Terry Healey | At Face Value

September 20, 2009 | Comments Off

 
icon for podpress  Interview with Terry Healey [16:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From his website:

Terry Healey is a cancer survivor who endured over thirty surgical procedures in an effort to reconstruct his face, which was disfigured by a fibrosarcoma. Terry has been published in Guideposts Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Psychology Today, and Coping Magazine. He is also a contributing author of Reading Lips, released in 2008, Make Your Own Miracle: Surviving Cancer, released in November 2004, and a contributing author of Open My Eyes, Open My Soul released in December, 2003. He is an Honorary member of the Board of Directors for The Cancer League, Inc., and serves on the Leadership Council of the Wellness Community for the San Francisco Bay Area. Terry is also the President of a sales and product strategy consulting firm called Ridgeview Consulting. Terry has recently appeared on ABC’s “Sunday on Seven” with Cheryl Jennings, Total Living TV Network with Jerry Rose, KTVU/Fox 2 “Mornings on 2″ with Ross McGowan, and appeared on over 30 radio stations across the U.S. Also a professional speaker, Terry regularly presents to corporate sales professionals, medical professionals, and students.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Motivation, Health, Medicine, Spirituality, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST 

John Wareham | The President’s Therapist

September 7, 2009 | Comments Off


Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors. My next guest on the show is John Wareham. He’s the author of The President’s Therapist, and he’s a leadership psychologist, lecturer, writer and poet. Welcome to the show, John Wareham.

 

John Wareham:  Great, pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

 

Dr. Kent:  Well tell me a little about this book. Incredible title, and surely intriguing subject. The President’s Therapist.

 

John Wareham:  The President’s Therapist, and The Secret Intervention to Treat the Alcoholism of George W. Bush is the full title. But yeah, on one level it’s a thriller where insurgents in the White retain a leadership psychologist to help George Bush overcome his addiction to alcohol and reverse the course of the Iraq war. But on a deeper level again, it is not just a thrilled, it is not merely a window into George Bush’s life, but it’s actually a life changer that instills the lifetime of work that I’ve had working with CEOs at one end of the social spectrum, and prison inmates at the other. And so, one review had said that it was a parable for leaders and followers, daughters and sons and wives, addicts and onlookers.

 

Dr. Kent:  Well, and it’s such a hot topic, you know, but until the last hundred days there was no more, I guess controversial figure in the world maybe than George W. Bush, and he’s still on the tip of all of our tongues. Why did you choose such a hot topic?

 

John Wareham:  Well, there were three reasons for that. First as a lifetime leadership coach, I could see that George Bush was the classic salesman over-promoted to CEO, and as such that he was in need of some serious help. But because I also work with a, as a substance abuse counselor, I was very quick to see that he was, when he began to slur his words and become (inaudible) and rigid, which are all signs of an alcoholic. Of course, he showed up to work with a black eye, as you recall, and he claimed that he fell off a couch. It seemed very clear, I thought, that he was desperately in need of help at that point. But then the third reason, which, the thing that actually got to me, I suppose more than anything else, was this whole torture issue. Because I became an American citizen because I believed in their ideals and I believed in their values, and we were the good guy. But suddenly we were not the good guys. Suddenly we were actually practicing torture. And it was hard for me to believe it. Now, I thought I should help, and I believe that if I could sit down with George Bush I would be able to show him what his blind spots were, as I’ve been able to do with other CEOs. But obviously I wasn’t going to be invited to the White House to help, and so I created a leadership psychologist and I sent him in to do this work for me, actually.

 

Dr. Kent:  Hmmm, that’s fascinating. And that’s you, I also come from a family of therapists, and I have to say that they all have their theories about President George Bush as well. And it’s such a fascinating thing because he wasn’t necessarily all that up front about his trials and troubles.

 

John Wareham:  No. The key to understanding him is to appreciate that he was effectively an abused child, actually. That he lived in a horror there as a child, everything seemed to be perfect. But in fact it wasn’t at all. He was emotionally abandoned by the father, he wasn’t ever there anyway. He was off with his mistress and all sorts of other women friends that he had, and he was pursuing his career. And he was left in the care of Barbara Bush, who although, I mean, she seems like a congenial individual, but in fact if you look a little closer, she was a very cold, callous and somewhat cruel individual. And so here’s George Bush as a small child having to deal with this, being accepted on one level, it would seem, and yet being rejected on another. And so he became an incredibly anxious person. And that’s why I would suggest that he had to drink the way that he did, and of course he was in drugs and everything, because it was his underlying anxiety.

 

Dr. Kent:  Well, and it’s also, in watching then President George Bush over 8 years, he did ease up a little bit towards the end. Now, at the beginning he just seemed like he didn’t fit at all. And actually at the very end he seemed very uncomfortable. He wanted to get out. But it’s almost like a heyday for a psychologist to look at this fellow’s career in office.

