Forged By Fire Review

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(More customer reviews)I want to stress that the actual plot of the story and the characters were interesting and I enjoyed their purpose, action, dialogue. But I read a review about this book somewhere that said that too much happened at once in the beginning. I don't take peoples' reviews too seriously until I read the book, but this time around, I wish I would have listened. The author tried to cram FAR too much into one small book of 156 pages. The boy was 3 years old at the beginning and by the time it ended, he was 17. People were on drugs, in jail, out of jail, court cases complete, basketball tryouts, friends made, learned to cook, car accidents, dying, all within a few pages. The whole time I read this story, I felt like the author had written an outline of what should happen in each chapter and instead of fleshing it out and letting it grow progressively, she just rammed it altogether and then threw in stuff that happened in a previous book. I read one book by her and bought them all...and now I'm starting to regret it. I hope the fourth one is better, because I loved the first one about Andy, couldn't get into the "Romiette and Julio" book at all, and now this one is crammed. I'm confused over whether I like this author or not--in the book about Andy, the dialogue was on point and the plot was organized and easy-to-understand. In the "Romiette and Julio" book, the dialogue was out of wack and the story was slow. This book had great dialogue and an interesting plot like the Andy book, but it went entirely too fast. I feel like I'm reading books from several different people instead of one.

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Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal with People Who Try to Control You Review

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(More customer reviews)Patrician Evans has developed a wonderful and plausible theory as to why certain people are compelled to control others.
All people have four internal functions available to them to use as internal guidance: their ability to think, their emotions, their physical sensations and their intuition.
Controlling people (CPs) have suffered some kind of emotional or physical trauma as children or adults that has caused them, as a defense, to shut down one or more of the first three functions. Oftentimes, the only function they use is their thinking function. This leaves them feeling empty inside. And it's a tough way to live.
For this reason, they are attracted to "four functioning" people. Once they feel secure with another person, they project their idea of a perfect person into the other person. The don't see the person for who she/he really is.
People can tell when they're in the presence of a CP because they will be defined by the CP (for example, "you're not hungry!") as if the CP can know another person's internal reality. They will not be listened to, the conversation will frequently make no sense and the CP will most likely be verbally abusive.
CPs see others much as children see their teddy bears: the perfect friend who knows exactly what the CP is thinking, who never talks backs or disagrees and who has no separate needs of their own.
CPs build their sense of sense of self from the outside in--not the inside out as is normal. Their personalities are constructs created by themselves to win the love and admiration they seek. They don't come from a place of deep authenticity. They have no sense of themselves. They need to anchor inside another person. Without that anchor in another, they feel lost and adrift, almost as if they are going to die. That's why the compulsion to control is so strong. That's why their reaction to someone who disagrees with them, or who in anyway doesn't fulfill the teddy bear role, can be so extreme and viscious.
The horrible irony for the CP is that their behavior pushes away the love and connection they so desperately need.
The horrible reality for victims of CPs is that they blame themselves, think they are crazy, constantly try to explain themselves to no avail, and think that if they just try harder, all will be well. But it never is.
There's one downside to this book. Ms. Evans spends hundreds of pages, in a lovely, unique writing style, explaining and supporting her theory of why people, and whole groups, are controlling. But she gives only one piece of advice for dealing with a CP, which is to say, "What?" every time they make one of their nonsensical statements or try to define another. I wish she had spent more time on strategies for dealing with CPs. Just saying "what" seems inadequate.

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When One Door Closes: Reflections from Women on Life's Turning Points Review

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(More customer reviews)The first sentence of each of these essays is a jewel. How can you not be hooked with opening lines such as, "I got the call on a Friday afternoon from a Washington D.C. detective, telling me in a very gentle way that David's body had been found;" "When you get married at 46, you can wear whatevery you want;" "Once you've been a mom to six children, there's not a whole lot else;" "I think I have developed feelings for another man;" "A monster is living inside of me;" "She recognized him at once and stilled, mid-sentence, to consider this stranger who exuded a glow of inevitability;" or "By the time news came that Mom had dided, she had been dead for years"?
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We all have times in our lives when we find ourselves facing a crisis, a difficult choice, or a life-changing event. From educator and psychotherapist Terri Spahr Nelson comes a remarkable anthology, When One Door Closes: Reflections from Women on Life's Turning Points, which offers the personal stories of fifty-three women from diverse backgrounds describing crucial decisions or profound shifts in perspective that changed them or their course in life. This book reveals the scope of women's lives as heard through the voices of those who have dealt with issues common to most-love, relationships, marriage, divorce, parenting, career choices, illness, grief, and loss. When One Door Closes brings forth touching accounts that offer readers an opportunity to make a connection, engage in reflection, and find encouragement on their own journeys and to discover that even in the most difficult of circumstances, compassion, hope, forgiveness, or peace can be found.

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