A Gentle Invitation into the Challenging Topic of Privilege The notion that some might have it better than others, for no good reason, offends our sensibilities. Yet, until we talk about privilege, we’ll never fully understand it or find our way forward. Amy Julia Becker welcomes us into her life, from the charm of her privileged southern childhood to her adult experience in the northeast, and the denials she has faced as the mother of a child with special needs. She shows how a life behind a white picket fence can restrict even as it protects, and how it can prevent us from loving our neighbors well. White Picket Fences invites us to respond to privilege with generosity, humility, and hope. It opens us to questions we are afraid to ask, so that we can walk further from fear and closer to love, in all its fragile and mysterious possibilities.

Behind the White Picket Fence: Power and Privilege in a Multiethnic Neighborhood

Come home to Shelter Valley where love lasts and families matter.... Miranda Parsons is content with her life. She has a great job, a wonderful family, a lovely house. She has good friends. And she lives in a town where people know her, care about her. So what's missing? Passion--as she finds out when she meets Zack Foster. Zack's a veterinarian who's recently moved to Shelter Valley after the failure of a marriage he'd considered perfect. He still likes being with women, but now prefers his romances "short and sweet." Randi and Zack learn what it is to feel truly passionate about someone else--and they begin to want the passion they've discovered. But to get something, you have to give something up. Can they exchange contentment for happiness--even if greater happiness means greater risk?

In all author Serena Lynn Estes’s life decisions, she had chosen to be unsettled to avoid her grief. She moved continuously, bought many homes, had four marriages, and could not seem to settle into herself. She got bored and chose continuous movement to keep herself from stopping, listening, and just being. Then, after Estes turned fifty, she chose to stop the madness. After moving to California, she received her Holy Yoga certification, learned to meditate, and conducted burning sessions to release the anxiety. The last of these entails writing down your feelings and the specific struggles you are currently experiencing and safely lighting the paper on fire in a safe place to watch it burn. A burning session can allow you to let go of the unwanted feelings and struggles and release them into God’s control. When Estes prepares for her burning sessions, it gives her peace and the feeling of surrendering her heartache and challenges into the hands of God. She still struggles, as we all do, but it is what we do with the anxiety within us that counts. Now she seeks to share the story of how she found peace and understanding and stopped searching for the “white picket fence” after making many wrong choices in relationships, friendships, and family issues. Set in Texas and California, this inspirational personal narrative tells the story of a woman who has endured many types of trauma and wants to share her tools for healing with others.

If you have ever wanted to follow your heart, find a new life, a new love, a new beginning. You will want to read this book. This book is based on a true story about Angels, love and loss. Going through the pains of divorce and grief and listening to your inner voice to find true happiness and your soul mate. Finding your White Picket Fences and your Knight in Shining Armour.

When her black sheep brother disappears, Amanda Janvier eagerly takes in her sixteen year-old niece Tally. The girl is practically an orphan: motherless, and living with a father who raises Tally wherever he lands– in a Buick, a pizza joint, a horse farm–and regularly takes off on wild schemes. Amanda envisions that she, her husband Neil, and their two teenagers can offer the girl stability and a shot at a “normal” life, even though their own storybook lives are about to crumble. Seventeen-year-old Chase Janvier hasn’t seen his cousin in years, and other than a vague curiosity about her strange life, he doesn’t expect her arrival will affect him much–or interfere with his growing, disturbing interest in a long-ago house fire that plagues his dreams unbeknownst to anyone else. Tally and Chase bond as they interview two Holocaust survivors for a sociology project, and become startlingly aware that the whole family is grappling with hidden secrets, with the echoes of the past, and with the realization that ignoring tragic situations won’t make them go away. Will Tally’s presence blow apart their carefully-constructed world, knocking down the illusion of the white picket fence and reveal a hidden past that could destroy them all–or can she help them find the truth without losing each other?