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Showing posts with label trauma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trauma. Show all posts

Monday, December 23, 2024

Virtual Book Tour of A Heart's Journey to Forgiveness by Terese Luikens(#memoir)

 


A heartfelt memoir depicting Terese’s journey of forgiving her father when he chooses to end his life by suicide.  


Title: A Heart's Journey to Forgiveness

Author: Terese Luikens

Publication Date: November 3, 2022

Pages: 282

Genre: Memoir

For Terese Luikens, a picture-perfect childhood it was not. Frequent cross country moves, an emotionally absent mother and an alcoholic father who ends his life by suicide when Terese is just thirteen years old. 

The sixth of seven children, Terese grew up in an unstable and chaotic household–invisible to her mom yet cherished by her father. 

This heartfelt memoir documents the chain reaction of a tumultuous family history. From her stormy childhood to the far-reaching effects of her father’s suicide, Terese shares her inspiring journey to escape the shame of her past, find healing and live, learn to trust, and discover faith in a real and personal God.  

A Heart’s Journey to Forgiveness is available at Amazon.



Book Excerpt


In my mind, these warm childhood memories include only my dad, never my mom. One photo from that era, snapped by an older sibling using Mom’s Instamatic camera, seems to capture our family dynamic. We are in the living room of the house that had the front-porch swing. I might be around four years old. My hair is cut short, pixie style, and I am wearing a long-sleeved, cotton-ribbed bathrobe. Dad, kneeling, wears a suit coat and a bowler hat. His hands are clasped behind my back and mine are hooked around his neck. Smiling, cheek-to-cheek, we face the camera.

Dad and I are in the center of the photo while Mom is in the lower left hand corner. She is sitting in a chair, and wears a plaid skirt and a turtleneck sweater. Her passive face is turned toward the camera.

That snapshot captures my life: Dad at the center and Mom on the perimeter.

 


About the Author

Terese Luikens has been married for forty-four years to the same man, although she is on her third wedding ring, having lost one and worn out another. She lives in Sandpoint, Idaho, enjoys being mother to three grown sons and grandmother to her much-loved grandchildren. She is the author of A Heart’s Journey to Forgiveness, a Memoir of her inspiring journey of emotional healing from her father’s suicide. She facilitates retreats and workshops focusing on forgiveness, and publishes her own blog, Why Bother? 

You can visit her website at www.tereseluikens.com.


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Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Guest Post by Laurel C. Fox Author of braving the way (Spotlight)

 

 

I want to welcome Laural C. Fox to Books R Us. Laurel is the author of Braving the Way. Laurel has written a guest post For my readers. Thanks for stopping by my blog.

The story of a mother’s love and a child’s grit and determination. Written as real-talk, conversational and easy to understand...

GUEST POST 

  The Inspiration Behind Braveing the Way


In 2014, I got a phone call that no parent ever wants to receive. My daughter Taylor was in a horrible accident, and was being transported to the biggest trauma center in Los Angeles.  When I began writing and digging into an on-line journal everyday, not only to escape the madness, but to also communicate with everyone-- I learned that it was my comfort. Then my comfort and my cathartic writing process slowly became bigger than that. My writing started with journals from day one and those went on until day two hundred and eleven. It was when I stopped posting the journals on-line that inspired me to turn this into something bigger than a journal. I began mentoring another parent through her child's traumatic brain injury recovery; and at the same time people from all over were writing and calling --to tell me that they missed my journals. They missed reading what I had to say. That made me think that this story of mine, could actually be a book.

My story is about a trauma that happened to my daughter, Taylor, when she was fourteen years old. My book braveing the way takes you deep into my own journey while being beside my daughter in her separate journey of survival.

We spent sixty six days in the hospital as a family never knowing the outcome. Many of my journal excerpts are in the book, and I write about traumatic brain injury and what that looks like, what it does to a family, and what it takes to be a survivor. I write about what it’s like to be a mom through that, and watching your daughter fight the fight. Spending months in  the hospital, and going through Taylor’s recovery process --as an author I take you through my personal deep dive into myself--which was not always an easy process.

It’s a book about moving through a trauma with my two daughters, and my own self-reflection while going through it, and always being ‘mama bear’ every step of the way. It is not only a beautiful story about maternal sacrifice, it is also about building tenacity, strength and courage through intense struggle. I hope to encourage and bring bravery to people who don’t think they have it.


About the Book:




Title: Braveing the Way

Author: Laurel C. Fox

Publication Date: June 20, 2024

Pages: 186

Genre: Memoir

When Laurel’s fourteen-year-old daughter experiences a life-altering event, her entire world is upended overnight. Faced with her child’s precarious fight to survive and the daunting road of rehabilitation ahead, Laurel discovers fountains of courage and devotion she didn’t know she possessed.

Despite the hardships and her own private grief, Laurel tackles each grueling day with positivity, resilience, and humor. She becomes a tireless advocate for her daughter by pushing past exhaustion and uncertainty, focusing on savoring small triumphs, finding meaning amidst tragedy, and opening the door to the healing force of community.

Sharing her deeply personal experience, she delivers an emotionally charged story that reveals the extraordinary power of a mother’s love, underscoring the lengths a parent will go to for their children. Laurel’s own self-discovery will both encourage and inspire you.

Laurel says to her readers My book is about a trauma that happened to my daughter, Taylor, when she was fourteen years old. My story ‘braveing the way’ takes you deep into my own journey while being beside my daughter in her separate journey of survival.”

Braveing the Way is available at Amazon.

 

 

Watch the Trailer

 
About the Author:
 

Laurel C. Fox was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and raised in Aspen, Colorado from the age of nine, through high school. She went back to Milwaukee for her first year of college at the University of Wisconsin at Madison/WI. After one year at Madison,  she moved on to finish college in California, earning a BA in Liberal Arts at Excelsior College, with her course studies done at UCLA in Los Angeles.

 You can visit the author’s web page at www.braveingtheway.com and Instagram at https://instagram.com/laurelcarini.

Purchase the Book:
 
 
 
 

 
 
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