Book Review - The Story That Must Be Told - True Tales of Transformation by Irene Watson and Victor R Volkman

Book Review

The Story That Must Be Told - True Tales of Transformation - Volume 1

Edited by Irene Watson and Victor R Volkman

Book Description

What will you do when life puts you to the ultimate test?  This slim volume contains 21 true stories of courage, love, endurance, and undying hope from people around the USA and UK. Follow each of our authors as they detail what it took to face impossible circumstances and powerfully transform them into forgiveness, understanding, and grace.

Are you...

haunted by a past event?

hoping to make a brand new start?

unhappy with how your life turned out?

searching for the secret to full self-esteem?

blocked by unfinished business you can't resolve?

wanting to explore or renew your relationship with God?

If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, then this is the book for you to start (or re-start) your personal journal of transformation.  What one person achieves creates new possibilities for everyone in what it is to be human.

Irene Watson's Website              Victor R Volkman's Website

Our Book Review

This is a collection of really personal, moving and thought provoking true stories, each unique, transforming story describing how that person grew mentally and/or spiritually and moved on from the way they thought and lived.  

Some really important messages stood out in the stories for me that really made me think about myself and others I have met in my life and were especially found in the stories A Call From Africa by Jari Holland Buck and A Heart Betryaed by Christy Lowry.  Some of the stories rely on faith to get through difficult times, others are more spiritual and some are what I would call 'the lightbulb moment' when you finally wake up and realise where you are going wrong.

One particular bonus that I love when reading books is that each story is short and you may find yourself finishing the book extremely quickly as you decide to read 'just one more'.

A really great 'pick me up' book where life's lessons are made clear in each story and may possibly give you the inspiration you need to change the situation you are in at the moment.  An enoyable read that I would recommend you try.

Our Rating

 

amazon.co.uk            amazon.com

Book Review - Rewriting Life Scripts

Book Review

 

Rewriting Life Scripts - Transformational Recovery for Families and Addicts

by Liliane Desjardins, Nancy Oelklaus, Irene Watson

About the Author - Irene Watson

Irene Watson was born and raised in a tiny hamlet of Reno in the northern area of the province of Alberta in Canada. It was a farming community, mostly settled by immigrants from Russia, Ukraine and Poland during the early 1900s.

Irene is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, as well as mentoring and coaching authors. She is also a facilitator of transformative retreats and workshops and a Aftercare Coach for Higher Power Productions 4-day programs facilitated by Liliane Desjardins. 

Today, Irene lives beside Barton Creek in Austin, Texas with her husband Robert of 42 years, their Pomeranian, Tafton; their calico cat from a rescue shelter, Patches; and their cockatiel, Clement.

Author on Facebook         Author's Website         Author on Twitter

Rewriting Life Script's Website        Rewriting Life Script's on Twitter

Book Description

In one sense, alcoholics and drug addicts are the fortunate ones. They have to learn a new way to live or risk death, incarceration, and loss of everything they hold dear.

But what about the other members of their family? Because so many of them believe that the addict is the problem, they do nothing about their own habits of mind and heart-and continue to live in resentment, anger, and fear, feeding their own stress level and shortening their lives in a way that's very different from the addict-yet, on another level, remarkably similar.

Rewriting Life Scripts: Transformational Recovery for Families of Addicts contains information, explanation, and processes for change. Following the steps outlined in this book brings peace of mind, forgiveness, reconciliation, and the ability-truly-to live happily ever after.

This book is a project of the Higher Power Foundation to provide financial support grants for people who need recovery to attend spiritual and life training events. We are fortunate to have endorsements by William Cope Moyers and Douglas Ziedonis, MD, MPH, University of Massachusetts Medical School/UMass Memorial Health Care System.

 

Our Book Review

When I first received this book to review I must admit the first thing that sprung to mind when I read the word addiction was drink and drugs, thanks to this book and Irene Watson's other book, The Sitting Swing, they have opened my eyes to what an addiction really is.  I now realise that an addiction can be anything behavioural, such as co-dependency, workaholism, sexual, to my initial thoughts of drink and drugs, it is what we do to hide from the pain that we do not want to deal with.

What everyone tends to forget about when the addicts starts receiving help, is that behind the addict and their problems there is a family who also needs help.   The addict, once they admit they need help, can receive various treatments to try and overcome their problem, but what happens to the family at this time and more importantly how do the family react and deal with the addict.  The family need help, not only on how to deal with this major issue in their lives but how to understand how the addiction could have started in the first place and how to help the addict on the recovery process, all of which cannot really be done until they have first cleared themselves of problems.  This book is here for them, written from years of research and clinical practice, and should be given to every addicts family as part of the whole recovery process. If an addicts family are unable deal with the issues, due to lack of knowledge, this could be the difference of of recovery and loosing their will to help themselves.