 

John Wareham:  Yes, well he was engaged, I mean here he is an anxious individual, right, who had been a serious alcoholic. And you give that up for religion, and then he’s engaged from that point on as, I guess he always was, in the classic Oedipal struggle to outperform his father. But that was not going to be a easy thing for him to do at all because the father was an authentic over-achiever. And he was a genuine hero and an athlete and a scholar. Whereas the son was infinitely less gifted, and try as he would, try as he did, he couldn’t ever, he couldn’t ever out-perform the old man. I mean, he came close some people would argue. But at the end of the day, I would say that he really brought the whole family name into disrepute. That’s how ultimately he was able to get even as it were. He was, he’s the classic person who destroys himself because he’s anxious, and he can see that he’s just unable to win at the end.

 

Dr. Kent:  Well and it’s so fascinating how, you know, you are to be applauded just for the concept of the book. What if you were to have the chance to sit down with the President and change his life and as a result of that change the course of world history? How could that therapist in the White House have changed the course of history?

 

John Wareham:  Well, I think he came very close in the book. If you read the book, he sits down with George Bush and is able to lead him to an understanding of the forces that compelled him to make the awful decisions that he did. And in order to bring a person to the light, in order to bring a person to an enlightenment, you can’t sit opposite of them and say, “Listen, the problem with you is that you just don’t think clearly, and you don’t see clearly.” I mean, you can’t do that. You have to lead the person to an understanding of the unconscious forces. And this is what Dr. Alter actually does with him. Now we all, we all have similar problems but, and that’s why the book was interesting. Other people that have actually read the book said that they saw themselves on the pages there because Bush doesn’t really understand why he would condone torture. I mean, he’s got no inkling really of why he went along with all that. But the answer to the question is that he was just treated cruelly when he was growing up. And there are some other forces at play as well, which I actually explain in the book. But bit by bit he gradually comes to see this. And if a person can genuinely see what their problems are, then they want to end them. And so this is where the book actually gets to, where he isn’t that keen to address the harm that he did. And unfortunately there are other forces that then come into play. I’m not sure whether you got to the end of the book, but the end of the book is a very satisfying thing, I think, and it will please everybody, too, whichever side of the aisle that you’re on. I think that if you had the ending, and I should say as well that Dr. Alter is in there to help George Bush, and so he treats him with understanding and care and empathy. And so this isn’t a book that seeks to destroy George Bush or to make fun of him, but actually to help him. I’ve got a feeling that he’s actually read the book. But anyway, that’s a whole other thing, and if he hasn’t, I wish he would.

 

Dr. Kent:  Well, and you know, in, I was so surprised, you know. George Bush was very humble when Barac Obama came into power, and he was very gracious it seemed on the outside, and then I was very surprised that when he got down to Texas he said, “Well, you know, I’m back home now, and I didn’t do anything wrong.” It was sort of this sort of regression almost to sort of a protected place. He’s such a fascinating character in the history of the United States, and I think he always will be. But talk about the actual George Bush, and do you think he did have therapy?

 

John Wareham:  No, I don’t think he did. He would have been much better off if he had. At this point, even though he may have done neither, but I think he feels an unbelievable amount of shame. Because again, he has wound up, as it were, lying in the gutter. I mean, Obama comes in and has clearly completely eclipsed him. He’s gone the other direction (inaudible). But what George Bush, at the end of it, his approval ratings were unbelievably low, and he has gone out in, I would say, disgrace. And I would think he’s got to, he’s got to learn to somehow deal with that and to begin with, he’s explaining it away and saying that history will judge. But I don’t think that that isn’t, I don’t think that that actually will wash with him. Outwardly, his style was that of the folksy cowboy. And people thought was fine. You know, he seemed like a folksy guy, and he seemed like a down home individual. But what you couldn’t quite see under that, there was a tremendous amount of anger and anxiety. And he provoked a war that he didn’t have to have. He could have ended the torture, but he didn’t. So if we go to treaty by the (inaudible) affairs, we can say well, outwardly he seems like a nice congenial individual who has got a (inaudible), especially the people. But that’s not at the end of the day what his actions revealed, right? At the end of the day he began a war we didn’t have to be in, he is responsible for the lives of 4,000 men and women who are dead now. And you can slice it any (inaudible). This is not a sort of legacy that you would wish for yourself at all. And if he hadn’t been there I don’t think these things would have ever have happened. Anyway, that’s what happened on his watch. And so he will…yes?

 

Dr. Kent:  He’s almost, he’s almost too good to be true for a novelist. It’s almost so, he’s already so much of a character that you have something really interesting to work with.

 

John Wareham:  Yes, (inaudible) to work with. Well, actually the psychoanalyst himself has got some issues of his own, which comes through in the book. And he’s dealing with the death of his own son through drugs. So he himself is very much attuned to George Bush’s problems and understanding of them. And that understanding that he brings makes it possible for George Bush to go along with the treatment that is offered. And he leads him to the point of the world is going to alter, and we see what happens then. Anyway, I don’t want to spell out the whole book, but as I say, it’s got a great ending, and I think the story was already one through, 72 hours it happens and it’s happening on a personal level for Bush, it’s also happening on a personal level for Dr. Alter, and it’s happening on a personal level for the reader also, cause I don’t think, people have said that you can’t read this book and not be altered yourself.

