Post-Traumatic Thriving Explores Powerful Ways to Heal After Heartbreak
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Just when everything seems to be going right — our jobs are stable, our children are succeeding, and the stars seem to be aligning in our favor — the floor drops out. Stunned and unable to make the simplest decisions, we shut down completely. In that moment, it’s nearly impossible to imagine things ever being “normal” again. What just happened?
“It is trauma, in all of its forms. It slaps us right in the face, and hard,” says world-renown expert on disasters and trauma Dr. Randall Bell. “When trauma hits, the most critical decision we make is to choose whether to be a victim, aggressor, survivor or thriver.”
In his new book, Post-Traumatic Thriving: The Art, Science, & Stories of Resilience, Dr. Bell interweaves science and academic research with stories of people who have not just survived, but have used their trauma as their fuel to thrive. Dr. Bell sits down with survivors of the Holocaust; murder-victim’s families; crime victims; suicide survivors; and those who’ve experienced homelessness, disasters, addictions, depression, death, divorce, disabilities, defeats and disease to explore the rare mindset of the post-traumatic thriver.
Through this unprecedented research, Dr. Bell shares with readers stories of remarkable resilience, including the following:
• A deaf man with a glass eye invented the electric guitar and became a household name, remarkably wealthy and most importantly, happy. • A convicted murderer took responsibility for the damage he caused, graduated with honors from college, became a minister and turned around the hearts of the most hardened criminals. • A girl born with cerebral palsy landed the world’s first starring role on national television and spoke at the White House three times. • A woman hid in a basement for years and lost her entire family in the Holocaust. She eventually found true love and paints stunning artwork. • The sister of a murder victim helped millions of women in toxic domestic relationships. • A woman’s car crash resulted in an addiction to prescription drugs, a divorce, a loss of her children and a cot in a homeless shelter. She has rebuilt it all back and more. • A man set to go to the Olympics had his hopes dashed by Jimmy Carter and went on to build a worldwide business empire.
Ultimately, Dr. Bell documents the science of happiness, as well as the individual styles and common thread that all post-traumatic thrivers have to emerge with a fulfilling life. When trauma hits, your most significant decision will be to dive, survive or thrive. If you choose to thrive, this book is for you.
As an economist, Dr. Randall Bell has consulted on more disasters on earth than anyone in history and is widely considered the world’s top authority in the field of post-traumatic thriving. His clients include the Federal Government, State Governments, International Tribunals, major corporations and homeowners. Dr. Bell believes that “the problem is not the problem — the problem is how we react to the problem.”
Often called the “Master of Disaster,” Dr. Bell is squarely focused on authentic recovery and resilience. His research has been profiled on major television shows and featured in numerous magazines and the international media. More information can be found at www.posttraumaticthriving.com.
Post-Traumatic Thriving: The Art, Science, & Stories of Resilience Publisher: Core IQ Press Release Date: January 1, 2021 ISBN 978-0-9967931-7-9 Available from Amazon.com and all bookstores
Trish Stevens Teresa Hinojosa Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 832.569.5773 Direct 281.333.3507 Phone [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
Ashley Samson Trish Stevens Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 Phone: (760) 213-8005 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
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Angel Faces® — You Will Never Forget Their Courageous Stories
We live in a society of selfies and status postings; how you look can dramatically affect your self-esteem more than ever before. But add to that being mauled by a raccoon, or left for dead in a horrific house fire, and it can be a living hell. The physical and emotional scars can be unbearable when you are faced with the cruelty of the world. But there’s hope…
Burn survivor Lesia Cartelli is sharing her experience and helping girls navigate the permanent disfigurement left from traumatic injuries. The stares, unwanted questions and rejection are the reality this special group of survivors deals with on a daily basis.
Lesia knows this is true because she lived through it herself. Her desire to heal from a natural gas explosion at age nine that left her seriously burned over 50% of her face and body, encouraged her to create Angel Faces® for girls and women who suffer disfigurements from traumatic injuries. This year, two retreats will be held concurrently in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, on June 16 – 23, 2019.
