Dying to Survive: Not in Vain, A Promise Kept Explores Life and Death Impact of Patient Advocacy
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They were killing her mother with negligence, Melissa Mullamphy recalls. And eight months later, Mullamphy’s mother succumbed following a cancer battle fraught with frustration, medical missteps and the endless bureaucracy that goes hand in hand with navigating our complex healthcare system.
Not in Vain, A Promise Kept is Mullamphy’s candid account of her mother’s journey and the family’s roller coaster of emotions. Readers will witness the mistakes that compounded their pain, the small victories that gave them hope, and above all, the love that kept them going during an indescribably difficult time.
Each chapter in Not In Vain, A Promise Kept represents one month from her mother’s diagnosis to her passing. Mullamphy recalls the experiences with vivid detail (the names of doctors and nurses have been changed), hoping to prompt others to ask the tough questions and learn by her example.
“My goal in writing this book is to keep the promise that I made to my mom … to share her story so others don’t go through what she and my family went through,” Mullamphy says. “You can have input, control and make a difference in your loved one’s healthcare.”
Mullamphy shares shocking lapses in her mother’s care, including blood clots the doctor fails to notice, the confusion surrounding her mother’s DNR order, the time she found her mother wearing another patient’s bracelet and the unspeakable heartbreak of learning that that all along, the hospital had used the wrong type of chemotherapy drug for her mother’s specific cancer.
Not In Vain, A Promise Kept is not without moments of hope, such as when the family is told the tumor has shrunk and when her mother’s last-ditch surgery to remove the tumor is declared “wildly successful.”
Ultimately, Not In Vain, A Promise Kept pays homage to a life well-lived and a woman well-loved, and it’s Mullamphy’s aim to help other patients and their loved ones find their voices, understand their rights and learn how to navigate a deeply complex, imperfect healthcare system.
“Use your voice, and remember that you are not there to make friends,” she adds. “Sometimes you have to be the biggest mouth in the room, but speaking up can save your loved one’s life.”
Author Melissa Mullamphy has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and has worked in psychiatric emergency rooms and step-down houses. Forever a student of mental health, she has also worked with many nonprofits, including those benefiting military veterans. For almost 20 years, she worked as a domestic operations manager for a major corporation. Following her experience with her mother’s cancer diagnosis and treatment, she began blogging about current events as they relate to healthcare.
Not in Vain, A Promise Kept ISBN-10: 1734802634 ISBN-13: 978-1734802634 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com, http://www.melissamullamphy.com and many other online outlets
Trish Stevens Corinne Walker Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
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Are you tired of doing everything yourself? Do you wish people would give you the help you need? Do you get frustrated when your attempts to help others don’t work?
Knowing how to extend a helping hand or ask for assistance when needed is one of the best ways to build trusting, collaborative and mutually beneficial relationships with colleagues, clients, family and friends. And yet, for far too many folks, “help fluency” remains elusive.
Go To Help from mother-daughter team Deborah Grayson Riegel and Sophie Riegel is a truly groundbreaking, easy-to-use guide that teaches concrete strategies to help readers get better at offering, asking for and accepting help — and explores the ways in which “help fluency” builds better relationships both professionally and personally.
In Go To Help, readers will learn how to:
Offer help that inspires others to learn and grow
Overcome emotional barriers to asking for help
Manage when someone doesn’t accept your help
Reject requests when you’re overloaded
Ask specifically for the kind of help that’s actually useful
Plus, Go To Help introduces 31 effective help strategies, along with tips and tools for putting these new approaches to use.
“Let’s face it, navigating the road ahead of us will require that we know how to offer, ask for and accept help, as we adapt to hybrid work environments and evolving workplace expectations; parent in high-stress situations (while facing everyday parenting challenges); participate in school that looks and feels different; and support our friends and family through change, and change again,” Grayson Riegel says. “This book will help you be more skilled, strategic and selective as you help others, as well as help yourself.”
About the Authors Deborah Grayson Riegel is a coach, speaker, author and consultant. She is also an instructor of Management Communication at the Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania, and teaches Leadership Communication for Columbia Business School’s Women in Leadership Program. She is also on the faculty for Duke Corporate Education and regularly writes for Harvard Business Review.
