THE R & R HOT STOVE.... The First Book Launch

Good Monday Morning Everyone!

We Did It!  First Book Launch!  Hoorah!

Now I am writing this post on Friday the 13th so….I am praying all goes well this weekend at our first book launch!    Exciting to have our 2500 books arrive yesterday!  We have had more than a few sleepless nights!  Would have been a challenge to have a Book Launch without any books!!  However, I do believe we will NOT run out of copies this weekend!

I have always loved to write – sometimes too much according to some of those I love the most who were often the recipients of my expositions as a mom or wife to express what I was/am REALLY feeling.  Some have the nerve to coin them ‘Mom’s Dreaded Letters’ if you can believe it!!  Ha! Ha! Now they are saving them in their Hope Chests because….I am NOW a published author and they may be able to someday get ten cents for my signature on those ‘dreaded letters.’

However, I would write when I was expressing my hurt, my sorrow, my frustration or giving my loved ones a little friendly advice….which often would not go the way I had anticipated!  LOL!  However, it seemed that such writing helped me process whatever I was feeling.  I would hear ‘Shorten it up Mom.  My siblings and I don’t have time to read your long dissertations!  Get to the point!’ How rude!  But then they have also told me that if I ever included them in my blogs, they would never come to visit me at the nursing home when I was old.  Hell, I am old now and the nursing home without interruptions sounds awfully inviting some days!! Just Kidding. However, I always seemed to feel better when I wrote …as one never knows what might come out of the end of that pen or pencil! And sometimes what I wrote ended up ripped into little pieces in the garbage or burned to a crisp as I released some of the angst or anger or hurt or fear I was feeling.  I think my writings were more helpful to me than to any of my ‘unappreciative’ family for it seemed to settle the activation I was experiencing.


So what does this have to do with anything?  I know there are some readers who have struggled with reading Gross Misconduct Hitting From Behind.  It is raw.  It is real. And for some it also brings up issues that may be or have been or are a part of their own story of love, loss, pain, abuse, conflict or circumstances surrounding one’s own relationship with an ex or current spouse. Reading the book may triggers some of the feelings still burning inside from such past or concurrent traumas. Or maybe you were raised in a conflictual environment that shaped you in ways that were the precursor of how you are still struggling as an adult.  Maybe you have shoved a lot of ‘caca’ down because thinking about such is very unsettling.  We know childhood trauma yields adult dysfunction. That is where writing may be helpful.  Sometimes…a piece of writing, read aloud and burned can be helpful too!  Just be careful about the wild fires!

Sometimes writing can slow down your brain and give you a chance to think about things differently or even inject hockey’s 24 hour rule whereby if you have an issue with a coach or team member you give yourself 24 hours to become calmer or in my business ‘more regulated’.  Sometimes the assistance of a therapist can also help deal with issues that have arisen as you read or have read the book.  Or perhaps maybe reading the book will give you some insights into the reality of intimate partner violence and coercive control or how family violence may be affecting you or your children.  We are talking about real things and sometimes… That is scary!

Other individuals and families who were intimately connected with Brent and Tracy and the boys or who were members of the Whitecourt and Spruce Grove communities may well have been vicariously traumatized by what happened to Ryder and Radek, two children who were the innocent victims of a father’s rage.  That doesn’t happen in our small communities!!!  That is big city stuff!  Maybe some of that activation from the tragic deaths of Ryder and Radek is still alive and kickin’ in your own nervous system and needs to be processed.  However,  maybe  some of the warning signs of potential abusive situations chronicled in the book will help a woman to change her own story and that of her children by recognizing such signs of violence in an intact or separated family scene.  Know that some such reactions are normal responses to abnormal situations. However, we know that approximately 30 filicides occur each year in Canada and that…is scary!    If you need help to process these feelings, please seek help.  There are many avenues for you to do that in our communities and with online therapeutic services.  

However, there is no mandate to read the book.  Even in your book club!  If it is too unsettling, please do not feel you must read it to the end. Take breaks. Know that there are also many beautiful scenes of love and compassion in this book.  Don’t read it late at night if you are bothered by it. My husband can’t and…he’s a very brave guy, he had to be as a High School Principal!  However, may readers be strong enough to look at their own situations or that of another more vulnerable human creation with new eyes and a hand up to change a potentially dangerous situation if such exists. “Maybe we can re-instate the adage “It takes a Village to Raise a Child” or maybe woman too can begin with the men who truly love them to speak up when their gut tells them something is not right and begin to change the culture of violence against women and children in our world – one person at a time …..by having conversations about the ‘unspeakable’ shared in Gross Misconduct Hitting From Behind. 
                                                
                                                                                                                               Love, Sandra