Giveaway – Shelter From Our Secrets, Silence & Shame by Rebecca L Brown @GoddessFish

I love book covers and I love the cover for Shelter From Our Secrets, Silence & Shame. I am delighted to have Rebecca Brown visiting fundinmental to share her own thoughts on the cover.

Topic: Discuss your cover — how it came to be, what it represents, what you love or don’t love about it, etc.  Anything you’d like to share about it.

I’m excited to be part of this Fundinmental blog tour, and I love that I can take this opportunity to talk about my book’s cover.  I know that we shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but I wanted my book’s cover to catch people’s attention and hopefully draw them to it and start reading. 

I took the photograph myself in May 2021 when I was out in my kayak on Lake Huron, where I am lucky to live and work as a mental health clinician.  I need to find ways to burn off and let go of the difficult stories that I collect in my day.  One of my favourite ways to release the stress is to paddle into the sunset and feel the tension release from my body.  I begin my book with this prologue: 

I am floating. 

On the water 

calm 

clear  

soft  

quiet.  

Dusk, 

the sun is setting. 

The sky will hold light  

for another half an hour  

or so. 

The beauty is often just after the sun sinks into the water,
then the colours are spectacular. 

Or just softer.  

It’s been a long day;  

hard  

heavy 

yet healing.  

I have no words left in me.  

I cannot talk 

or listen anymore.  

I need quiet  

peace 

calm  

presence. 

I have found the shelter that I seek today 

on the open water.  

My kayak is my shelter this day. 

I will paddle until I physically feel the release in my body.  

I will watch the sun set until I find the peace in my soul. 

I hope to sleep tonight. 

Rebuild my resilience. 

I will wake and do it all again. 

I may need to seek shelter differently tomorrow 

Or not. 

Knowing that I must still seek shelter sometimes,  

makes it safe for me to continue in this work that I love.

Later in the book, I share a chapter which digs further into why this particular photograph means so much to me.

Chapter Fourteen: Spring 2021

  I couldn’t wait to get my little yellow kayak in the water. It had been three years since I moved to the shores of the Great Lake Huron. We live in a home that has a story of its own (more on this to come), and it was built to look out at the beautiful water, which is a gift we cherish every day. The sunsets have been called among the most beautiful in the world, and the water itself changes from day to day: from calm, like glass, to rough and choppy. We’ve referred to it as both Lake Atlantic and the Pond Lake, all within twenty-four hours.    The soft sand and miles of beach are what draw people from afar, but what makes it the most magnificent sight always is its colour. The water looks almost tropical. It can resemble a Caribbean turquoise blue, so soft that it takes your breath away. Looking at the colour of this beautiful water is a moment of awe that I treasure every day.

  We’ve had a warm, mild spring, and this year feeling confined to the house, working from home, unable to see people in person, I have been trying to spend even more time outdoors in nature and, as often as possible, down at the water.

  On May 17, our temperature rose to twenty degrees Celsius (68 F), and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. After dinner, I pulled my little yellow kayak out from under the deck where it had been stored all winter. I hosed it off to get rid of any spiders and dirt that had been hiding there all winter, and within half an hour had it in the water.

  Due to the State of Emergency and lockdown in our area, there was virtually no one in the cottages that dot the shoreline of our secluded little bay. I was able to paddle in silence for an hour. The sun was high in the blue sky when I started, and once I went as far as I needed to, I let my paddles rest, pulled out my phone, and took a couple of photos to celebrate the moment. I floated and rested and let the warmth of the sun sink deep into my skin, and I meditated silently for a few minutes, noticing the slightest movement of the calm water swaying my boat.

It was both a moment of happiness and awe that I was so grateful for.

  Then I turned my little yellow Pelican kayak in the direction I had come and started to paddle slowly and rhythmically back home. My cup of happiness was full.

  The next morning, I woke up to the sound of my dog beside my bed telling me the sun was up. I went downstairs with her, my other dog, and two cats, and while I let all the animals out into the back yard, I poured myself a cup of coffee and cued up a guided mindfulness meditation. I let the small herd back inside and then made my way to my comfy chair in my office to practice ten minutes of mindfulness. The meditation I listened to this day was on Headspace.com, one of my favourite mindfulness apps. I easily slipped away with the narrator’s voice as she guided me through a visualization about balance, using the visual of a blue sky as a focal point.

