Inspired by her mother’s numerous tales of growing up in Nebraska during the Depression, and as her life as a young bride and as a nurse, Mary Jane began compiling these anecdotes years ago when she began to realize their significance to her family’s history. With the birth of nieces and nephews and the death of her beloved mother came the realization that life does not last forever and the imperative to preserve these family treasures became even greater. With generous and enthusiastic contributions of photos, facts, details and insights, family members enhanced these stories and provided depth and luster to this glimpse into an American family descended from immigrants. Although it is typical in many ways, this family is unique – as perhaps all families are unique – and the author’s gratitude to her parents, her sister and each of her relatives is boundless.

A powerful and honest account based on three decades of true-life experience Award-winning The Branches We Cherish weaves together thought-provoking, joyous, and poignant reflections of four birth parents, birth grandmothers, adoptive parents, and two adopted children. In 1992, Linda and David long to have a child. They decide to adopt a baby and learn they can only do so under an open arrangement where the biological parents and the adoptive family know each other's identities, and choose to remain in contact after the adoption is finalized ... possibly for life! There are no ready answers to their many questions: What happens in the first year? Twenty years later? What does visitation between birth and adoptive families look like? Will it be awkward to raise a child with the birth parents in the picture? How do adopted children feel about this open arrangement? In the early 90's there is little guidance for long-term relationships between adoptive and birth families, so Linda and David have to learn as they go. Diving in with open hearts and open minds, they build relationships based on mutual trust, respect, deep gratitude for one another, and most importantly, unconditional love for a child. They learn just how important having the children's birth parents and families in their lives is for everyone's emotional health—including their own. Discover the challenges of open adoption and the extraordinary gratification available to all members of the adoption constellation when they are willing and able to cultivate and maintain these lifetime relationships.

We are so influenced by others and our foundation beliefs and thoughts that we give up easily. We don't even give a second thought and just go with the flow of the world. This book will give you the details of what we are missing out to conquer on small things daily to boost our motivation. The simple methods and change of perspective would help you achieve daily small goals and dream about future long goals. To give value to all my readers and give them simple ways of how they can tackle any hindrance in their own life and can influence others for the same.

LITTLE GIRL FOUND!

Cherish: Behold, I Knock continues the story begun in Cherish: A Still, Small Call about Reverend Andy Garrett, his family, his friends, and the working of God in a rural community called Cherish. This is Andys first church, and even though Andy is from the suburbs of Chicago and knows little about farm country, he and his wife, Abbey, grow close to the flock they serve. It is a church that knows how to deal with bats in the sanctuary, a deaf substitute pianist, and a wild-haired and poetic church secretary. Andy finds out what happens when the water of the baptistry boils over the night before a baptism, and he learns how his unchurched, bartending background can be used by God to change the life of a drug-addicted teen. Most of all, Andy finds an opportunity to share with his parents the love of God and the truth of Christs redemption. It is dramatic and remarkable how God finally works to draw them to himself.

One evening in 1994, writer Brooke Stephens was listening to the news while working on a tribute to her grandfather for an upcoming family reunion. The evening's newscast began with three negative reports about black men--as rapists, muggers and murderers. The contrast between the black men on the news and the black man she was writing about suddenly seemed enormous. Where were the black men she knew? Stephens wondered. Why were they never featured on the evening news? Never publicly discussed or shown? From these questions, the idea for Men We Cherish was born. Waiting to Exhale and the Million Man March to the contrary, good black men are neither fantasy nor unanswered prayer. In Men We Cherish, thirty African American women celebrate these everyday heroes: fathers and grandfathers, brothers and best friends, sons and husbands. These essays, memoirs, and love letters offer moving portraits of the three-out-of-four black men who never make the headlines. The men in the lives of established black women writers, including Bebe Moore Campbell, Gloria Wade-Gayles, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and the Delany sisters, reflect the diversity, honesty, generosity and depth that is the reality of African American men. With Men We Cherish, Brooke Stephens has created a groundbreaking collection that stands alone in the market as a literary memoir, a social critique, and an affirmation of faith.

