Book Promo ~ Love at the Center of Grief

Love at the Center of Grief is a contemporary The Notebook for grieving
teens who want to believe in the power of love even when faced with
The Fault in Our Stars. 

 At the tender age of 6, Gretchen Gardener and Hayden Tucker endured the losses of their mothers. For them, Summerfort Grief Center, near Branson, Missouri, offers a place of hope. But as puberty hits, the childhood friends begin to grapple with very different feelings toward each other. Both wonder, can the heart accept love after loss?

Love at the Center of Grief, from Cindy McIntyre, is a compelling coming-of-age story that poignantly captures the realities of teen angst and the magnifying effects of the extraordinary emotional burdens that the two friends carry.

Gretchen, dubbed “Grief Girl” by her classmates, is a mixture of childish maturity, spouting off unique words and Constitutional factoids. Neither of these talents, however, solves her obsessive behavior: she hoards odd memories.

“Hardly Speaks” Hayden proudly sports a Summerfort Eagles high school football jersey, but not everyone on the team accepts this robust loner with a sensitive nature.

Forever bonded by their shared loss, Gretchen and Hayden must navigate adolescence while processing the shifting nature of their hormones and grief — with widowed dads in tow. Both Gretchen and Hayden write stories to their mothers in their grief journals, and it’s through their candid entries that secret thoughts and raw emotions are revealed.

McIntyre used her own experiences as a grief counselor to inform an honest narrative that delivers a balance of heartache and laughter, plus believable characters worth cheering for in the quirky little town of Summerfort, Missouri.

Love at the Center of Grief is a great read for those who are fans of Julie Buxbaum’s Tell Me Three Things and Kathleen Glasgow’s How to Make Friends with the Dark.

Cindy McIntyre, author of Eulogies Unspoken: Stories of Worth and Caring for Dad: With Love and Tomatoes, has served as a secondary at-risk teacher in Missouri for 20 years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in human services, with an emphasis in education. After the loss of her parents, McIntyre set out to help others as a volunteer facilitator at the Lost & Found Grief Center in Springfield. Originally from Earlville, Illinois, she now calls Missouri her home.

For more information, please visit www.missouriauthorcindymcintyre.com, or follow the author on Instagram at @missouriauthorcindymcintyre.

Love at the Center of Grief

Publisher: Angel Pin Publishing
ISBN-10: ‎1734922818
ISBN-13: ‎978-1734922813

Available from Amazon.com

Cindy McIntyre lost her mother at the age of twenty-nine. Grief overwhelmed her, and she discovered writing, “Dear Mom” letters had a profound healing effect. That pain turned into her first book, Eulogies Unspoken: Stories of Worth. Her book takes readers on a journey through grief, faith, and the celebration of overcoming adversity. Along the way, she learned so much about her parents. In the end, she learned even more about herself–perhaps angels appear to grant miracles of faith!

Cindy continues to use her background in psychology, education, caregiving, and grief in her writing, and as a way to help others. She currently volunteers as a group facilitator at a grief center. She’s been an at-risk secondary teacher for over twenty years.

Book Promo: Dancing To The Darkest Light

Inspiring Others Who Are Navigating Challenging Times

Soheila Adelipour

Soheila Adelipour hopes you never look at life the same way after reading her memoir of survival, Dancing to the Darkest Light. Her story begins in Iran, where her family, desperate to escape the Islamic revolution, fled to New York. Her family found solid footing in the Big Apple, living the epitome of the American dream, until one day, all they had were nightmares. In a relatively short period of time, Adelipour lost a son and two siblings. Her book offers a riveting account of her healing process, and through her example of extraordinary resilience, she hopes to inspire others who are facing tragedy and heartbreak.

Chronicling their experiences in Dancing to the Darkest Light, Adelipour recounts how her only brother became a neurosurgeon while others followed different paths. But their successful relocation and the joy they felt over each triumph was soon shattered when Adelipour’s second son, Stefan, was killed in a dorm room fire before his scheduled graduation from Boston University.

Adelipour channeled her grief into the foundation she established in his name. Soon after, her older sister had to undergo five brain surgeries that left her blind and deaf before ultimately claiming her life. The same week, their only brother who was supervising her care was diagnosed with leukemia. Adelipour gave him her bone marrow and 60 percent of her liver when his liver stopped functioning. Doctors ultimately announced he was cancer-free with a perfectly functioning liver, but the week he was to come home, he died from pneumonia.

How one perseveres under the weight of all this loss is at the core of Dancing to the Darkest Light. “When life plays different music, we have to be fluid and dance to the new tune,” Adelipour said.

Adelipour received her bachelor’s degree in business and her master’s degree in Art Gallery Management while her first two children were in diapers. She was involved with the World of Arts and Antiques in New York City and followed that by operating high-end gift stores.

For more information visit www.soheilaadelipour.com.

