Dr. Randy Kamen takes you into the stories of six women whose search to find greater life satisfaction paves the way for readers to do the same. This is a journey to acquire health-enhancing tools and strategies and learn essential life lessons that will help you develop more loving and sustainable relationships and lead you to your best possible life.

This book provides an in-depth look at what a little-known clinician, the educational therapist, does and how they do it. It goes behind the clinician’s door to illustrate the unusual and broad range of interventions – both academic/vocational and social/emotional – that an educational therapist employs. This particular case study involves a young woman named Nora who had a severe but undiagnosed auditory processing disorder. She could not give meaning to the spoken language that came at her too rapidly, leaving her in a constant fog of words that she couldn’t comprehend. This case discloses the problems, their causes, and the emotional toll that had to be considered when developing an effective educational/therapeutic plan for Nora. It vividly illustrates the dynamic exchanges and mutual learning that goes on between client and therapist. Parts I and II illustrate how the psycho-educational interventions that addressed Nora’s academic and non-academic needs were gradually formulated over the first year. Part III provides a series of vignettes from subsequent years that illustrate the ongoing applications of the therapist’s work. Distinguishing Features Explanatory Sidebars – The rationale behind particular techniques and interventions is clarified through a system of explanatory sidebars that inform the reader without distracting from the story. This approach makes the book both an instructional tool well as compelling story. Organic Curriculum – The rationale for and application of an "organic (personalized) curriculum" is explained and applied throughout the book as a model for others to use in working with this population. A Longitudinal Perspective – The initial work with Nora began many years ago, so this book provides a long view of her life and tracks the influences that educational therapy exerted on her development into a fully functioning adult. Cognitive/Emotional Integration – The core of educational therapy – the interdependence of cognitive skills and emotional response – is clearly documented throughout the book. In addition to educational therapy students and practitioners, this book is appropriate for those working in related fields such as special education, school psychology, school counselling, and social work in educational settings.

Mental Health Professionals help their clients through common emotional challenges. Often not discussed and left untreated is how emotional challenges show up in clients' physical spaces through overstuffed closets, cluttered homes, and stressed families. If you're a therapist, counselor, or coach, Behind the Closed Door encourages you to explore the connection between the mental state and the physical space, so your clients can experience positive and lasting change in both. In this thought-provoking book, Katie Tracy, CPO(R) explores the cyclical relationship between emotions and clutter and how the appearance and function of a home influences thoughts, feelings, and emotions every day. - Experience the unique perspective of a Certified Professional Organizer(R) who works directly with clients in their homes - Learn why "stuff" is a challenge for clients and how clutter at home relates to mental health and therapy - Discover the role that therapy plays in helping clients tackle their physical stuff, and learn strategies that can be incorporated into your therapy practice "Ms. Tracy sets the stage for mental health professionals to understand how physical space filled with clutter can influence the client's emotional experiences." --Dr. Joseph R Ferrari, Vincent dePaul professor of psychology, DePaul University "In Behind the Closed Door, professional organizer Katie Tracy weaves together scientific research and her rich experience working with clients to illuminate the cyclical relationship between our emotions and the stuff that clutters our physical spaces." -Catherine Roster, Ph.D. Professor, University of New Mexico

“A moving and riveting memoir about one family’s love and tragedy…beautifully researched, and expressed” (Anne Lamott). Early one Tuesday morning John Brooks went to his teenage daughter’s room. Casey was gone, but she had left a note: The car is parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m sorry. Within hours a security video showed Casey stepping off the bridge. Brooks spent several years after Casey’s suicide trying to understand what led his seventeen-year-old daughter to take her life. He examines Casey’s journey from her abandonment at birth in Poland, to the orphanage where she lived for her first fourteen months, to her adoption and life with John and his wife, Erika, in Northern California. He reads. He talks to Casey’s friends, teachers, doctors, therapists, and other parents. He consults adoption experts, researchers, clinicians, attachment therapists, and social workers. In The Girl Behind the Door, Brooks’s “desperate search for answers and guilt for not doing the right thing without knowing what it was reveals the utter helplessness of suicide survivors” (Kirkus Reviews). Ultimately, Brooks comes to realize that Casey probably suffered an attachment disorder from her infancy—an affliction common among children who’ve been orphaned, neglected, and abused. She might have been helped if someone had recognized this. The Girl Behind the Door is an important book for parents, mental health professionals, and teens: “Rarely have the subjects of suicide, adoption, adolescence, and parenting been explored so openly and honestly” (John Bateson, Former Executive Director, Contra Costa County Crisis Center, and author of The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge).

Valerie O'Connor comes from a large, close-knit, working class family in Vermont. At the age of eighteen, she marries twenty-five-year-old Jack Marsh. He is a handsome, dashing Korean War veteran, but he is also a damaged man who cannot keep himself from taking his fears and insecurities out on his wife and his five children. To make matters worse, Jack takes Valerie away from her family, and all the way across the country, isolating her from the very people who know her and care about her the most. Too proud to ask for help or admit her failure as a wife and mother, Valerie is unable to protect either herself or the children. One by one, pushed to the extreme, the children escape, in one fashion or another, until they are all gone, even Ricky, the youngest and perhaps the most troubled, and there is only Jack left, and Valerie must face the reality of her marriage and her life. And then, as if out of the ashes, another generation begins. Will history repeat itself? The answer is a message for us all. Visit the author's website on www.sloanbooks.com

"First published in Great Britain by MIRA/Harlequin, HarperCollins UK"--Title page verso.

Set in Kenya in the 1950s against the fading backdrop of the British Empire, a story of self-discovery, betrayal, and an impossible love from the author of The Fever Tree. After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she’d longed for is much changed. Her father’s new companion—a strange, intolerant woman—has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching the boiling point. And looming over them all is the threat of the Mau Mau, a secret society intent on uniting the native Kenyans and overthrowing the whites. As Rachel struggles to find her place in her home and her country, she initiates a covert relationship, one that will demand from her a gross act of betrayal. One man knows her secret, and he has made it clear how she can buy his silence. But she knows something of her own, something she has never told anyone. And her knowledge brings her power.