Sophie Riegel is a student at Duke University. She is an author, mental health advocate and global speaker who champions and encourages conversations about mental health.
Go To Help: 31 Strategies to Offer, Ask For, and Accept Help Publisher: Panoma Press Release Date: January 17, 2022 ISBN-13: 978-1784529642 Available online and from all good bookstores
Trish Stevens Karen Williams Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Black Sheep: A Blue-Eyed Negro Speaks of Abandonment, Belonging, Racism, and Redemption (This press release may be reprinted in part or in its entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)
With an afterword by My Haley, PhD, widow of Alex Haley, famed author of Roots and Malcom X
Ray Studevent walked hesitantly toward the door of the nursing home and prayed that his Momma, now in the throes of dementia, would recognize him. Surely, the blue eyes would give him away. The blue eyes that his Momma originally equated with hatred and brutality.
White on the outside, Black on the inside, Ray grew up on the eastern side of the Anacostia River, the Blackest part of the Blackest city in America not long after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the D.C. race riots. There were guidelines if you were Black; different rules if you were White; but only mixed messages for mixed-race children like Ray, who had to fight for acceptance and struggle to find his identity.
Black Sheep: A Blue-Eyed Negro Speaks of Abandonment, Belonging, Racism, and Redemption is the unforgettable true story of Ray’s struggles as a mixed-race boy learning to fight the ghosts of his past to find trust and love. Abandoned by his White, heroin-addicted mother and Black, violently alcoholic father, Ray found salvation at age 5 when he was adopted into a loving, stable home by his father’s uncle Calvin and his wife, Lemell. But that is just the beginning of the story.
Lemell is suddenly widowed and must raise Ray and her two daughters as a single mother in Chocolate City. Each time she looks into Ray’s blue eyes, she sees the Klansmen who tormented her family as she grew up in segregated Mississippi.
Ray and Lemell must navigate the minefields of society’s outward racial tensions while inwardly, Lemell does her best to overlook her emotional scars and suppress her justifiable resentment toward White people when she looks into Ray’s blue eyes.
Black Sheep takes readers on an emotional journey and reveals universal truths through faith and great humor. It is a search for who we are, where we fit and who we can become. Imagine a book where The Notebook meets The Help.
About the Author Ray “Ben” Studevent was a mixed-race child whose unique look led him to fight a racial identity crisis his entire life. Each time he entered a room, he had to decide whether it was better to be Black or White. His personal and career journeys ebbed and flowed, taking him to prison, fatherhood and gigs in comedy clubs, modeling and stock-market research. In all these varied experiences, he realized that race played a critical role. Visit his website at: raystudevent.com.
Black Sheep Publisher: HCI Books Release Date: May 4, 2021 ISBN-10: 0757323812 ISBN-13: 978-0757323812 Trade Paperback, 288 pages Available wherever books are sold
Trish Stevens Lindsey Mach Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Embrace Your Imperfections and Embark Upon a Healing Journey with God as Your Guide
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Crippling fear permeated every aspect of Christine Soule’s life from an early age and followed her into adulthood. Her past of brokenness — abuse, dysfunction, addiction and other trauma — could have very well defined her future. But once she turned to God and let Him lead the way, she found a path toward a brighter future.
“The key is discovering who you are in Christ — your true identify. And that’s especially significant if you, like me, have a past of brokenness,” Soule writes in her inspirational story, Broken and Beautiful. “So much of how we see ourselves revolves around the demands our society places on us, insisting we live up to its expectations. Don’t listen to the world. Listen to God.”
Soule’s life was a jumbled pile of broken pieces. Her father was married seven times; her mother four times. Between her parents’ divorce when she was 5 years old and the day she allowed the power and presence of God into her heart, she watched her sister have an affair with her adoptive father; met 15 siblings she never knew at her biological father’s funeral; turned to drugs and alcohol; got pregnant at 17; had twins less than two years later; and became a victim of human trafficking. She had to break the cycle for the sake of her children. With nowhere else to turn, she dropped to her knees and prayed. And that’s when everything changed.
