My manuscript is now available on authonomy at this location.
Go to the side panel on the right and click on “Read the book.” The book will be displayed chapter by chapter. There is a table of contents at the beginning that gives you a better idea of what is happening in each chapter. It’s okay if you just want to pick off the chapters that appeal to you. You cannot download the book. It must be read on-line.
You are entering a construction zone because the book is not fully uploaded and I make daily changes to it. It still needs editing and a major revision of at least one chapter toward the end. My editor has told me this; I just haven’t had time to do it. I have changed my thinking in some instances and when I go back to rewrite, I will phrase certain things differently.
If you would like to tell your friends about my book, here’s how I would pitch it to pique their interest:
1) I’m a mother writing about her son’s diagnosis of schizophrenia. There are very few mothers (I can think of one only) who have published a book about this sensitive subject.
2) I’m a parent who objects to the current biochemically-driven model of schizophrenia and other so-called mental illnesses. This pits me against the majority of family members and the public-at-large who have gone along with the idea of mental illness as a brain disease. The time is ripe for challenging this view, especially when this criticism is coming from a parent.
3) This book discusses a lot of unusual holistic therapies and helpful attitudes that the family members can adopt that should be better known to the general public. I describe the therapies and the improvements that I saw in Chris that I attribute to the therapies undertaken.
I’d be delighted if you read the book and I welcome your feedback. You don’t even have to tell me that you’ve read it or even bother to read it. I don’t keep a list. If you’d like to comment or push the book to the attention of the greater authonomy community, you’ll have to register. It’s quick and you don’t have to be a writer yourself, but it helps if you like to read and comment on others’ manuscripts. My goal is to generate more support for the position that you and I share about so-called mental illness. Invariably that means a published book.
authonomy says:
Attracting external readership can really boost your visibility on the site. So if you already have champions from outside the authonomy community – whether that’s family, friends, colleagues or visitors to your blog, facebook profile or other website, you might also encourage them to join the site and get involved. If they can prove their credentials to the community by building their talent spotter rank, then they’ll be in a position to be noticed and in turn help you raise the profile of your book.
Please forward, tweet or retweet this post to your friends to let them know that there is a growing number of parents who are refusing to go along with the biochemically driven model of mental illness.
If you have problems viewing the book, please let me know.
Hi Rossa,
Ihave just enjoyed the first dozen chapters of your book and I love it.You mention energy healing in your introduction and this opens the door to my sharing my experience of this gift. The mode I have learned and practice on others as well as on myself is called Attunement and is very usefull. My first time of feeling all right in myself in years came after an attunement was shared withb me by a spiritual mentor. I eventually learned how to practice this energy healing art for myself and I now share it with others. The goal of attunement is to learn to stay in the energised attuned state all the time and this is now my consistant living experience.A big issue for me for many years was massive amounts of fear and terror which was crippling, a result of a serious accident in my early teens which left me severly traumatised and afraid of many things. It was because of this traumatization that I first went to see a pychiatrist and began `my many years as a mental patient.Now my daily life is lived fearlessly and with much delight and joy as I move about in my world with the proven ability to befriend many people on a level that is worthwhile to all of us as my vivid exemplification of the aduacetly realized life potential which is my experience is visable to all in my world. I do realize that many people who see my rather flamboyant display of my own uniqueness are prone to misjudging me and do get a rather predudiced and incomplete picture of what is really going on for me. It seems that most people have to be quite desperate to accept the plain truth of which my expression of myself gives evidence.Nontheless those dear ones who are coming close and seeking my assistance give me the greatest fulfillement that I have known as I naturelly and easily find ways of helping them to begin to beleive that they too can become whole from an inner fountain of goodness and wellbeing which is always present for me. I know that for a person reading my words here it is perhaps a bridge too far for you to be convinced of the truth of my claims for myself in these postings and yet something in me is deeply pleased to be able to make these notes here.
Gladly I am available to anyone who is interested to connect with me on skype sound and vision. Dare to try me if you will to be true to the things I have been saying here. “
For this cause came I to this hour”
My skype name is NGAUGHAN 5334 OR NOEL
GAUGHAN 1
I welcome the honest sceptic
One, when’s it going to be finished?! I enjoyed reading it very much, and I’d like to thank you for taking the time to share this with those of us who are interested. And also thank Chris for allowing his story to be told and shared so completely and intimately. I’m sure it helps others, whether or not they are in distress. It helped me just thinking back upon my own adolescence and young adulthood. The many therapies you have tried are intriguing and I’m glad I’ve read about them. I’m particularly interested in the Family Constellation Therapy.
I was surprised at the number of therapies you have tried. You must be exhausted. There are so many things I like. I like that you focused on the community and the family, and stressed that it’s not just a disease of one person alone.
At the same time, it’s been a long time with Chris. One keeps waiting and hoping for that happily ever after ending. That we have not gotten it completely yet, makes me think of other things, other possibilities for this story you have told. And what I mean is that – oh darn. I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought here. I stopped and rushed on to a paragraph below before I forgot it.
There’s no way I can encapsulate all that I felt and thought reading this with this one comment, but aside from some small typos, one thing that did stick out to me is that Chris is obviously a smart person, and I found myself wanting to know more about when he learned, how he learned. Was it easy for him? Can we hear a bit more about his learning style and his intelligence? You did not focus very much upon that, but perhaps if you come from a very intelligent family and your present family is intelligent, you might take it for granted.
I can see your interest pique with each new therapy and then you come to some level ground where you just say damnit Chris, you gotta participate here, too! I know exactly how that feels. In short, one sees and feels the cycles you go through. I can’t believe you worked outside the home during all this time. Lord when did you find the time?
Anyway, as scattered as these thoughts are, I wanted to get them down fresh, just after I finished. I’d love to read more, it was well-written and readable. A page turner, if I may. I won’t try to put on an editor’s hat, I’m sure you have plenty of good advice in that regard. Just consider me a ready reader for when the next installments are ready.
-Birmingham
Birmingham – Thanks for your thoughtful comments. The book is essentially finished, but the editor I sent it to had some comments that meant more work on my part. I am reluctant to post the next chapters until I fix the problems. And, yes, I was exhausted while I was intensely worried. (I’m no longer tired!) My husband and I decided early on that we needed the extra income because we had two other sons to support and we shouldn’t let whatever was happening with Chris impact us financially. Chris is an intelligent person, but he never really tried in school. He got through the early grades with no effort on his part (but no academic rewards, either) and then he picked up the pace quite a lot when we moved to Europe. He had high test scores, but no sense of direction. He was told by a testing firm that because of his math skills and verbal skills he had his choice of anything he wanted to do. Choice bothers Chris. He was disappointed by that answer because he hadn’t a clue himself. He had about two years where he was beginning to really do well in school, but as this time drew to a close he was beginning to go psychotic. From all my reading and all of the people I’ve met here and elsewhere, quick recovery is the exception rather than the rule. I feel recovery could be a lot quicker if psychiatry were honest about this condition, rather than disingenously claiming it’s a brain disease with no known cause and no remedies.