 

Dr. Kent:  Well, it’s certainly a, I certainly believe those statements because you’ve had a past of writing many different varieties of books, including the working with prisoners in becoming leaders, Secrets of a Corporate Headhunter.

 

John Wareham:  Right.

 

Dr. Kent:  And then also your other novel, Chancey On Top. How is this novel different for you in that fold?

 

John Wareham:  How is this one different? Well, you get a chance to, I mean, everybody would have liked to have sit opposite George Bush and to confront him, right, on the death of these young men. And so in this book, the reader gets the opportunity to do just that. I mean, he’s there, as it happens. And that was fun for me to do that. And I really, I guess the other thing about the book was I really didn’t know, I didn’t know how it would end. I mean, when you begin on a novel you know approximately what you’re up to. But to see how George Bush would respond to treatment. And again, everyone, if you’ve read the book has said it seems that this is exactly how he would behave. So by that he begins to see the light, he begins to understand his behavior, he begins to feel that, he begins to see the harm that he has done, he begins to wish to alter everything, and then it gets very exciting as well. I was also able to have a talk with Dick Chaney as well, which was sort of funny, and Carl Rove, so they were in the book. And also he has a section with Laura Bush, also. So it’s, you know, some underlying issues around, which nice people don’t really know. I mean, the fact that she, the fact that she killed her former boyfriend, you know, isn’t all that well known. I mean, it isn’t. Well, she did it, she ran the guy over in her car. I mean, she was never prosecuted, they said it was an accident, but again Dr. Alter’s left to, he’s left to speculate about that, and everyone else has been, too. So I think the family, the family history there is laid out. And again, it’s all very clear and then helping her to understand why she was attracted to a man who has got alcohol problems all his own. It makes for pretty interesting reading. But I was especially pleased at the way the endings have finally all come together (inaudible) check out the end. I mean (inaudible) novel, you want everything to come together at the end, you want the excitement to build, and it certainly did for me the whole way through. And it was only after I completed the book the first time that I thought this is excellent. I couldn’t believe that I did it. But then I had this other great idea, so I went back and I fiddled with that, I fiddled with the book, and at the end of the day I thought it was the best that I could do. I thought my books before were different, but of course I had a lot of fun doing this. It’s what every reader, it’s what every person in America would have loved to have done, which is to sit down and help George Bush understand the error of his ways and correct those errors. We would all love to have done that, right?

 

Dr. Kent:  Absolutely.

 

John Wareham:  To have a talk with him and say, “How could you ever condone torture,” and he says, “Well, it wasn’t,” and you say, “Give me a break.” Show it to him, show him clearly. Show that he cannot hide from it, right? And this is what happens in the book, but it’s done in a very pleasant way. So I mean, you’d like to confront him on that, you’d like to ask him about the deaths of the people that he killed, to get the opportunity to see how he responds when he’s out. The press, let’s be honest, the press never asked him a hard question ever, right?

 

Dr. Kent:  Right.

 

John Wareham:  They would ask him a question and then he would just go on at length over and over and over. Nobody ever seriously sat opposite of that man and said, “What the hell are you doing?” Right? Nobody ever did it. Right?

 

Dr. Kent:  Indeed.

 

John Wareham:  Nobody did it. Right. Right. And so he got away with that all that time. People have been much harder on Obama, who hasn’t done anything wrong yet, right?

 

Dr. Kent:  Indeed. Yeah, and I could sit and talk with you for hours about this book, and with Dr. Mark Alter, the man who actually had a chance to confront George Bush. The book is called The President’s Therapist, and The Secret Intervention to Treat the Alcoholism of George W. Bush, and wow, what a topic. And thank you so much for talking with me at length here.

 

John Wareham:  A great pleasure to be on the show, thank you so much for asking me.

 

Dr. Kent:  Yeah, and people can check out more at johnwareham.com, or ThePresident’sTherapist.com, do I have that right?

 

John Wareham:  Yes, right. Yes.

 

Dr. Kent:  And of course the book is available wherever books are sold.

 

John Wareham:  Everywhere but, you can also get it on Amazon as well, but it should be available in all bookstores as well, but if you have a problem, I mean for sure it’s on Amazon, it’s been on the bestseller list there ever since the day of Obama’s inauguration.

 

Dr. Kent:  I can imagine. And what’s your next project?

 

John Wareham:  I’ve got one, well actually I’ve got two, but I’m not going to talk about them because somehow if you do, the air goes out of it, but I’ve got something exciting that (inaudible). Oh, actually I’ve got some serious film interest in my earlier novel as well, called Chancey On Top. And I might also turn this, I might also turn this book into a (inaudible).

 

Dr. Kent:  I’d love to see The President’s Therapist as a film, too, so, but what an honor chatting with you. It’s John Wareham, and The President’s Therapist. You have a wonderful day.

 

John Wareham:  And you too, thank you so much.