  This image of a blue sky is often one used in guided mindfulness meditations, and it’s a lovely image to think about. We can visualize the blue sky as something we always have access to; it’s the clear, calm, uncluttered mind, but it can be buried beneath our busy, racing thoughts, or the clouds. If we visualize clearing away the thoughts/clouds by intentionally focussing on our breath for a few minutes, the clouds gently float away to reveal the beautiful, calm, blue sky that is always somewhere in the background of our minds. The meditation suggested visualizing a photograph of a beautiful blue sky to help enhance this visualization, so I instantly visualized the beautiful blue sky I had experienced just the evening before when I was out in my kayak.

  I opened my phone and turned to the photo I had taken just twelve hours earlier, out on the water on my kayak, with the beautiful blue sky in the background.

 I knew instantly that I this photograph held so much meaning, which is why I chose it for my book cover.

Shelter from Our Secrets, Silence, and Shame: How Our Stories Can Keep Us Stuck or Set Us Free by Rebecca L. Brown, MSW, RSW

GENRE: SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / Self-Esteem                  

BLURB

As a mental health clinician, Rebecca Brown has been a safe place for many to seek shelter from their secrets, silence and shame. Inspired to finally slow down, stop running from herself and share her own story, she found ways to seek and savour her own shelter.

Rebecca’s personal journey takes us through sadness, tragedy, self-sabotage, the impossible pursuit of perfection, distorted thinking and eating, engaging with her shadow self, divorce, and numbing with alcohol, all in an attempt to avoid the story needing to be shared.

Dispelling the limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves can unlock our limitless potential to reach goals we never dared to dream. From the Boston Marathon to working with horses, Rebecca sets out to prove to herself that anything is possible when you don’t listen to the negative stories you tell yourself.

Everyone has a story. We become who we are because of what has happened to us, and because of the stories we tell ourselves. But do our stories continue to serve us well, or keep us stuck? Are our stories fact or fiction? Is it time to rewrite the versions we have been telling ourselves?

Shelter provides strategies to help reframe the thinking patterns we have developed, and offers tools to recognize when we are suffering from our own thoughts, feelings and actions. Resilience-building techniques are woven through the pages, and encouragement for the lifelong journey of collecting moments of awe and happiness.

Seeking and reading Shelter is a gift of self-compassion and self-discovery. Rebecca’s hope is that it will be read with a highlighter in hand, pages folded down, re-read, recommended to a friend, and used as a guide to start sharing our own stories with those we love.

We may not have written our beginnings, but we have the ability to write every word from this point forward and just imagine where our stories can take us when we are free of secrets, silence and shame.

EXCERPT

I give my talk.

The room erupts in applause.

A dozen people line up to thank me or say a few words at the end of my session.

One man in particular stands out.

He is well over six feet tall and wearing a full Texas sheriff uniform.

He has greying hair and is likely close to the end of his career.

He pumps my hand as he shakes it, almost leaving it numb.

He thanks me for my talk. “Great stuff,” he says.

And then he hands me his business card.

But it’s not quite a business card.

It’s a photo card, like a baseball card, or a kid’s hockey card, with the player’s name, position, and smiling face as they stand posed to take a shot in their team uniform.

Only this is of a man on a black horse.

More precisely, it’s this man, a Texas sheriff on his beautiful black police horse.

“I thought you’d like to have this,” he says. “My horse is Canadian, like you.” And then he says something that has stayed with me, because he couldn’t be more right: “Everyone in this business should have a good horse!”

He meant the business of trauma.

I couldn’t have agreed more.

I still have his “business card.”

Two years later, I went back to Texas to teach a three-day workshop on resilience to youth detention workers. I tried to look up my Texas sheriff, but he had retired. I hope he’s finding more time to enjoy his good horse. I’ve shared the story of our brief encounter and his photo card with many police officers over the years. And every one of them agrees: horses can heal humans. I’ve found shelter with horses. Sometimes in the saddle, but mostly not. My story will get there. Eventually.

I finished my keynote address and spent the rest of the day at the conference on Youth in the Justice System. People stopped me in the halls of the hotel, telling me how much they enjoyed my talk. Later that evening, I went for a run.

And then I drank a bottle of wine and went to bed.