Over thirty adolescent and young women (ages 13-26) with disfiguring traumas will come together on a private compound on Lake Winnipesaukee to heal. They come from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma Texas, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Ontario, Canada, and their stories will tug at the hearts of your audience.
During the multi-day retreats, survivors hear first-hand from Cartelli about her injuries and methods she used to recover. Through role-playing, the girls learn strategies on how to handle staring, teasing and intrusive questions, and during daily yoga, art therapy, lake play and intensive sessions, the participants begin to let their social armor down. The truth of the effect of their trauma is exposed so they can begin to heal. Licensed psychologists and clinical cosmetic professionals are also on hand to lead groups.
“Our retreats are only the first component to healing,” Cartelli explains. “Seeing our participants realize they are not the ‘burned or disfigured girl;’ they are a daughter, sister, a good soccer player, etc., first. Their trauma is an experience (a reservoir within themselves they can now access for courage), but it’s not who they are. I hear from their families or medical centers that referred them that after they return home with the tools they learned at the retreat, they are much more confident and self-assured in the real world—ending their social death. Now that gets me excited!”
Her own experiences on the long road to healing inspired Lesia to write a book as a way of helping others in their journey. Heart of Fire demonstrates how to discover blessings and gifts within any challenge, and the importance of opening our hearts to deeply heal what blocks our life’s pathway. In her book, Lesia also teaches the power of embracing our fears—something she did herself at age thirty-three when she faced her fear of fire and suited up in full firefighting gear to enter a burning building known as a “control burn.” A beautiful side note to the story is that after she conquered her fear, she married the fire captain who actually led her into the fire.
Angel Faces®, founded in 2003, is a non-profit organization headquartered in Encinitas, CA, whose mission is to provide healing retreats and ongoing support for adolescent girls and young women with severe and permanent disfigurement from burn/trauma injuries so they may achieve their optimum potential and develop meaningful relationships for themselves, their families, and their communities.
For more information, please visit the Angel Faces website at www.angelfaces.com.
Trish Stevens Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 281.333.3507 Main/Office 832.334.2733 Cell [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
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Clues Surrounding Six-Day-War Ambush Start To Surface In Blood In The Water
On June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty, an unarmed intelligence ship reporting to the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the auspices of the National Security Agency, was ambushed by unmarked jet planes. Rockets and machine gun fire erupted, napalm hit the deck, and a torpedo blew a 40-foot hole in the starboard side of the vessel. Lacking any means of defense, the sailors were powerless. In the end, 34 American sailors and translators lost their lives and another 174 were wounded — many for life. Israel confessed to the attack but called it an “accident” and a “mistake.”
Blood in the Water: How the US and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty by investigative writer Joan Mellen presents evidence suggesting complicity between US and Israeli intelligence in the attack on Liberty and the more than 50-year-long cover-up.
Using interviews with more than 40 survivors, knowledgeable political insiders and even some CIA officers who refused to be complicit in the cover-up, along with Soviet archives of the period, Mellen details the intensity and horror of the sustained attack and the “deliberate targeting of Liberty’s antennae and satellite dish, undermining any credibility that Israel’s aggression was not intentional.”
Through exhaustive research, Mellen aims to unearth answers to questions that have lingered for more than 50 years: What were the underlying motives for the attack? Was this a false flag operation conducted in the midst of the Six-Day War? Is it conceivable that Israel initiated the operation without a green light from the US?
For the sake of justice, truth and the murdered and surviving sailors, Blood in the Water is a must-read that shares compelling evidence of a horrifying truth.
Joan Mellen is the bestselling author of 24 books, including A Farewell to Justice, her biographical study of Jim Garrison’s New Orleans investigation into the Kennedy assassination. She has written for a variety of publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Baltimore Sun. Mellen was a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University in Philadelphia before retiring in 2018 after 50 years. She lives in Pennington, New Jersey.
Blood in the Water: How the US and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Released: December 2018
ISBN-10: 1633884643
ISBN-13: 978-1633884649
Available from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com
Trish Stevens Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 281.333.3507 Main/Office 832.334.2733 Cell [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social sharing)
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Apocalypse Survivors Groomed For Life At The Edge Of The Solar System
For those who’ve ever tried to imagine a post-apocalyptic Earth, Dr. Donald Hricik has come up with some interesting scenarios of his own in Our Great Escape; Part 1: Dumbers. The year is 2360. Survivors are being groomed for a new life on one of Jupiter’s moons after having been kept alive for centuries on mind-altering drugs.
