Love Never Quits: Surviving & Thriving After Infertility, Adoption, and Reactive Attachment Disorder by Gina Heumann

LOVE NEVER QUITS: SURVIVING & THRIVING AFTER INFERTILITY, ADOPTION AND REACTIVE ATTACHMENT DISORDER
by Gina Heumann
* Memoir *

Title: LOVE NEVER QUITS: SURVIVING & THRIVING AFTER INFERTILITY, ADOPTION, AND REACTIVE ATTACHMENT DISORDER
Author: Gina Heumann
Publisher: MadLand Press
Pages: 246
Genre: Memoir

WHACK… At three in the morning Gina was sound asleep, yet somehow she was smacked in the head. She looked over at her husband, thinking perhaps he accidentally rolled over and flopped his arm on top of her, but he was sleeping soundly and facing the opposite direction. She turned to the other side and glaring back at her was her eight-year-old child.

“Did you just hit me?”

“Yes, and I’d do it again.”

“Whyyyy?”

“Because you took away my video games.”

“That was EIGHT HOURS AGO. And you’re still mad about it?”

“I wish I could kill you.”

This is the true story of the hell one family lived through parenting a child with reactive attachment disorder, a severe diagnosis related to children who experienced early-childhood trauma.

This inspirational story covers over a decade of daily struggles until they finally found resolution and made it to the other side. The family remained intact, and this once challenging son is now achieving things never thought possible.

 

 

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So let’s talk about this diagnosis that we now suspect: Reactive Attachment Disorder. RAD is a fairly controversial diagnosis as far as psychological afflictions are concerned, but one that is extremely serious. Although this is not a diagnosis that is solely reserved for adoptees, it is by far more prevalent in children who had some sort of disrupted attachment. The Institute of Attachment and Child Development defines Reactive Attachment Disorder as “a disorder in which children’s brains and development get disrupted by trauma they endured before the age of 3. They are unable to trust others and attach in relationships.” Since adoption is a result of a disrupted attachment, it is most common in children who are adoptees, foster kids, and step children, but it can also occur in biological children who’s primary caregiver was hospitalized, in prison, deployed, or had some other traumatic event that separated them, even for a short time. Not all adopted children have RAD. And not all children who suffer from RAD are adopted.

Symptoms of RAD include: severe anger, lack of empathy, inability to give or receive affection, lack of cause and effect thinking, minimal eye contact, lying, stealing, “mad peeing” (urinating all over the house when angry or bedwetting into the teen years), indiscriminate affection with strangers, inappropriately demanding, preoccupation with fire, blood, and gore, hoarding food, abnormal eating patterns, learning lags, and lack of impulse control. These can be more serious in some patients than others, of course, but over the years, Maddox suffered from most of these. In extreme cases, symptoms can include verbal, physical, psychological and emotional abuse of the mother (yes), self-harm or threats to others (yes), and hurting or killing pets (thank god, no). As hard as things were for us, I read this list and know it could have been a lot worse.

RAD was in the news recently as one of the descriptors of Nikolas Cruz, the school shooter at Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida. Internet support groups for parents dealing with Reactive Attachment Disorder were a buzz with comments like “that could be my kid someday.” Honestly there was a time I thought the same thing. And of course, the comments about the school shooter were focused on the parents: “why didn’t they spend more time with him?,” “they should have given him more hugs/love,” “why wasn’t he in therapy?,” “he needed more discipline,” “a good spanking would have whipped him into shape”… judgments, judgments, judgments. I was so accustomed to judgments from other parents, strangers, and even my own family. Relatives gave us books on “Love and Logic,” gave Maddox timeouts that only made him angrier, and yelled at me for my lack of mothering skills. No sticker chart was going to resolve this issue.

In the heat of a rage, a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder seems to be afraid of nothing. Maddox didn’t respond to typical parental requests, bribes, or threats. If we would yell, he would yell back, louder and meaner. “Go to your room” was never met with compliance, and running away from home was an ongoing issue.

But underneath it all is a powerful sense of fear. Fear of never being loved or accepted. Fear of not making friends. Fear of not fitting in with normal society. As a mother, I feared he might grow up to be the next school shooter.

Starting even before he was born, his birth mother, desperately poor and managing a special-needs child at the age of 17, was sending stress hormones to his brain in the womb, setting him up for a lifetime of anxiety.