AUTHOR Bio and Links

REBECCA BROWN is a clinical social worker with over 35 years in practice ranging from medical social work, childhood trauma, vicarious trauma for first responders, international psychological first aid, and Equine Assisted Therapy. She is honoured to hold a faculty appointment with the Department of Family Medicine at Western University in London, Ontario. She teaches extensively on the topics of trauma and resilience and has delivered keynote presentations throughout North America. She shares her life and career with her husband, a family physician and trailblazer in the field of Lifestyle Medicine. Together they live and work on the shores of the Great Lake Huron, where they seek and share shelter with their six adult children, four grandchildren, extended family and friends, two dogs, two cats and one horse.

Connect with Rebecca L. Brown

  • WEBSITE https://rebeccabrown.ca/
  • INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/rebeccabrown.ca/
  • GOODREADS https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22150115.Rebecca_L_Brown

Get your copy of Shelter                    

  • AMAZON.COM https://amzn.to/3JTnKAj
  • AMAZON.CA https://amazon.ca/dp/0228859417
  • INDIGO CHAPTERS https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/shelter-from-our-secrets-silence/9780228859420-item.html
  • BARNES & NOBLE https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shelter-from-our-secrets-silence-and-shame-msw-rsw-brown/1140865116
  • SMASHWORDS https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1125515
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Giveaway – The Light in the Darkness by Jo St Leon #jostleon @GoddessFish

The Light in the Darkness: Musings on Living With Cancer by Jo St Leon

GENRE:   BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Inspiration & Personal Growth

BLURB

The Light in the Darkness is a must-have companion for anyone living with a serious illness, or caring for a loved one with such an illness.

With this collection of reflections and personal essays, Jo St Leon shares her experiences, her darkest moments and her greatest joys. She tells of the journey from fear and denial to acceptance and a determination to live her best life. She shares her deepest thoughts and feelings, always with her characteristic blend of wry humour and wisdom.

The Light in the Darkness is the book Jo wishes she could have found when she first received her cancer diagnosis.

Tell us about your cover

My cover is a particular source of joy to me. It expresses exactly how I feel after living with a cancer diagnosis for six years. I marvel that the Tellwell designer seemed to read my mind.

My initial requests concerning the cover were very vague. I have no talent for design, and although I had an idea of how I would like it to look, I had no faith that this idea was a good one. I thought that if I gave the very sketchiest of information, the designer would come up with something that looked good. Worst case scenario: I had one revision as part of my publishing package, so I could tweak it, or even perhaps reject it altogether.

My requests were something like: mostly dark, with pops of light. What came back was good beyond my wildest dreams. I don’t know if the cover artist read the book, but s/he encapsulated the whole of the content with this one image. No revisions necessary. I sent back a joyous ‘Oh, yes!’ straight away.

So what is it that I love so much? First, it’s the way that the darkness is a landscape. There are so many shades of dark—near-black, grey, darkening, lightening—the hidden depths are extraordinary, and beautiful. There are mountains and valleys, peaks and troughs. This is very much how receiving a cancer diagnosis felt to me. I didn’t fall into the depths of despair, as I might have expected to do, and my world didn’t turn black. Rather, there was this inner world that didn’t have the vividness of the outer world, but was there for me to explore. The book is really a telling of that exploration.

Then there is the light, and the figure gazing into it. It’s almost a religious image, although it’s not a religious book. But the suggestion of walking towards this transfixing light is irresistible, and very much how it felt as I neared the end of the writing. When the book told me it was finished, and there was nothing I could usefully add, it felt a bit like emerging from a chrysalis. For me, and I think for many people, receiving a serious diagnosis prompts much soul-searching. It’s a search for meaning, a need to understand and integrate one’s shadow self, and a determination to live with authenticity for however many weeks, months or years remain.

I think the cover suggests all this and more, although I don’t think anyone idly picking up the book in a bookshop would instantly say all that I’ve just said. This is where I think the cover is so clever—it suggests mystery and majesty. It invites readers in to find out more.

The lettering on the cover is the work of a very dear calligrapher friend, Gemma Black, who donated her services for what she believed to be an important cause. In recognition of her generosity, I am donating $1 from each book sale to Cancer Research.

AUTHOR Bio and Links

Jo St Leon is a musician and writer living in Hobart, Tasmania. Receiving a cancer diagnosis in 2016 prompted her to transition from being a full-time musician who loved to write to being a full-time writer who loves to sometimes play the viola. She shares her house with two very pampered felines. She loves reading, cooking, swimming and yoga.