Here’s the twist. The man picked to head the exodus to the edge of the solar system, a doctor, discovers that these survivors are losing their memories and emotions and even dying in large numbers — the results of a flaw in the drug’s design. The author grapples with larger themes of surviving a man-made planetary catastrophe as well as whether or not life is even worth it if it must be lived on mind-altering drugs that come at great cost. First in a two-part series, Dr. Hricik admits he wrote Our Great Escape while undergoing seismic shifts in his own life.
“I wrote it while I was dealing with my wife’s illness and death from severe dementia,” said Dr. Hricik. “That’s why you see themes of memory loss, dementia and death percolating throughout.”
Born in Ohio, Dr. Hricik is currently Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University and served as the Chief of Nephrology and Hypertension at University Hospital’s Cleveland Medical Center from 1993 to 2017. His research interests have focused on complications of immunosuppression and immune monitoring of kidney transplant recipients. He has published more than 180 articles and books, and 35 book chapters. When he’s not writing, he enjoys painting and fishing.
To read more about Dr. Hricik, please visit: https://dhricik.wixsite.com/website-1.
Our Great Escape; Part 1: Dumbers
Kindle Direct Publishing
Released: 2018
ISBN-10: 1981016287
ISBN-13: 978-1981016280
Available from Amazon.com
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I would like to send a complimentary copy of The Essence of Resilience: Stories of Triumph Over Trauma, in consideration of an interview or review from you.
While the effects of trauma can be devastating to a person’s life, it’s how they respond to it that becomes the game-changer. In this gripping new book, Tanya Lauer and Kathleen Parrish, authors and professional counselors with forty years combined experience, share powerful stories of trauma survivors who reclaimed their voice and their resilience. Please read the following release and let me know if I may schedule an interview with either of these experts, or provide a review copy of the book. In the event you might want to run this story, let us know and we’ll be happy to send you a jpg of the authors and book cover for your use. Thank you for your time.
Kim Weiss Director of Communications HCI Books, The Life Issues Publisher 3201 SW 15 Street Deerfield Beach, FL 33442 (800) 851-9100 ext. 212 [email protected] www.hcibooks.com/trade
The Essence of Resilience: Stories of Triumph Over Trauma By Tanya Lauer and Kathleen Parrish
Tucson, AZ – When trauma strikes in the lives of unsuspecting victims, it leaves wounds that run deep. If not properly tended to, these events can leave scars that affect the way a person relates to themselves and everything around them. “It is said that every scar tells a story,” Lauer and Parrish write in The Essence of Resilience: Stories of Triumph Over Trauma (HCI – ISBN: 9780757319419 October 2016 — $14.95), but often those stories are kept locked away in silence by the victims who are struck voiceless and alone in the dark shadow of their pasts. By keeping their stories buried within themselves, often trauma victims distort the reality of their trauma and devolve to self-blame, and very often cope with drugs, alcohol, and other unhealthy and dangerous behavior.
But everyone is capable of harnessing resilience – the part of ourselves that refuses to surrender or die. Everyone is capable of reclaiming themselves and taking control of the present by learning to cope with their pasts, and in The Essence of Resilience, fourteen trauma survivors demonstrate the miraculous healing power of storytelling to work through finding the “gift in their wound.” Stories include:
• A young girl bullied by her classmates, losing her definition of herself in their hurtful words. • An adopted daughter, searching for a sense of belonging through substance abuse. • A rape victim regaining her voice through therapy animals. • A Marine with a history of child abuse learning the power of sharing and facing his past.
Tanya Lauer and Kathleen Parrish are professional counselors who specialize in those who have suffered a traumatic experience, which they define as “any event that violates your sense of safety and wellbeing, or shatters your integrity or sense of wholeness.” With a combined 40 years of experience helping trauma survivors cope, Lauer and Parrish share their tried-and-true arsenal of tools including Relationships, Trust, Travel, Compassion, Gratitude, Animals, Nature, Humor and Spirituality that helps victims reclaim their voice in this gripping and powerful book.