After his birth, he went directly to a foster home, where he was neglected. Mistrust of adults and caregivers was ingrained in his brain, and anger was his primary emotion.

It is hard to believe that the first six months of life can have such a profound impact on a child and make it so difficult to lead a normal life without serious intervention and extreme love and care.

Being a RAD parent is one of the hardest and loneliest jobs on earth, and that’s true without even counting all the judgment.

 

Gina Heumann is a true Renaissance woman: wife, mother, architect, designer, instructor, author, speaker, and sales rep for an award-winning Napa Valley winery. She and her husband, Aaron, adopted Landrey in 2001 from Guatemala and then went back for Maddox three years later. Gina’s love of learning and dedication as a mother inspired her research of different treatments and therapies that eventually led to this inspirational success story about conquering Reactive Attachment Disorder.
Her latest book is Love Never Quits: Surviving & Thriving After Infertility, Adoption, and Reactive Attachment Disorder.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

Website Link: www.ginaheumann.com
Facebook Link: https://www.facebook.com/loveneverquits

 

ENCOUNTERS BLOG TOUR IN $50 AMAZON GIFT CARD!

ENCOUNTERS by Patrick Stull

Title: ENCOUNTERS
Author: Patrick Stull
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 250
Genre: Fine Art Photography Book

With photography at its base, Stull offers a nuanced explication of his encounters to allow the viewer an opportunity to form a relationship with his art. While looking within ourselves, exploring our own feelings, he hopes that he will inspire greater humaneness in response to his art.

ENCOUNTERS is the second in a series of six large-format books in which artist, photographer and author, Patrick Stull explores a wide range of experiences. Using light and the physical body, the written word and his artistry he creates imagery that examines aspects of the lives of women.
Compiled over the last 18 years, the images in ENCOUNTERS, Stull says, are meant to “inspire and challenge the observer while always empowering the subject.”

Stull brings a powerful sense of the surreal and the spiritual to his work as he plots a course along the many paths of the human experience. His imagery runs from the ghostly and ephemeral to the flowing and fiery.

As much as he concentrates on the human form, Stull never forgets to focus on the humanity of his subjects. His choice of the coffee-table style book format draws the viewer into an experience both intimate and universal.

Stull’s first book in his series, titled EVOLVE, was published in 2006. A third book, titled HIDDEN DIMENSIONS, is completed and awaiting publication. Future titles in the series include DHARMA, BEING DIFFERENT, and YOGA, A HEALING MOMENT.

Stull hopes that his readers come away from the book with “a love for art and a respect for the female who gives us life and challenges us to be better human beings.

 

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Encounters is a collection of imagery created and compiled over the last 15 years to inspire and challenge the observer while always empowering the subject. The imagery is coupled with text, odes and perspectives about the human experience and existence itself. The imagery is mostly an explication, an intimate view of the lives of women and our relationship to them – on an individual and cultural level. However, there are images of men included in this work. A portion of the portfolio presents something more than a photographic image. Here the imagery is developed into contemplative art pieces of the surreal genre, where the viewer is transported into the depths of their own psyche challenging them to see something new.

 

American artist Patrick Stull has spent the last eighteen years mostly creating imagery about the lives of women. He searches for what lies beneath the surface of his subjects, empowering each one he encounters. He has recently ventured into the realm of surrealism, creating powerful imagery that reflects on our humanity while dealing with the meaning and power of art.

Stull say's, "My work has allowed me to venture past the camera into the realm of a humanist, an artistic life, delving into the intellectual, a more cerebral life experience, creating what I call 'connectivism.'"  

His ongoing work is based in large-scale digital photography accompanied by sculpture/body casts, composition art, painting, poetry/prose and drawings.  His art is then integrated, collectively, into exhibitions to provide the viewer a once in a lifetime experience. The presentation of the work is delivered to the viewer in a unique and emotionally powerful way. 

Stull, 71, a self-taught artist, works in many artistic disciplines. Educated at San Diego State University with degrees in psychology, economics and philosophy during the 1960’s, amidst the backdrop of the counter-culture revolution and the Viet Nam War, where his social consciousness and political views were shaped. Stull emerged from a Catholic Irish/German family, one of five children where work, discipline and religion took precedence over emotional expressions of the self – a different kind of loving environment. Being a husband of thirty-plus years and father to two has taught him the power of kindness, love and commitment. 