Connect with Jo St. Leon

Buy The Light in the Darkness            

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Early Review – No Surrender by Patrick Bisher with Jon Land #PatrickBisher @jondland

No Surrender by Patrick Bisher & Jon Land was not what I expected, but so much more than I anticipated.

The true story is disheartening and uplifting, emotions flitting through the pages like butterflies through the air, leaving me feeling like all things are possible.

This is an early review and the book is up for preorder, releasing July 4, 2017.

This is one you won’t want to miss.

No Surrender: Faith, Family, and Finding Your Way

Amazon  /  Goodreads

MY REVIEW

Patrick Bisher’s true story is all about overcoming hardship and finding his true path in life. His determination and perseverance can be an inspiration to us all, giving us hope and encouragement to dream and reach for it.

Michigan is my home state, so knowing Patrick is a fellow Michigander made me want to know his story even more. He is an amazing  man with a story to share that we can all walk away from being better off for knowing it.

Imagine, as a child, a 9 year old boy, hearing, “You’ll never be able to walk again.” When I read that, the first thought to pop into my mind was One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

At the end of each chapter is an inspirational summary of ‘What you can learn from this.’

Patrick takes us from a childhood of bullying, harassment, despair and pain, to an adulthood filled with hope and determination and a desire to inspire and uplift. He is dealt blow after blow, struggling to find his way through every setback. Even when he is lost, he finds an inner strength.

Life is full of surprises and the road twists and turns, a journey we must all take, but there is no straight line.

Funny that he also tasted the General Motors life and found it lacking. I worked there for fifteen years and took early retirement because I wanted more. It felt like a prison to me and I had to spread my wings. Sometimes we have to take a leap of faith. No risk, no reward.

I totally agree with his final chapter and it concerns me for our country’s future.

Patrick believes in Paying It Forward. His story takes us from him being bullied and labeled as a cripple who would never amount to anything, to being a Navy SEAL, when everyone said it wasn’t possible, to giving back to all those who need a little help in achieving their goals and desires.

Believe…believe in yourself.

I felt so good after reading No Surrender and I want to thank Patrick for his service to our country and his willingness to share what he has learned with all of us.

I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of No Surrender by Patrick Bisher & Jon Land.

Animated Animals. Pictures, Images and Photos 5 Stars

Never Surrender by Corey Hart is a song I hold close to my heart.

It was an inspiration to me when I needed one and I hope it lifts you up too.

GOODREADS BLURB

A Navy SEAL who first overcame a crippling childhood condition and then a devastating training accident offers his own experiences as lessons in defeating adversity.

Patrick Bisher’s career as a Navy SEAL should have ended after a parachuting accident nearly crippled him. But overcoming adversity, even an injury as serious as a broken hip, was nothing new for him. He’d spent a portion of his childhood in leg braces. Doctors told him he’d never walk again thanks to a degenerative hip condition. He wasn’t about to give up then, any more than he was in the wake of that parachute training accident. Instead, he went on to serve in combat as a member of SEAL Team Seven, seeing action in Iraq and ultimately winning the Army Commendations Medal, among other awards.

Now Patrick wants to take the lessons he learned on and off the battlefield and apply them to everyday life. He offers inspiration to all who’ve faced the kind of adversity he has. In chapters drawn directly from his own experience, he sketches a heart-wrenching tale of salvaging lifelong victories out of crushing defeats, and hope out of heartache.

From being branded a “cripple” to successfully negotiating BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALS) training, from agonizing pain to heroic achievement, from devastating loss to finding his faith, Patrick’s story is one of discovering ways to do everything he possibly can, instead of making excuses for what he can’t. An American hero who never surrendered is now sharing his lessons with those fighting their own battles to emerge from their dark places into the light and lead a better, more productive life

ABOUT JON LAND

JON LAND is the USA Today bestselling author of more than forty novels, including Strong Enough to Die, Strong Justice, Strong at the Break, Strong Vengeance, Strong Rain Falling (winner of the 2014 International Book Award and 2013 USA Best Book Award for Mystery-Suspense), Strong Darkness (winner of the 2014 USA Books Best Book Award and the 2015 International Book Award for Thriller), and Strong Light of Day (winner of the 2015 Books and Author Award for Best Mystery Thriller and the 2016 Beverly Hills Book Award for Best Mystery). Land is a graduate of Brown University. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

MY JON LAND REVIEWS

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