Broken and Beautiful is Soule’s remarkable story of how God took the pieces of her broken, astonishingly dysfunctional life and transformed it all into a breathtaking mosaic of joy and purpose.
“The places where you feel hopeless are exactly what He wants to redeem and fill with beauty, dignity and strength. He has a plan for your pain. A wonderful intention for your failures. A purpose for your hardest, darkest stories,” Soule writes.
Told with honesty and surprising touches of humor, Soule shares her journey from drug- addicted stripper to exuberant Jesus lover with a passion for helping others embrace God’s love. Broken and Beautiful is a raw, authentic story of hope, from a place of experience.
Author Christine Soule lives with the love of her life, Mitch Soule, in Seattle. They have five kids and three wonderful grandchildren. She is the founder and CEO of Providence Heights (www.providenceheights.org), a nonprofit created to house women and children in need and to provide counseling, education and jobs.
Broken and Beautiful: Let God Turn Your Mess into a Masterpiece ISBN-13: 979-8662957619 Available from Amazon.com (Broken and Beautiful), providenceheights.org and christinesoule.com
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“About Natalie is groundbreaking. It doesn’t preach or pretend to offer a panacea. Instead, it offers a refreshing, authentic look at one family’s struggle with addiction, easily the most powerful book published on the subject in the 21st century.” — Dr. Maryel McKinley PhD, Addictions Expert, Former Co-Host, “All Talk Recovery Radio,” Los Angeles, Ar-bitron rated No. 1 in Southern California
Like the band that played on as the Titanic sank, Christine Naman unpacked the groceries and made a meatloaf — the simple act of normalcy distracting her from an unthinkable reality: addiction was pulling her daughter under.
“Even with the picture of the situation coming more clearly into focus, I clung to denial like a kayaker who has been thrown from his boat would cling to a branch lying across the water,” Christine says. “It is amazing how deep into denial a person can go and how strongly they can hang onto it before reality smacks them around enough so that they let go.”
Christine traces her daughter’s years-long battle with addiction in About Natalie, a gripping, cautionary tale of how, in spite of a loving family and a comfortable life, a child can end up on the wrong path, meet the wrong people and get lost in the unthinkable.
About Natalie takes readers deep inside Christine’s emotional and mental turmoil as she grows into her new, unfortunate role as the parent of an addict. She steps on syringes left on the floor and wrestles one from the family dog’s mouth. She lives the nightmare of finding an unresponsive child on the floor and uses Narcan to revive her. She chases away a drug dealer and stays up all night waiting for her missing child to come home. She rejoices during periods of recovery and hope and is devastated during relapses. When her daughter suffers, Christine suffers right along with her.
Interwoven with Christine’s reflections are Natalie’s compelling poems that share her personal pain and the unvarnished truth of her struggle.
At its core, About Natalie is a story of fighting for — and right alongside — the ones we love, no matter how difficult the circumstances. It is a story of keeping the faith, battling hard and never giving up.
Bestselling author Christine Pisera Naman is a wife to a beautiful man named Peter and a mother to three fantastic kids named Jason, Natalie and Trevor. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, which she does poorly; painting, again poorly; and volunteering at her local hospital, which she hopes she does well. She is the author of the Faces of Hope series of books that are now housed in the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City. Her other works include Caterpillar Kisses, Christmas Lights, The Novena and The Believers. About Natalie is her heart poured onto paper.
She hopes that by sharing her family’s difficult story she can bring understanding and knowledge to those who do not know the problem firsthand as well as provide comfort to those who know the nightmare of addiction all too well.
About Natalie Publisher: HCI Books Release Date: May 2021 ISBN-13: 978-0-7573-2385-0 (Paperback) ISBN-13: 978-0-7573-2386-7 (ePub) Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Lindsey Mach Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
The Devil Thought He Had Me! Shares Remarkable Journey from Sinner to Servant of God
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At 18 years old, Wendell White lay trapped in the trunk of a car and assumed it would be his last ride. Battered from a beating during a drug deal gone-wrong, all he could think about was his 19-month-old son. White prayed. He asked God for forgiveness. He steeled himself to face the consequences of the sinful life he was living. And he wondered in angst, “How in the world did I get here?”