His latest book is the fine art photography book, Encounters.

 

Visit his website at www.patrickstull.com.

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GIVEAWAY!

Patrick Stull is giving away a $50 Amazon Gift Card!

Terms & Conditions:

• By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
• One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter to receive one $50 Amazon Gift Card.
• This giveaway ends midnight August 30.
• Winner will be contacted via email on September 1.
• Winner has 48 hours to reply.

Good luck everyone!

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The Inspiration Behind The Desire Card by Lee Matthew Goldberg

The Inspiration Behind the Desire Card

By Lee Matthew Goldberg

I began writing The Desire Card in 2012. At the time, I never imagined it would be the first in a series. The sequel Prey No More will be out later this year, and I’ve recently finished the third and fourth book as well.

Occupy Wall Street was a protest movement that began around the same time I started the book, which raised issues about economic inequality between the wealthiest 1% of the population and everyone else. I had also been speaking to a friend who was a medical resident and learned two things about the human liver. One, it can regenerate in a matter of weeks. And two, if you need a liver transplant, it can take a while to move up the donor list and no amount of money helps speed the process. The two ideas merged. An organization catering to the 1% that promised “Any wish fulfilled for the right price.” And a desperate man on Wall Street who needs a new liver and goes to extreme measures to get one.

The book was sent out by my agent to many big publishers but it was proving a tough sell. Too dark (one editor wanted it to be lighter), or they were hesitant about publishing a series. I had heard great things about Fahrenheit Press and on a whim sent both books to its publisher who was getting on a flight when he read my query. The Desire Card became his flight and when he landed, he wanted to schedule a call. Ultimately, he bought the first two books in the series.

Overall, I have an idea for the fifth book and would probably end the series there, but who knows? With the main character being the shadowy organization called the Card, there are a multitude of possibilities for future books.

About the Author

Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of SLOW DOWN and THE MENTOR (St. Martin’s Press), which was acquired by Macmillan Entertainment with the film in development. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018 Prix du Polar. The first two books in a thriller series, THE DESIRE CARD and PREY NO MORE, are forthcoming from Fahrenheit Press in winter 2019. His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in the anthology DIRTY BOULEVARD, The Millions, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, Essays & Fictions, The New Plains Review, and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series (guerrillalit.wordpress.com). He lives in New York City. Follow him at leematthewgoldberg.com and @LeeMatthewG.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK

 

About the Book:

Title: THE DESIRE CARD
Author: Lee Matthew Goldberg
Publisher: Fahrenheit Press
Pages: TBA
Genre: Crime/Suspense

BOOK BLURB:

Any wish fulfilled for the right price. That's the promise the Desire Card gives to its elite clients. But if the Card doesn’t feel like they’ve been justly compensated, the “price” will be more menacing than the clients could ever imagine.   

Harrison Stockton learns this lesson all too well. Harrison has lived an adult life of privilege and excess: a high-powered job on Wall Street along with a fondness for alcohol and pills, and a family he adores, yet has no time for. All of this comes crashing to a halt when he loses his executive job and discovers he has liver cirrhosis with mere months left to live.

After finding himself far down on the donor list, Harrison takes matters into his own hands. This decision sparks a gritty and gripping quest that takes him to the slums of Mumbai in search of a black market organ and forces him under the Desire Card’s thumb. When his moral descent threatens his wife and children, Harrison must decide whether to save himself at any cost, or do what’s right and put a stop to the Card.

THE DESIRE CARD is a taut international thriller that explores what a man will do to survive when money isn’t always enough to get everything he desires. It’s the first book in a series followed by PREY NO MORE that focuses on other people indebted to this sinister organization, where the actual price is the cost of one’s soul.

PRAISE:

"Careful what you wish for, especially from a nefarious shadow organization, in this gripping start to Lee Matthew Goldberg's fast-paced, highly compelling, buzz worthy new series. If you love characters morally compromised, richly drawn, and constantly surprising, you'll love THE DESIRE CARD. I burned through the first book and can't wait to get my hands on PREY NO MORE to see where this endlessly exciting story takes me next! Loved it!” - Daniel Palmer, critically acclaimed suspense author

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