 

Dr. Kent:  And my next guest on the show is the author Sarah Allen Benton, and she wrote Understanding the High Functioning Alcoholic: Professional Views and Personal Insights. And we’re going to talk with her in just a minute. She is a college licensed mental health counselor, and she’s got some great insights. And it’s great to talk about that right on the tail end of The President’s Therapist, and The Secret Intervention to Treat the Alcoholism of George W. Bush. What if John Wareham created a situation where a therapist actually went into the White House and had a chance to counsel the former President. So come on back, and we’re going to talk with Sarah Allen Benton, and that will be great.

 

Posted by admin | Filed Under Medicine, History, Health, TRANSCRIPTS, Spirituality, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Politics, Religion, PODCAST 

Darren Littlejohn | The 12-Step Buddhist

September 5, 2009 | Comments Off

 
icon for podpress  Interview with Darren Littlejohn [18:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Darren Littlejohn, author of the 12-Step Buddhist (Beyond Words/Atria 2009) is a recovering addict and a practitioner of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as a former mental health specialist. He earned a BA in Psych in 1991 and worked in chemical dependency and acute psychiatric care facilities during college. Darren took 2 years of graduate school in Research Methods for Psychology. He has been a Buddhist practitioner since the mid 80’s. A spiritual crisis led to a relapse in 1994 with 10 years of sobriety.

After regaining sobriety in 1997, Darren worked on recovery with a new zeal, incorporating many years of psychotherapy, 12-Step work, Zen and Tibetan Buddhist practices. While relapse with long-term sobriety is common, returning for a sustained duration is extremely rare. Darren’s program, which became the basis for the book the 12-Step Buddhist, is an integrated approach that is hard won over a span of more than twenty years. Darren, a jazz guitarist and dog lover, now lives in Portland, Oregon, with his life partner of more than 10 years, Tysa Fennern and their two dogs. He’s been involved with many community projects, including the fight against smoking, creating dog parks, community television and a spiritually driven jazz program.

For how-to articles, audion/video podcasts, workshops, and resources see the12stepbuddhist.com. Twitter
@12stepbuddhist

Posted by admin | Filed Under Motivation, Health, Medicine, Inspiration, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Jill Starishevsky | My Body Belongs to Me

September 3, 2009 | Comments Off


Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors! I’ve got four guests on the show today. At then end of the show we’re going to have Dale Anger, who’s one of the best fiddlers of our whole time. He’s done work with the Turtle Island String Quartet, amazing group, and before that we’ve got two best selling authors, Michael Port, who’s the author of Book Yourself Solid, and a new book we’re going to talk about with him, all about manifestos, thinking big manifestos. And I’ve got Michael Gates Gill, the author of How Starbucks Saved My Life, and he’s a best selling author as well. He’s going to talk to us later on in the show. But at the beginning, I’m very excited to talk to an author of a book called My Body Belongs To Me. She is an assistant District Attorney in New York City, and it’ll be fantastic speaking to her about children, and also about sort of the craziness of New York that we all see on television, but now we can hear about first hand. So welcome to the show Jill Starishevsky.

 

Jill Starishevsky:  Thank you for having me, very good pronunciation of my last name.

 

Dr. Kent: I was about to ask that. Good, good. So tell me a little about you background, what a, it’s a hard job that you have, right?

 

Jill Starishevsky:  Yes, I prosecute sex crimes against children, as well as sex crimes against adults, and child abuse as well. So all of those things are kind of sad and difficult. I’ve been doing it in New York City for almost 12 years now, and I find that as long as I don’t think about what I’m doing, I can move forward. But if I spend too much time thinking about it, it weighs me down. Otherwise I just think of it as helping people, and I can push forward and get the job done. It’s really quite exciting work, but sometimes it’s not dinner conversation. Dr. Kent, did I lose you? Hello?

 

Dr. Kent: Hello, and welcome back to Sound Authors. We’re back on the air after some technical difficulties, and I believe now I also have Jill back on the line. Sorry about those difficulties, we’ve got you back.

 

Jill Starishevsky:  No worries, happy to be here.

 

Dr. Kent: So let’s go back where we were, and we were talking about, you had said that it’s a difficult job, and I surely understand. My father actually works with child abuse kids, and specializes in neglect and shaken baby, and all sorts of things, and it’s a horrible thing to hear folks that are in that industry, well, I shouldn’t call it an industry, in that service talk about the horrors that happen to these children. How do you go to sleep at night?

 

Jill Starishevsky:  You go to sleep by not thinking about it. You just do as much as you can during the day, and when you go home you pray, and you pray for the kids that you dealt with, and you just go to work and you start again the next day. I have to say, some of the hardest cases that I’ve had to deal with are the shaken baby cases, because you just ask yourself, who would do this? How could someone do this to a child? Those are particularly difficult now that I’m a mother, but overall, the child (inaudible) and the sex abuse against adults, it’s very, it’s difficult work, to say the least.

 

Dr. Kent: And part of that, I imagine, is what inspires you to write a book like My Body Belongs to Me. Talk about that.