I have learnt so much from this book, I cannot put into words just how important I feel this is to read.  In life we tend to hang on to our old survival techniques to get us through the difficult patches, hiding from the problem or pain, thinking that this will make everything alright or that the problem will go away.  Unfortunately the way we do this hasn't helped with any problems in the past so why should it now.  We need to find the courage to face a problem, instead of going into denial, and realise that there are things in life that we cannot change or control, what will be will be, we need to let go of the problem and surrender ourselves to these old patterns and to channel that energy into improving our life instead, making us stronger. 

The book is a fantastic resource of help to all family members. It gives the reader a greater understanding of addictions and recovery, with great insight into the inner lives of addicts, how addictions affect family dynamics that can be carried into adult life.    It is full of stories to bring the reader closer to understanding the topic, success stories, questions and answers and even has some quote here and there.

The book is all about our current beliefs and acceptances as we were taught as we grew up and how we can rewrite these.   Our lesson in life should be to trust and enjoy every moment in life, believe in yourself and realise that nothing is perfect, we cannot control everything, To Love Life Again !!

For me the chapter on 'Making changes in your life first' was the most important, especially the Fear part, in fact I read and re-read this as it was quite an eye opener for me and I wanted to fully understand.  Most people have problems to deal with, I personally have spent the last few years suffering from depression due to major events that I did not want to deal with, my husband has been strongly by my side all of this time but had he had the opportunity of taking the time to read this wonderful book he would not be struggling with the after effects of it all now as I am recovering.  I am lucky enough to be at the latter stages of the book having taken what is classed as the 'paradigm shift' and have actually gone through some of thinking that is described, that is why I feel it is a vital part of any addict and addicts family to read.  Instead of taking years to recover and find the answers myself things could have been massively improved.  Extremely highly recommended.

One line in the book stood out for me and made so much sense -

'Love is the energy that heals feelings and the power that restores us to sanity'.

Our Rating

   
amazon.co.uk            amazon.com

Book Review - The Sitting Swing by Irene Watson

Book Review

The Sitting Swing: Finding Wisdom to Know the Difference

by Irene Watson

About the Author

Irene Watson was born and raised in a tiny hamlet of Reno in the northern area of the province of Alberta in Canada. It was a farming community, mostly settled by immigrants from Russia, Ukraine and Poland during the early 1900s. 

Irene is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, as well as mentoring and coaching authors. She is also a  facilitator of transformative retreats and workshops and a Aftercare Coach for Higher Power Productions 4-day programs facilitated by Liliane Desjardins.

Today, Irene lives beside Barton Creek in Austin, Texas with her husband Robert of 42 years, their Pomeranian, Tafton; their calico cat from a rescue shelter, Patches; and their cockatiel, Clement.

Author on Facebook         Author's Website         Author on Twitter  

Book Description

Irene Watson's pretentious life could go no further until she faced her past. Her moving and inspiring memoir begins at the end, in a recovery center, where she has gone to understand a childhood fraught with abuse, guilt, and uncertainty.

Two distinct parts of the book look at abusive child rearing and the process of recovery years later. This story shows change, growth, and forgiveness are possible. It gives hope and freedom to those accepting the past and re-writing life scripts that have been passed down for generations. It's never too late to change your life, never too late to heal.

Our Book Review
A beautiful heartfelt book describing a little girls life as she grows up under the dominance of a mother who lived in a bubble of how her life and that of her perfect daughters life would be. Starting from fear of loosing her child, her mother protected Irene to the highest degree, constantly being with her, implanting her thoughts and beliefs and even speaking for her, making her believe that she was not to speak her mind at all.  Irene was left to feel worthless and that people were not interested in her input in life at all.

A little girl petrified that God would punish her for not sticking to his ten rules, learning from her parents that when he was angry he could create plagues or even kill people.  A little girl who sat and watched as her parents themselves went against these rules, confused and fearful.  A little girl who was being abused by her cousins and was led to believe that this was her own doing and nothing else.  A little girl who had no need for education as she WOULD live locally and WOULD be a farmers wife.

Then she met her saviour in friend Margie, who made her feel valued and a real person.  She began to open up and challenge her mother but she was going against her perfect girl mother and when she tried to run away it was the final straw and brought out a violent side of her mother that she would never forget. In time she escapes by getting a job away from their small hamlet, but doe she really escape?

