My Favorite Color Is Blue. Sometimes

Life is hard. Sometimes, children find that out sooner rather than later. For a child the loss of a loved one may be difficult to process. Children lack the vocabulary to express their feelings as adult do; their brains are not fully developed so completing the...

Crafting Gratitude

Most of us know that practicing gratitude has many benefits including greater happiness, better health, and increased productivity. Gratitude journals, where you might list five things each day which you are thankful for, are one way to focus on gratitude, but after a...

The Lifesaving Church

From the title, you might think this book is a how-to for churches and other faith communities on how to prevent suicides. It is that, but also much more. It is the story of the author, Rachael A. Keefe, her struggles in a highly dysfunctional family, her eating...

The Pope’s Cat

Children are drawn to animals and find them fascinating, so it’s no surprise that a number of children’s books focus on animals. The Pope’s Cat written by Jon M. Sweeney and illustrated by Roy DeLeon is a little bit different, however. It tells the story of a very...

Bruised & Wounded: Struggling to Understand Suicide

I must have been around eight or nine years old when Aunt Mill died; she was my mother’s aunt (my great-aunt) and my mother was close to Aunt Mill, who called the night she died. Aunt Mill had been drinking and had taken pills. She wanted to end her life but had...