 

Jill Starishevsky:  Well, absolutely. One of the things I learned early on in doing this is that children don’t disclose immediately when they’ve been sexually abused. People think that if a child falls down on a playground they’re going to come running over to the parent and say, “Oh, I hurt my knee.” And they try and draw a parallel and say, “Well, of course if my child were, God forbid, sexually abused, they would come running and tell me.” But it doesn’t work like that. And in so many of the cases, the children that I’m seeing have endured years of abuse in silence. And I decided after years and years of seeing this that something needed to be done. And there was one case in particular that really sparked this book, that was really the catalyst for me to write this book.

 

Dr. Kent: And now, let’s talk just a second about, one thing I’ve heard, and I’m pretty sure is true, is that most…  And here we are again, back live again on BlogTalk Radio. Clearly there’s some connection problems today, but luckily we’re still live with the incredibly author Jill Starishevsky and the book My Body Belongs to Me. We’ve had some difficulties, but we’re persisting here.

 

Jill Starishevsky:  We shall overcome.

 

Dr. Kent: Yeah, so tell me more, right where we left off. I’d love to know more about this book. How can we keep our children safe, and the question I’ve asked, I had heard that most domestic violence does occur within families.

 

Jill Starishevsky:  Well, domestic violence is the violence within the family, that’s inherent in the definition of domestic violence, but most child abuse often does occur with either inter family, or with someone who’s a close family relationship, because someone has to have access to your child. So the person who’s going to be alone with your child and therefore able to hurt them or touch them is someone who you trust to take care of them, whether it’s a soccer coach, a religious official, it’s someone who you trust to be alone with your child. So it’s the kind of thing where a lot of people think, “Well, this isn’t going to happen to my child,” so they don’t talk to their children about how to prevent child sexual abuse. They don’t teach them what it is, that their bodies are private, that no one should be touching them, and therefore, if they are touched, oftentimes children don’t know who to tell, and therefore the abuse continues and often escalates.

 

Dr. Kent: And what has it been like after writing this book? What’s it like being in touch with children and parents in this way?

 

Jill Starishevsky:  Well, you know, it’s actually been wonderful because I feel like in my role as a prosecutor I get to the children after they’ve already been hurt, and there’s nothing I can do to prevent that hurt. All I can do is work and move forward to try to get justice against the person who did this to the child, but having written this book, this is like a proactive step that I can take to try and help prevent the abuse from happening in the first place, help encourage a child who already has been abused and is continuing to be abused to get the courage to disclose and tell someone. So the book is very simple, it’s a 22-line rhyme, and it tells the story of a child who is touched by an uncle’s friend, and then tells a parent right away, and the parents praise the child for being brave enough to tell, and it’s a message that’s empowering for children. So although we as parents come to the subject with a lot of baggage, children hear this story and it’s light and easy to hear, in child-friendly language, and they walk away understanding that their body parts are private and that if someone touches them inappropriately to tell a parent or a teacher right away.

 

Dr. Kent: Well, and it is, it’s such a difficult discussion for parents to even have with their kids, and that’s part of the problem, right?

 

Jill Starishevsky:  Right. Parents are afraid to have the discussion, they either don’t know what to say and don’t want to mess it up and therefore say nothing, they don’t know when to say it, and they’re often under the impression that it should be when a child is 7 or 8, but it’s really much younger that they need to hear this information, but again sometimes parents are under the belief or misconception that this isn’t going to happen to my child, so I don’t need to have this conversation. But it’s the kind of thing where no one thinks it’s going to happen, just like we teach children water safety and look both ways before you cross the street.  You never think your child’s going to get hit by a car, but you still teach them about traffic safety. It’s the same thing with their bodies. You hope this never happens to them, but you give them the information, the tools, so as to hopefully prevent it, and again, worse case scenario if it does happen to know to tell someone right away. And in the back of the book there’s a part that’s called “Suggestions for the Storyteller.” And that’s the part of the book where it tells the parents how to utilize the book, what to talk to the children about after they’ve read the book, with questions to ask. So it’s really foolproof. It really, we’ve gotten a wonderful response from parents and educators in the medical community, and people who have really embraced the book and understand that there’s a need for this, and this is a tool that’s helping to facilitate an otherwise difficult conversation.

 

Dr. Kent: Well, and there was an interesting, in the election cycle, in the sort of brutal stuff that developed during the elections there was a statement that went out into the press that Obama was in favor of sex education in kindergarten and how crazy is this, and it seems to me that what he had been talking about was something like what your book does.

