One of my favorite photos of Becca

My baby girl who just graduated this year. Isn’t she beautiful? Watch for photos of the rest of my family in the coming weeks.

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Secrets She Left Behind by Diane Chamberlain

Secrets She Left Behind by Diane Chamberlain is a stunning work of fiction revolving around the viewpoints of four main characters Sara, Keith, Maggie and Andy. Maggie, Keith, and Andy are all related because years ago Sara, who is Keith’s mother, had an affair with Maggie’s father. Maggie set a fire which killed three people and left her half-brother Keith badly burned and extremely bitter.

 Secrets She Left Behind is the story of two families whose fates are inextricably wound together. Burn victim Keith is hooked on pain pills and mixing them with alcohol in a family with a history of alcohol abuse. His mother is missing, but where is she and what happened to her?  Why didn’t she take Keith with her? Keith’s half-sister Maggie wants to try to make things better for him but can’t even face him and the two siblings have serious issues they have to overcome in order to begin finding some common ground. Is it even possible for them to overcome the pain and terror in their way?

Add into this mix a stranger who arrives in town and befriends both Maggie and Keith. To Keith she claims to hate Maggie, but to Maggie she becomes the only friend she has in a town turned against her. Who is she lying to and why?

What follows is an excerpt from the book written from Maggie’s perspective on the first visit to her court ordered psychiatrist:

“‘What’s it been like for you since Monday?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Being out of prison? Being free?’

‘Okay.’

He waited for me to go on. I stared out the window with its view of the parking lot until my eyes watered. Then I looked at  my ragged fingernails. He wasn’t going to talk until I did. It was like a standoff. A war, but I had the feeling he could take the silence longer than I could.

‘The reporters are everywhere,’ I said finally.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘What’s that like for you?’

I shrugged. ‘I hate it,’ I said. ‘It’s not fair to my family, either. If it was just me…well, that’s bad enough, but I get why they have to be after me. I’m the story. But I want them to leave my brother and mother alone.’…

…I thought again about Andy walking to the school bus that morning, maybe trying to make sense of the reporters and their questions. Struggling to figure out how to answer them. Before I knew what was happening, my eyes filled with tears.

‘You love your family very much,’ Dr. Jakes said.

I nodded.

He motioned to the box of tissues on the table next to my chair and I took one and pressed it to my eyes. I did not want to cry here. I didn’t want to give this old sloppy fat man the satisfaction of making me cry. But suddenly, that was all I could do. I cried, and he let me. That’s about all I did for the rest of the session. He said that was okay. Good, even. I had a lot of pain inside me, he said, and we’d have plenty of time together to talk it all through.”

Since reading Secrets She Left Behind I’ve discovered the story of these two families actually began in Chamerlain’s Before the Storm, which I’ve never read. I found the Secrets She Left Behind to be more than capable of standing alone as a novel. I will read Before the Storm simply because I fell in love with the characters in Secrets She Left Behind and am so glad there is more to their story, even if it occurred prior to this novel.

Secrets She Left Behind by Diane Chamberlain, copyright 2009 Diane Chamberlain, published by MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada, M3B 3K9, ISBN 978-1-61523-062-4

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Mondays-hate em! (via Mommaslittletinker’s Blog)

I loved this post. It reminded me I’m not the only one who hates Mondays, in fact, some people have far better reasons to hate Mondays than I do. It also reminded me to be nice to the voice at the end of my telephone line. Whether a bill collector or a dreaded telemarketer, everyone is just doing his or her job.

You know I wish we could just skip over Mondays.  I have the kind of job that isn’t a hard job but its stressful.  And I hate having to come back to work on Monday.  I am a bill collector.  And on Mondays I go back to work begrudgedly because the same people I called today, I called last Monday, and the week before that and the week before that.  And I hear the same thing time after time….  I get yelled at, sworn at, hung up on, told to get a r … Read More

via Mommaslittletinker’s Blog

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Go To Play Every Day & Call It Work

Go To Play Every Day & Call It Work

Go To Play Every Day & Call It Work is a fascinating new book by Bill Dueease. In Go To Play Every Day & Call It Work Bill looks at how personal coaching has helped not only him, personally, but over a dozen of the people who have benefited from personal coaching through The Coach Connection. Bill could have given more examples from the more than 1,900 satisfied clients of TCC. It was for the sake of brevity that Bill hand-picked the wonderful examples of everyday people like you and I.

Bill Dueease writes in an easy and approachable manner that makes it seem more as if you are having a conversation with an old friend than reading a book. He is very willing to open up his life and show you what personal coaching did for him the two times he used it. He is also more than willing to share some of the outcomes of the difficult 17 years during which he was increasingly frustrated and unhappy, due, in large part, to the fact he had forgotten his earlier success with personal coaching.

Bill’s first “personal coach”, Lynn Bussey, didn’t call himself by that title, though that is what he was. The concept of personal coaching would not appear until many years after Lynn and Bill became acquainted with one another. Still, through his open and accepting style, Lynn got Bill to open up about the things he really liked and disliked, helping Bill to keep from making a move which would have put him in the wrong career. His one-on-one coaching also helped Bill identify exactly the right job for him. Out of 250 companies who had recruited at Bill’s college campus together they found one that was a perfect match for the position Bill wanted. Bill went to visit the company and his initiative and enthusiasm won him the position he wanted, even though the program he applied for was already full!

Bill got to “go to play every day and call it work” for more than 15 years. It was a happy and exciting time for him; doing jobs he loved in positions he had hand-picked for himself.

Bill forgot about his experience with Lynn Bussey. As I pointed out personal coaching, as such, wasn’t in existence at the time. When Bill’s position with a major petroleum company was phased out due to Wall Street taking over what used to be a physical transaction and making it a paper one, Bill was unsure what his next step would be. He used the techniques every person without the benefit of personal coaching does, trial and error, and selecting work positions to please others. Bill found himself making decisions that weren’t right for him or his family, a process that continued for nearly two decades. Thankfully, Bill found a way out of this vicious cycle and you can too, with the help of Go To Play Every Day & Call It Work. Bill shows you, with real examples, how personal coaching can make a real difference in your life and the lives of your loved ones. Go To Play Every Day & Call It Work is a priceless resource to help you find your ideal income position and change your life for the better.

Go To Play Every Day & Call It Work, copyright 2010 by Bill Dueease, published by Aspen Business Group, 15861 Dorth Circle, Fort Meyers, Florida 33908, available from online retailers or http://gotoplayeveryday.com ISBN 978-0-9772739-0-4

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