I previously stated that talking with a therapist helps to deal with childhood trauma.
I don’t know what contacting a therapist is like in your area, but it’s practically impossible here in Tucson. Therapists are backed up for months. Then I heard about on-line therapy.
My sister is working with an on-line therapist and loves it.
Therefore, I decided to look into on-line therapy, and here is what I found:
Forbes Help recommends Betterhelp and Talkspace, and Cerebral, all of which are rated excellent. Google prefers Talkspace as No. 1.
There are others, and you can find them all on Forbes Health, which lists Betterhelp as No. 1, but this depends on what type of therapy you are seeking.
A subscriber suggested another site for information on child abuse here.
Scams
Look out, these guys are getting better all the time.
I nearly fell for one this week. He claimed to be Daniel Taylor representing Lionsgate Films. Almost everything checked out: the right rep being Taylor who is on LinkedIn, the correct return address and, of course, Lionsgate is a respected filmmaker. Finally caught him by noticing he sent from an incorrect email, as legit companies almost always have email addresses that have their company name URL in the email address. If any of you writers receive what appears to be too good to be true, it likely is.
Book Talk
The above is one of the many photos I have collected for The Texian Trilogy on Pinterest. If you are interested in seeing the others:
I am deep in researching the third book of The Texian Trilogy which currently is titled, Aftermath, the Long Way Home. Since the story takes place in Texas, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Mexico, and Nassau in the Bahamas, research in prodigious. I must discover what occurs in all these places at particular times and how it affects my characters. Readers please be patient with me.
Somehow, I manage to find time to read fiction, and I am loving the Cork O’Connor crime/mystery series by one of my favorite authors, William Kent Krueger. This interview with Krueger discusses writing the series.
Here is Chapter 2 of Learning to Fly:
The town of Redfree is a fine place for raising barley and healthy children who grow up and either raise more barley or head for the nearest city with more to offer than dragging out of bed before dawn and carrying a mortgage that is never paid. Donnor’s Fuel, Maggie’s Diner, Leff Mercantile and First Bank and Trust face one another across the road that runs north to south through town. In fact, these establishments were practically the entire town until three months after the War of Secession began, when ten miles east where land is flat, grouchy old Simon Calder up and sold every acre he owned to the Gaian Military Forces for as much as he could fleece them. His family had been unlucky as they owned the only parcel with no water. This lack didn’t keep the military from diverting water from the Fern River and building an air base there. In a desperate attempt to secede from Gaia, planet Beo and the Lux Corporation made the stupid and, some say, unforgivable, mistake of creating Droids without restraints against humanity. It took less than a Gaian year for the Droids to turn on humankind, forcing the two planets to set aside their grievances and unite forces in the Lux War, which was more horrifying than anyone could have imagined. It took six years for the newly formed Allied Fleet to put the surviving Droids to flight. As peaceful years pass, everyone, even the military, comes to believe this hope as fact. The war that decimated so many cities and which came close to destroying both Beo and Gaia turned Redfree from a little-known farm town into a thriving picturesque community. Many consider it safer to raise children here than in Dunedin, the sector capital only an hour’s drive in the servolane west. The war was the catalyst but, as usual in such situations, individuals were responsible. Captain Ryes MacLeish was stuck with the responsibility of creating housing for all the enlisted and officers who flooded the new air base. He knew nothing about the job, but he was a clever man, and knew how to get help from someone who did. He called upon an old friend, John Mack Gabriel. John Mack was a developer, and when he had a good look at Redfree, he saw his future.
Redfree abides in a lovely valley with the Jericho River rushing southwest on the west side of of town. The Jericho falls in cascades and rapids along a scenic, two-lane road, beloved by bikers, motorized and not, twisting out of the Mineral Mountains to the north. Pines and furs seeded by the original ships took over most of the weaker indigenous trees of the mountains and surround an eighteen-mile lake. Farther to the west, low hills and a small mountain rise perfect for a scenic overlook and late night trysts by prep school students. Pink-barked poplars grow along the river and throughout the town, and their leaves are bright turquoise in summer and fluttering gold in fall. Most important, it’s a short drive west to Dunedin City, where you can do your business and return in a single day.
John Mack built his home on the Jericho River. South of town is Mattland Allied Fleet Base, and families who live on that end of town are likely military, related to the military, or retired from the military. Not that those farther north would peer down their noses at anyone down south. The southwest possibly, where the river runs under the train bridge and along South Elizabeth Street where certain types can be found, not all enlisted either.
Many of Redfree’s finest abide on the southeast side, officers and their families. Several folks are active in Redfree politics, filling seats on the Town, Architectural, and Arts Council. Lynelle Monroy, suited up and in heels, clack clacks out of her white bungalow on the southeast side of Redfree, car keys clutched in her right hand. She’s late for the Arts Council meeting, and it’s her son’s fault. Some mothers have a girl as their first child, a girl who helps them take care of the younger one, who learns to cook and clean and help with the laundry. She had to have a boy. Two of them. Not that her youngest is a problem. Tucker has always been a joy, a boy who laughs and accepts life however it comes. Kevlan is the broody one. A problem since he was small, too clever by half and too ... secretive. She leans over the steering wheel, jams the key in the ignition and the others jangle annoyingly. She blinks at the bug-specked windshield.
Tucker was less than a year old and asleep in his stroller that night years ago when she was pulling laundry out of the dryer at the base laundromat. Robert was off on some military thing again. It was late, she was tired, and she was thinking she had made a mistake. How nice it would be if she might drop everything and walk out of there, go back to school, have fun again …
Anything but this. She turned around, arms full of warm laundry, and there stood three-year-old Kevlan, so close and silent she’d nearly swiped him with a dangling diaper. “Please don’t go,” he said.
That’s what it is. He makes her feel guilty just by being, by the way he looks at her. Because he arrived without notice, unplanned for and, somehow, she’s afraid he knows.
Marlene, who does her hair at The Hot Spot, says it’s his age. He’s thirteen and a teenager. In the name of the Three Aspects of God, how could it be worse? If his father were home to discipline him as he should, she would not have this problem. But no. His job always came first—flying, his stupid career—always more important than his family. If she had only realized before it was too late, before she had gotten pregnant. She had been so young, only nineteen. Her parents, who should have stopped her, adored Robert Monroy.
She used to enjoy the often-repeated story of how her father found him casting in the mud for fish from shore when Robert was twenty-three and flying X2 Specters based out of Mattland. Dad figured if the boy wanted to fish badly enough to ignore the mosquitoes that were feasting on him, he might have some kind of true fisher quality, if not much sense. It was a regular thing with them the years after, going out in Dad’s boat, trying to outdo one another for the biggest pike whenever Robert got time off. Her father introduced them. “Here’s the only man I’ve shown my special fishing hole.” He had mentioned Robert before, but she hadn’t paid attention until that fateful day she came home from college and found him on the front porch reeking of fish. He was handsome and quiet, and his blue eyes met hers like an electric spark. That same quietness translated into a self-assurance different from the loud boastfulness she was used to in boys at school. He made her feel safe and adored, an irresistible combination.
What did it get her? She pushes hard on the accelerator with a satisfying vroom. Not good for the car. She’d like to careen onto the street but doesn’t dare. Ladies don’t do such things. They back out nicely, like this.