 

Jill Starishevsky:  Absolutely. I mean, he’s talking about child abuse prevention, and child sexual abuse prevention. You know, this conversation is very timely. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, and what the President’s talking about was that at a young age we need to teach children how to protect themselves and to know that their bodies are private and that it’s ok to say no. You know, we teach children, “Listen to adults.” And there needs to be a caveat, “Obey adults, unless they’re telling you to do something that’s hurting you, in which case it’s ok to say no to an adult. It’s ok to run away.” This is not common sense, and I can tell you this firsthand because I’m seeing the children on a daily basis, and part of what I do as a prosecutor is I need to understand why a child didn’t tell, or why a child didn’t say no and run away, so that I can explain to a jury. Because a jury might think, “Well, if this were happening to my child it wouldn’t have gone on for two years, and my child would have told me right away.” So I have to ask these children, “Why didn’t you tell? Why didn’t you run away?” It’s not intuitive. Children either, either they’re told, if he said, “It’s our secret,” or “He said no one would believe me,” all of these things are addressed in the book. We talk about, “We don’t keep secrets from adults.” You know, children and adults don’t keep secrets. In fact we’ve taken that word out of our vocabulary at my house. If you need to use the word surprise you can say surprise, because oftentimes it’s not that these children are being threatened into silence. “I’m going to hurt your mother if you tell them what I did.” It’s, “This is our secret, ok, don’t tell anybody,” and the kids don’t. So this is really a conversation that we need to start having at a young age, and I think schools across the country have been responding so positively to this book, and I think it’s only a matter of time that this message really gets out there.

 

Dr. Kent: And you talk about a particular incident from your work that sort of inspired this book. Do you want to go into that a little bit?

 

Jill Starishevsky:  Oh, sure. I mentioned that children often don’t tell. There was one case in particular, after years of hearing that children didn’t tell, one case really became the catalyst for this book. I prosecuted a case involving a child who was 9 years old, and she had been sexually molested by her stepfather from the time she was 6 until she was 9, and she told no one. And one day she got into an argument with her mother, who knew nothing about the abuse at the hands of her husband, and she said to her mother, “You love my little brother more than you love me.” And the mom wanted to show her daughter that that wasn’t true, that she did love her. So she had her 9-year-old watch an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show that was on, it was called “Tortured Children.” It was about parents who physically abuse their kids, locked them in cages, horrible stuff.  The mom wanted the 9 year old to watch the show so she could say, “This is what parents do who don’t love their children, and I love you.” So the 9 year old watched this show, and although it wasn’t about sexual abuse, the 9 year old got Oprah’s message, which was, “If you’re being hurt and can’t tell a parent, because it is a parent, go to school and tell your teacher.” After three years of telling no one, this little girl went to school the very next day, and she told her teacher, “My daddy’s been,” whatever, however she characterized it. And the teacher told the principal, and the principal called child services, and child services called the police, and the police brought it to the District Attorney’s office, and I prosecuted the case a year later, when she was 10. I put the little girl on the stand and I put the teacher on the stand, and I put the principal on the stand, and we talked about the Oprah Winfrey show, and we convicted the man, and he’s now in prison for a very long time. Back when that happened I thought all it took to end this little girl’s nightmare, three years of a nightmare was a TV show saying, “Tell a teacher.” So I thought, either Oprah needs to end every show by saying, “Tell a teacher,” which of course she can’t do, she’s got a huge platform, and I understand that, but I was like either Oprah needs to end every show saying that, or someone needs to do something. So years went by and I saw more and more children who didn’t disclose, and the abuse continued, and I kept waiting for someone to do something, and finally I said, you know what, I’m going to do something. And I wrote this book, and that’s how I got to where I am. And it’s really been a wonderful thing because I can see it making a difference. The more the book gets out there, I really feel that there’s a war going on out there, another war, that the child predators know how to get to our children. They know what they like, they know how to get them alone and what to give them to keep them silent, and we’re not talking to our kids, and it’s not working so far. We’re not talking to our kids, and they’re getting to our kids. So if we try talking to our children and teaching them about how to keep themselves safe, then we can have a better chance of winning this war.

 

Dr. Kent: Wow, it’s such a powerful story, and you speak with such conviction about it, I certainly hope this book gets a mighty platform. And again, as the child of someone who did a similar job to what you’re doing, worked with abused children, it’s a real chore to have that in your life, and it’s amazing that you’ve turned around and created a wonderful book like this.  My Body Belongs to Me is written by Jill Starishevsky, thank you so much for talking to me today.

 

Jill Starishevsky:  Wonderful being here.

 

Dr. Kent: And we can find out more about the book at mybodybelongstome.com, and that’s really such a beautifully illustrated book, so positive, and a great way to teach your children about all of these things, and we all need to do that. So it was great speaking to her, and my next guest on the show is going to be the award winning author Michael Port, come on back for that.

 

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, Health, Childrens, Medicine, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, TRANSCRIPTS, PODCAST 

Terry Healey, Author of At Face Value: My Triumph Over a Disfiguring Cancer

May 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors!  It’s Friday again and we’re all psyched to be going home for the weekend. This is Dr. Kent, and my next guest on the show has an extraordinary tale.  The book is called At Face Value.  It’s written by Terry Healey.  At Face Value: My Triumph Over a Disfiguring Cancer.  Welcome to the show.

Terry Healey: Hey, thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent: Give me a nutshell about this book.

Terry Healey: Well, I’d like to say it’s an inspirational memoir that’s really about my experience overcoming a facially disfiguring cancer, but also probably more importantly, how I was able to eventually, over the course of several years, come to terms with that, accept myself, and ultimately in the end be grateful for the experience.  It was something that really other people encouraged me to do.  There was a lot of people from the support group that I was attending that just thought that it was a message that could help a lot of other people and so that’s why I ultimately wrote the book.