Dancing to the Darkest Light
ISBN-10: 173371264X
ISBN-13: 978-1733712644
Available from Amazon.com

Amazon Review:

A powerful message about finding happiness and fulfillment in the face of loss
A profoundly moving memoir of life’s unexpected moments and painful losses. Soheila is a remarkably strong and courageous woman who teaches us the value of cherishing our happiness and our family bonds despite the hardships we may endure. Her book is an inspiration on living our lives to the fullest and on finding meaning even in the face of tragedy. Congratulations Soheila on a beautifully written tribute to those you have lost! Nirit R

 

Book Promo: My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me

 

My Wife Said You May Want
to Marry Me: A Memoir

by Jason B.        Rosenthal

The widower who became nationally known after his wife wrote days before her death a heart-wrenching column in The New York Times shares his insight about love, loss and living again in his new memoir.

Jason Rosenthal’s book My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me shares his experience after his wife, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, wrote the column “You May Want To Marry My Husband” which The New York Times published ten days before she died. The essay illuminated her desire for Jason to move forward and find happiness after her death.

In My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, Jason describes what came next: his commitment to respect Amy’s wish, even as he struggled with her loss. Surveying his life before, with, and after Amy, Jason ruminates on love, the pain of watching a loved one suffer and what it means to heal.

His new work is guaranteed to be far reaching to all who have suffered with grief, loss and the journey to new life, purpose and relationships through healing.

The book is available through
Amazon
and
Harper Collins

Book Promo: Healing through writing

Can Trauma Spur Creativity?
After His Devastating Loss, a Man Finds Healing
Through Writing

Can an emotional trauma flip a switch in the creative brain? Does profound loss offer a new perspective from which to peer into one’s soul?

For LeRoy Flemming, author of the “Timelightenment” series (www.timelightenment.biz/) and volume one of “Soulsplitting,” the answer is a resounding yes! And, there’s psychological research supporting this idea.

Timelightenment (Volume 1)

In role-playing, veterans who’ve endured trauma resulting in PTSD “were better able to represent the boundary between reality and the role-playing, to immerse themselves in the scene, to enact identifiable characters consistent with their setting, and produce complex and interactive scenes that told a coherent story,” compared to non-PTSD vets, according to researchers Robert Miller and David Johnson.

The non-PTSD group created more stereotyped, and unimaginative scenes, despite a higher education level and greater role-playing experience, the two wrote.

“I was never diagnosed with PTSD, but I know profound emotional trauma can trip all kinds of coping mechanisms in the brain and soul, including creativity,” Flemming says. “When I suddenly lost my mother, it was a profound, life-altering shock. She was fine when I saw her last – Dec. 25, 1999 and she died on Jan. 1. That’s what started me writing.”

His mother was, by far, the most stabilizing and inspiring person in his life, he says, and losing her rocked him to his core. Rather than seeming abstract, the larger questions in life became the most important, and that’s when he knew he had to write.

“I didn’t have much of a background in writing,” he says. “But since her passing, I’ve been in close contact with a part of my soul that has spawned several books, all of which have helped me heal.”

The creativity caused by pain is a cycle, “because the creative process has significantly healed me,” he says. “I’m not surprised that creativity increases within those who’ve suffered; it makes sense.”

How does a grieving individual make something good out of a heart-wrenching loss? Flemming offers perspective.

•  Don’t force it. One of the last things a grieving person needs is an assignment they don’t want. Grief is a process that entails a host of negative emotions: denial, confusion, anger and more. Prescribing creative therapy to oneself or another before one is ready for it can backfire.

•  Let it flow naturally. We are all unique individuals and, though we know in the backs of our minds that we’ll someday face the loss of a loved one, we can’t predict how we’ll handle it.

“Grieving and creativity actually share some traits,” Flemming says. “Both are processes, and both prompt individuals to express feelings in their own terms. When creativity can be used in conjunction with the grieving process, the catharsis can be profound.”

•  You have many options. When a person is desperate for an outlet, he or she will often gravitate toward what he knows. A onetime aspiring painter, for instance, may return to that familiar and comforting form of self-expression.

“But the mind can be unpredictable; it may be that gardening is the process that is most therapeutic for a grieving person, even though she never pulled a weed or planted a seed in her life,” Flemming says. “In other words, be open to where your intuition guides you. As most grieving people understand, life doesn’t always work out as planned. Be open to helpful new possibilities.”

About LeRoy Flemming

Leroy Flemming is a graduate of Alabama State University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Montgomery, Ala. He always wanted to show people that with spiritual guidance you can make things happen. Through his determination and inspiration from his Creator, he completed his five-part series of novels, “Timelightenment,” (www.timelightenment.biz/), in hopes of demonstrating to the children of this world that they can dream big, and accomplish those dreams. Though inspired by many people, his biggest influence comes from his mother, who said shortly before she passed away, “Son, I may give out, but I never give up!” Flemming recently completed volume one of his new series, “Soulsplitting.”