work (as a tip, working and talking with others can be tremendously powerful). If you don’t work through the early trauma of losing your mother, you might not move forward when the next unexpected loss occurs.

Some actions that might help you to work through the trauma of being a motherless child include writing a list of the top 10 things that you love about your mother, slowly looking at pictures of your mother, listing five ways your mother made you laugh and re-reading letters that your mother wrote.

If your mother kept a journal, it may also prove therapeutic to read her journal. Talking with family members about your mother, asking relatives questions about your mother and writing a letter to your mother may also prove beneficial.

Road Toward Healing as a Motherless Child Could Take a Lifetime to Complete

Take your time. Complete one activity at a time. See if you don’t start to feel more connected to your mother. Go slowly. If it feels traumatic when you look at your mother’s picture, do a few other activities around your mother before you start putting pictures of her up around your house. The same applies for young children.

Be patient with yourself and others. Take your time. Everyone processes loss differently and at a different pace.

At the least, don’t expect to return to the way that you felt before your mother exited her body. Be kind to yourself. You experienced a major life change. It is going to do just that — change you. What it can’t take away is your ability to love yourself, love your mother, love your surviving father and love others. It’s these truths that Raymond Clarke learns in the book, Love Pour Over Me.