Dr. Kent: And what a story it is that you have to tell.  How did you, there’s so many people that have gone through awful events in their life, and they kind of give up.  Talk to us about how you kept going through all of this and have come out the other side.

Terry Healey: I would say that I was very lucky, actually, that I had a great support system, I had great family and friends who provided not just good solid support, but were full of positive energy.  I had a medical team that I believed in from day one, who I felt could do what they had to do, that believed in me, in getting through this.  So I trusted a lot of people around me and I think that helped a lot.  When I spend a lot of time with cancer patients who are newly diagnosed I often hear that they’re not very keen on their doctor, or they don’t feel very good about the treatment plan that’s ahead of them.  I was really lucky to have that, so it just kind of fell into place for me. But I definitely would pass that on to anybody that that support system that you have that’s around every day, if it is a medical team that you need, you owe it to yourself to go out and find the people that you connect with and that you trust.

Dr Kent: This happened to you as a young man.  It’s a time in life when we don’t anticipate anything happening to us.  The world is on a string, and it’s always so difficult for young people to deal with difficulties like this.  Talk about the beginning of this struggle for you.

Terry Healey: I think it’s a great question.  I was not unlike a lot of 20 year olds that think they’re invincible, you know, nothing serious is going to happen.  I think when I was initially diagnosed with the cancer and was told I had a rare form of cancer, I still felt that way, I felt that I’ll be able to lick this thing, this is no big deal. And fortunately I was able to beat it initially and really wasn’t left with any form of disfigurement, but it was 6 months later when I had this recurrence that it really hit me, hit me hard, and made me realize that I was in for a long road to hell.  This was something that was going to be life threatening, potentially and most likely was going to be very disfiguring, and so at 20 years old when you think about your life, appearances matte a lot.  We’re all kind of in that mode, especially here in the United States where that’s a very important fact. So kind of grappling with those issues.  Believe it or not, I think the disfigurement part became a greater challenge for me, especially given that it lasted quite a long time in terms of having to deal with that, have surgical treatments for years and years to recover from the disfigurement.

Dr Kent: I can’t even imagine what this was like, going through, as can most, I would say, a good portion of your audience is amazed that you were able to get through it at all, but then there’s another portion of your audience whom you give courage to. Talk about that part of your audience.

Terry Healey: First off, I think a lot of people on the surface will make comments like, “God, I don’t know how you got through that, I could never get through something like that.” Well, I think oftentimes we underestimate what we can get through, and you hear these stories on TV all the time about different types of adverse situations, adversities that people have to confront and deal with, and all different types of things that happen to us in life.  And so, I think people underestimate, I think we all have some human instincts that help us get through that stuff, but you know, I guess I do have messages for people in that I think it’s important for people to think about what if I was faced with something? What kind of survival kit would I need to get through it.  I won’t go through all those points, but when I public speak, I talk a lot about my survival kit, and some of those elements that can help other people, and I mentioned some of it before, but I think the first thing is you’ve got to make sure you’ve got a good support structure around you.  You’ve got to make sure you surround yourself with positive people.  But you also have to make sure that you have a purpose in life beyond whatever it is that’s hit you, and that’s probably the hardest thing, but I think making sure that there are other things that you’re always striving for, trying to look beyond the illness, beyond the condition, beyond the situation.  As hard as that is, I think that’s what helped me to try to look forward and believe that there was going to be something.  I didn’t know when it was going to happen, but down the road my life was going to be better.  And you know, I think it’s also important, especially for males to hear this, is to talk to a counselor, to go to a support group. A lot of men resist that more so than women, obviously, and so those are things I resisted as well, but when I actually opened my eyes and opened the door to it, I found that it was incredibly beneficial and really instrumental.

Dr Kent: What a neat, on the back side of things, what a neat way to take disfiguring events in your life, not just you, but this throws everything on its head, and you’ve been able to turn it into sort of a lifetime of devoting it to people.  How is that a blessing for you?

Terry Healey: It’s a blessing in so many ways.  I mean, to your point, I think it is kind of my little ministry, if you will, to make sure that I’m able to get out there and talk to other people and help them, but it’s a constant reminder for me of the fact that I appreciate every day now.  But it’s also taught me a lot about relationships, and I think we can take things for granted.  When you’re faced with something like this, it forces you to get that fresh perspective.  I’m the more forgiving person and I’m certainly more accepting of other people, and I think more tolerance.  All those kinds of things are really important, but primarily the blessing for me is what you just said, that I’m able to actually get out there and have that reward of being able to help other people in different ways, and my story isn’t just about cancer and disfigurement.  It’s the things that I learned and the things that I can share with other people. That’s really the greatest blessing through this whole thing.