The Devil Thought He Had Me! is White’s raw, compelling story of resilience and survival, and a profound testimony to the power of God’s grace and mercy.
“After getting beaten and put into the trunk of a car, I knew then that I wanted to help the youth and adults all over the world to not make the same decisions that I had made,” he reflects.
The Devil Thought He Had Me! is the result of White’s genuine desire to use his own tragic story to connect with and help alter the trajectory of others who have veered off course. White candidly walks readers through his early days in the poverty-stricken Englewood community on Chicago’s South Side, where his mother sold drugs to make ends meet and often left White and his siblings home alone as she worked the streets. He would later follow in his mother’s footsteps until that fateful day when a drug buyer paged him to purchase two and a half ounces of crack cocaine. And everything went wrong.
The Devil Thought He Had Me! is White’s profound journey from drug-dealing teenage father to well-grounded husband, father, friend, mentor and servant of God. It’s White’s hope that by openly sharing his experiences, he can help others facing difficult life circumstances realize that there’s a pathway out.
“This book was written to be a light in a dark world,” White says. “If I can change the way that you think, I can change the way that you live.”
Author and motivational speaker Wendell White has had to overcome obstacles most cannot even imagine. His difficult upbringing on the South Side of Chicago taught him many bad habits but also instilled in him the values of loyalty, toughness, respect and a strong work ethic.
Today, he is a powerful speaker who draws from his life experiences to address audiences. He is motivated by faith, changing lives, inspiring others and legacy. The Devil Thought He Had Me! is his first book.
For more information, please visit www.wendellwhitespeaks.com, or follow the author on Facebook at Wendell White; on Instagram at wendellw_24; and on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe1s8sYANHZdGtsXJnOCDpw/videos.
The Devil Thought He Had Me Publisher: KS Media and Publishing ISBN-13: 978-1736491201 Available from Amazon.com and www.wendellwhitespeaks.com
Trish Stevens Terri Johnson Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Providence Heights Brings Renewed Hope to Seattle’s At-Risk Women
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Seattle spends more than $1 billion per year on fragmented programs to support its homeless, according to Puget Sound Business Journal. This figure is staggering, yet offers no guarantees that these vital services will be available from one year to the next. Too much hinges on donations and government programs — dollars that hang in the balance relative to the local economy. Women and children are especially vulnerable to the dangers of living on the streets or in unsafe environments, and one woman who has survived unthinkable adversity has founded an organization unlike most others.
In 2019, Christine Soule launched Providence Heights, a Christian-based nonprofit designed to empower Seattle’s women in need through housing, employment opportunities and personal development programs. The organization’s business model includes multiple sources of revenue to generate a sustainable income, something Soule likes to call Capitalism for the Poor. Additionally, “Our unique retail space integration will secure revenue as well as provide apprenticeship, jobs and entrepreneurial skills,” Soule explains.
The initial Phase I launch will provide housing and resilient growth programs for approximately 100 women at risk of going under who simply need an opportunity to regroup and equip themselves to not just survive but to thrive. Also for those who have come out of a program such as the Union Gospel Mission and are fully prepared to commit to changing the trajectory of their lives.
Phase II aims to more than double the capacity and provide housing for more than 200 women, including those with children. Once the revenue stream is firmly established in this phase, Providence Heights will enter Phase III — the final phase — when the organization will replicate this model from city to city. They hope to also empower similar organizations to use its successful blueprint to help those they serve.
Providence Heights Founder and Chief Executive Officer Christine Soule is a lover of people and passionate about leading them toward a restored and dignified life. From her personal experience, she has great compassion for homeless and abused women. She co-founded The Purpose and is a philanthropist, author and inventor. Her recently released book, Broken and Beautiful, chronicles her remarkable journey from trauma to triumph. Christine is also a mother of five and married to Mitch, the love of her life.