Join these survivors as they face their pasts head-on, sharing their deepest and darkest moments to open themselves up to the ability to heal. These stories, while they may be painful, are also published to be motivational to those who may be suffering silently on their own. These tributes to each individual’s past reveal an inspiring look into the miracle that is human resilience, and allows us to bear witness to these brave survivors in their triumph over trauma.
About the Authors
Tanya Lauer and Kathleen Parrish are Licensed Professional Counselors with over 40 years combined experience providing counseling and trauma intervention services. They are affiliated with Cottonwood Tucson, an internationally renowned residential treatment program for co-occurring disorders in Tucson, Arizona. They are frequent presenters at professional conferences in the United States and in Europe.
Available wherever books are sold or to order directly from the publisher: www.hcibooks.com or call (800) 441-5569 ISBN: 978075319419 — $14.95 October 2016
Kim Weiss Director of Communications HCI Books, The Life Issues Publisher 3201 SW 15 Street Deerfield Beach, FL 33442 (800) 851-9100 ext. 212 [email protected] www.hcibooks.com/trade
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Brace For Impact: “Miracle on the Hudson” Survivors Share Their Stories of Near Death and Hope for New Life
What Passengers of Flight 1549 Want Others to Know About Second Chances
Deerfield Beach, FL – On January 15, 2009, the world was mesmerized by “the miracle on the Hudson.” Against all odds, Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger safely landed a plane plunging toward disaster on the river. More amazingly, all 150 passengers survived—and, for the most part, with nothing worse (physically) than a few bruises and soggy clothes. At the time, many of us tried to imagine how we would have those three chilling words—“Brace for impact”—and then, amazingly, been spared from certain death?
A year later, it’s time for a different, perhaps more meaningful story. What happened to these extremely fortunate passengers when they went home? What was it like to return to their families, their jobs, their neighborhoods—everything familiar, but somehow changed? How did they celebrate coming back from the brink of near-death trauma? How did their loved ones respond to the living proof of a miracle? What has been the real impact they braced for, not of the disaster and death they expected, but of the gift of a “new” life?
Intrigued by these and other questions, authors Dorothy Firman and Kevin Quirk set out to find answers—by asking the survivors themselves. The result is an inspiring collection of first-person accounts: Brace For Impact: “Miracle on the Hudson” Survivors Share Their Stories of Near Death and Hope for New Life (HCI Books). Along with the personal stories of 25 men and women profoundly affected by Flight 1549—survivors and first-responders—this volume offers lessons about faith, gratitude, wisdom, healing, love, and transformation for everyone in today’s world of upheaval and challenges. Readers will hear from parents who believed they would never see their teenagers, toddlers, or a child on the way; an ex-Marine officer, a swimming pool serviceman, a nurse, a TV executive, and a boat pilot; survivors who have publicly spoken about their experiences at churches, schools, businesses, and organizations as large as the American Red Cross, as well as those who have remained private. Through their heartfelt, stirring words, their courageous admissions of fear, their humor and their hope, the contributors reinforce the importance of family, knowing what really matters, and discovering our purpose. Throughout and above all, Brace For Impact stands as a testament to how something good—even something wonderful—can emerge out of crisis and tragedy. And that’s a timely, welcome lesson to inspire and comfort everyone. ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Dorothy Firman is the New York Times bestselling co-author of Chicken Soup for the Mother and Daughter Soul, among numerous books. She has worked in the field of psychology and counseling for over thirty years. Kevin Quirk is a former journalist with The Charlotte Observer, among other newspapers, and a prolific ghostwriter and editor.
For more information, please visit http://www.hcibooks.com/p-3987-brace-for-impact.aspx
Brace For Impact: “Miracle on the Hudson” Survivors Share Their Stories of Near Death and Hope for New Life
Available online at https://www.amazon.com/Brace-Impact-Miracle-Survivors-Stories/dp/0757313574/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= ISBN 978-0757313578