Dr Kent: My father has been in a wheelchair for a while, and he’s completely fine, but after a car accident that he and I were in many years ago, he lost his ability to be the same human being that he was beforehand.  He can’t be the runner that he always was through his life, and that puts him into the disability crowd.  What I find interesting is I spoke to someone else about this very recently, is that this country sort of goes in stages.  Right now there’s the Prop 8 and homosexuality, the big issue right now.  There was different times when women’s rights was a big thing.  Do you think disability rights is ever going to come to the forefront?

Terry Healey: You know, you hope it does.  I think for any group that is not the majority, for any minority group, that’s always the greatest challenge, is how do you get the same rights as everybody else.  Unfortunately, the smaller that minority group it is, the more difficult it is, the less champions there are for it and so as horrible as any of those things are until somebody becoming disabled in some way during the course of their life, the people that have the ability to reach the masses, people like Christopher Reeves, for example, they can do so much, and bring so much to the forefront and help elevate a lot of those things that are important.  And just because you’re a small minority doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t receive the same benefits and be treated the same way as everybody else. So I’m certainly hopeful of that.  An aside is, I think about the cancer that I had, and the fact that I try to support it, I try to provide dollars to it, I try to help fundraise for it.  The problem is, it’s such a small percentage, that it’s really tough to get any mindshare, any research dollars to go toward it. So it tends to be this ignored type of cancer.  And unfortunately, it’s something that affects young people, so not to say that young people are more important than old people, but if you have a disease for example, that’s hitting people that are in their teens, even though it’s a small percentage, that to me is also an important thing to focus on.

Dr Kent: In talking about disabilities, what’s interesting is that you don’t really have a disability.  But your sort of experienced the same thing, probably, when you were young, and probably the most difficult thing to deal with is if you’d been in a wheelchair, people stare at you.  Right?  If you have a disfigurement, people stare at you.  Talk about that.  You’re the same guy you were, and now all of a sudden people stare at you, and they don’t quite understand.

Terry Healey: Yeah, that’s a great point.  It is, if people are different, they get treated differently.  If they look different, or if they act different, no matter what they get treated differently. That was the hardest thing for me, because when I was 20 years old my life was smooth sailing, and I never had issues of dealing with struggles with the opposite sex or anything like that, it was easy.  And then suddenly I was this monster, if you will, and kids pointed and stared and laughed, and even adults asked a lot of questions, which made me uncomfortable.  But what I think is amazing about the whole transformation, and we have to give ourselves time to transform, but over the course of many years I tried to work on the internal, as opposed to the external part of me.  At a certain point I cut off and ignored this, trying to reconstruct myself back to the way I was, and instead said I’ve become really insecure, I’ve got to focus on the inside.  What I found was, when I’d walk down the street in 1986 people would ask me questions.  But why, several years later, in the 90’s and beyond do I never get questioned anymore, do kids never come up to me and ask me questions.  It’s a rare thing now for somebody to notice that I’m different, and all I can think of is that, and granted I don’t have something that may be as noticeable as being in a wheelchair, but I think it’s how we carry ourselves, and the confidence that we have, and I think if we don’t make a big deal about being different, nobody else will.  Or people are less inclined to. That’s the only thing I can think of. I look the same as I did in 1986, or 1991, let’s say.  Why was I getting so many questions back then and so many difficult situations, and now it’s just so rare to have those.  To me, that was a real life transforming experience, and I was lucky that it’s worked out that way.

Dr Kent: Well, it’s been such a pleasure chatting with you, I could talk all day about this book, and about your life story.  Terry Healey’s website is terryhealey.com.  Tell us in just about a minute about your speaking business and what projects are you working on now, and of course, how is this book doing for you.

Terry Healey: I’m doing a fair amount of speaking.  I have a full time job as a marketing strategy consultant, so I have to pick these things and pick and choose a little bit, but I speak to a lot of corporations, sales and marketing organizations within those.  I speak to a lot of schools, and that’s something that I find probably the most powerful in terms of impact.  So, young kids in high school or even middle school, sometimes in college, who are dealing with issues of insecurity, dealing with appearance-related challenges.  So those are great ones for me, and right now I’m doing a lot around these Relay for Life’s and stuff with the American Cancer Society, so supporting events with other cancer patients that are dealing with things today.  So I’m trying to focus and pick those things that I think I can have an impact on and where my story will resonate.  The book just kind of comes secondary, and as much as people can read and not be distracted by all the other things around them, great, if they can pick up the book, it’s an easy read.  But it’s a nice complement to the book to have the ability to speak to people in groups.

Dr Kent: Well what a pleasure it’s been.  The book is called At Face Value: My Triumph Over a Disfiguring Cancer.  We’ve speaking with Terry Healey, and I can’t wait to talk to you the next time.

Terry Healey: Hey, thank you so much for having me.

Dr Kent: Now, my next guest on the show, as always, is a musician, and I’m going to start out playing a track from her album, and Susan Oetgen, and the group is called Likeness to Lily, and I’m going to play a track from their record.  It’s called False Hopes, a beautiful track.  Listen to this, and after we listen to the track we’re going to talk to her live, so come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Motivation, History, Health, Medicine, TRANSCRIPTS, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST 

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