About this item
Based on the author's own experience as a parent with an addicted child, she provides straight-talking self-preservation tools and techniques for parents of addicts in and out of recovery. An essential book to help parents navigate this confusing and uncharted landscape - in the author's words, "Planet Paradox." Barbara Victoria is a parent who struggled with her own child's addiction. She has been active in Al-Anon for many years.
About the Author
Here's the scoop: I am well into my 60s now and can say that the expectations for young girls when I was growing up was not what they are today. Indeed. The daughters of hopeful and well-intended parents would grow up to marry well and be taken care of by young men with whom they would raise good families. Well, let's just say that life happened, and set me on a path of inventing myself as I went along. Which means . . . I have worked at a lot of things and lived in a lot of places and amassed a rich if checkered history. Beginning with:
EDUCATION: I worked my way through Stephens College, Columbia, MO and received an Associate;'s Degree, and through the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, with a Bachelor's Degree in Painting and Printmaking from the College of Fine Arts. Picked up courses in creative writing at the University of Louisville and Northwest College, Powell, WY.
PROFESSIONAL SKILLS: My first job was at age 16, but the highlights thereafter are: graphic designer; broad experience in freelance journalism and newspaper reporting, feature writing and a weekly column; writing and editing as a managing editor handling all aspects of print production. Along the way . . . became a hospice volunteer which led to work recruiting and training hospice volunteers, and bereavement work with client families; and work as a respite case manager in a residential home for adults dealing with mental illness and/or addiction, and as a mental health technician in a group home.
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION: Begin with winning the Junior Invitational Sailfish Race at Indian River Inlet and an engraved silver platter after three summers racing every Sunday at the Lewes Yacht Club. The professional stuff was downhill after that: First National Leadership Conference of Rural American Women, Delegate, Washington, DC; National Conference on Farm Women in Historical Perspective, Presenter and Round Table Chair, the University of Wisconsin-Madison; First White House Conference for Rural Women, Presenter on "Land, Food and Agriculture." Sigma Dellta Chi, Metro Louisville Journalism Awards for Enterprise reporting, weekly column, and feature writing; Kentucky Press Association awards for weekly column on any subject, enterprise reporting, and lifestyle section. Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum, first place national competition. Department of the Army Achievement Medal.
BOOKS PUBISHED: HARVEST OF HOPE - FAMILY FARMING AND FARMING FAMILIES, The University Press of Kentucky 1995; RESOLUTIONS - TRANSFORMATION THROUGH THE PROCESS OF LOSS, Pronghorn Press 2005; IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU - EXCEPT WHEN IT IS, Central Recovery Press 2012.