My book doesn't have one plot like a novel. Oh My Gosh, Virginiahas a whopping 100 plots. This book is a collectionof my columns over the past fteen years. "Grin and Bare It" means exactly what it says. I have no secrets in my columns. I call my writing essays orcommentaries. Each column has a series of facts, combined with my opinions. At times, my writing is tongue-in-cheek, which confused my mother-in-law. She'd say, "Hon, I think I like your stories, but I don't understand them." My writing goal in the monthly news magazine Today in Mississippiand the George County Timesis to entertainand encourage people to lighten up. A few stories are sentimental, but the main thing is they are true life happenings.You will most likely nd yourself in many of the stories, since I write about things we all have in common. I frequently speak to civic organizations, women's clubs, bank socials, country clubs and church groups. Once I wasintroduced at a Methodist Church dinner in Columbia, Mississippi, and the president of the organization said, "Kayhas come to make us laugh." I'm not a comedian, so that made me very nervous. I call myself a humorist when I write or speak. The differencein a comedian and a humorist is that a comedian tells one joke after another, and in our day, many of them are off-color. No thank you. That's not me. On the other hand, a humorist writes about the fun side of life and, in the process, has an encouraging message to deliver. I believe we need all the encouragement we can get. I write some funnystories now and again, but I don't call them jokes. People like me I call "incident prone." Things just seem to happen to us. A few months ago in my ladies' SundaySchool class, I'd unbuttoned the top button of my suit skirt because it was tight after a ve-pound weight gain, andit fell off when I stood up. I froze in shock and stood at my chair like a statue. Two helpful members grabbed myskirt and pulled it up for me. My readers like pet stories, travelogues, memories, current events that are fun and different and, well, just look inthe Table of Contents for some other topics. I stress a good attitude in stories and speeches, though we're all faced with unwanted changes, unexpectedchallenges and unpleasant surprises. I've heard it said that things work out best for those who make the best outof the way things work out. I liked that, so I adopted it as my philosophy for life. Keep grinning Helen Kay Fountain Grafe"

Cherish is an inspirational book that primarily focuses on teenagers and youth to help them realize the value of life. We often tend to lose ourselves in the constant noise that surrounds us all the time. Cherish attempts to help us seek what really matters. It also teaches us to be unfazed during tough times. With a friendly tone of communication, it also shares real life anecdotes that will help you to seek the glory inside you. Every insight in it will give you something new to know and help you to understand yourself. Cherish will make you know how precious you are and how precious your life is.

Exploring Depth Psychology and the Female Self: Feminist Themes from Somewhere presents a Jungian take on modern feminism, offering an international assessment with a dynamic political edge which includes perspectives from both clinicians and academics. Presented in three parts, this unique collection explores how the fields of gender and politics have influenced each other, how myth and storytelling craft feminist narratives and how public discussion can amplify feminist theory. The contributions include some which are traditionally theoretical in tone, and some which are uniquely personal, but all work to encounter the female self as an active entity. The book as a whole offers a multi-faceted and interdisciplinary approach to feminism and feminist issues from contemporary voices around the world, as well as a critique of Jung’s essentialist notion of the feminine. Exploring Depth Psychology and the Female Self will offer insightful perspectives to academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, gender studies and politics. It will also be of great interest to Jungian analysts and psychotherapists, and analytical psychologists.

In Perpignan, south of France, a woman who had survived Meningitis, died after a serious car accident leaving her two daughters alone with their unworthy father, dragging them away from their country to move to the United States. Amelia and Megan were two amazingly beautiful girls who had their mothers heart but their fathers charm. Amelias husband receives an anonymous letter telling him not to trust the people whom he treasured most, taking him to Chicago to find out who the perpetrator of the mysterious letter was. Megan unleashes all the story of what happened between herself and her sister during the time they were living with their grandparents. Amelias husband faced with this story tries to uncover the real truth of what happened to his wife with the help of his friends. Megan had a baby boy after seven months of getting married and she was looking forward to start a family with her French husband. Why after so many years of turmoil, jealousy and lies Megan and Amelia had to be separated again, this time for ever.