Left with a lifetime of mental as well as physical abuse, Irene follows her friends hype and enrols into the Avalon Center for a 28 day course on overcoming addictions.  Extremely skeptical and believing it all to be a waste of time, she carries on believing at least it would help her when working with her therapy clients, hearing that addiction is only a symptom of the real underlying pain.  Until one day close to the end of the course she finally gets it, a light bulb moment which positively changed Irene's life forever.

Although covering sad points in Irene's life I found myself fascinated reading about her day to day family life and the area around them.  The author has written with a truly open and honest hand, even with a little humor at times.  Very easy to read,  you can feel the desperate emotion and pain felt at the time by the author and you may also find some possible answers to life's problems yourself.

I must admit when reading I love books with short chapters, the only problem with The Sitting Swing was that I kept saying to myself just one more, then another and another, it was very hard to actually put the book down. An inspiring memoir that will empower you to look within yourself with understanding and spirituality.  Extremely recommended reading.

Our Review

 

amazon.co.uk          amazon.com

SIGNED BOOK GIVEAWAY - The Sitting Swing by Irene Watson

Welcome to the Avoiding April Showers Giveaway Event. This event is hosted by Put A Little Umbrella In Your Drink, My Mommy's World, Taking Time For Mommy and And The Little Ones Too.

This event features giveaways with a value of $25 or more at each of the participating blogs! Be sure to visit each blog from the linky below and enter for your chance to win! (after you've entered our giveaway mind !!)

OUR GIVEAWAY

SIGNED BOOK GIVEAWAY - The Sitting Swing

by Irene Watson

Open Internationally 
Ending on 30th April 11.59pm Est

Irene Watson's pretentious life could go no further until she faced her past. Her moving and inspiring memoir begins at the end, in a recovery center, where she has gone to understand a childhood fraught with abuse, guilt, and uncertainty.

Two distinct parts of the book look at abusive child rearing and the process of recovery years later. This story shows change, growth, and forgiveness are possible. It gives hope and freedom to those accepting the past and re-writing life scripts that have been passed down for generations. It's never too late to change your life, never too late to heal.

This amazing SIGNED BOOK giveaway is Open Internationally
ending on 30th April at 11.59pm est

Please wait for Rafflecopter to load, if it does not load, please refresh page, thanku x

Enter Below n Good Luck !!

THE LUCKY WINNER OF THE

SIGNED BOOK

THE SITTING SWING

IS

M Bodenheimer

CONGRATULATIONS !!!!

SPECIAL THANKS TO AUTHOR IRENE WATSON FOR THIS FANTASTIC PRIZE X

SIGNED BOOK GIVEAWAY - Rewriting Life Scripts by Irene Watson

We're taking part in the Kick-Butt Characters Blog Hop.
Hosted by She Promotes

Once you have entered our fantastic giveaway, please take a look at all the other giveaways listed at the bottom of this post (after entering mind !!)

OUR GIVEAWAY

SIGNED BOOK - Rewriting Life Scripts - Transformational Recovery for Families and Addicts

by Liliane Desjardins, Nancy Oelklaus, Irene Watson

OPEN INTERNATIONALLY

Ending on 22nd April at 11.59pm est

In one sense, alcoholics and drug addicts are the fortunate ones. They have to learn a new way to live or risk death, incarceration, and loss of everything they hold dear.

But what about the other members of their family? Because so many of them believe that the addict is the problem, they do nothing about their own habits of mind and heart-and continue to live in resentment, anger, and fear, feeding their own stress level and shortening their lives in a way that's very different from the addict-yet, on another level, remarkably similar.

Rewriting Life Scripts: Transformational Recovery for Families of Addicts contains information, explanation, and processes for change. Following the steps outlined in this book brings peace of mind, forgiveness, reconciliation, and the ability-truly-to live happily ever after.

This book is a project of the Higher Power Foundation to provide financial support grants for people who need recovery to attend spiritual and life training events. We are fortunate to have endorsements by William Cope Moyers and Douglas Ziedonis, MD, MPH, University of Massachusetts Medical School/UMass Memorial Health Care System.

This amazing SIGNED BOOK giveaway is Open Internationally
ending on 22nd at 11.59pm est

Please wait for Rafflecopter to load, if it does not load, please refresh page, thanku x

Enter Below n Good Luck !!

Congratulations to our lucky winner!!!!


J Schroeder




YOU HAVE WON !!!




Special thanks to our authors for this wonderful prize x