New Resource for Families Dealing with War Trauma

My Story: Blogs by Four Military Teens

This is helpful information for the teenager in the family — a group we often ignore when discussing the struggles of the returning combat veteran. It's a book written by Michelle Sherman, a clinical psychologist in Oklahoma, who specializes in supporting families affected by PTSD/trauma

Dr. Sherman wrote it primarily as a source of support and education for military teens, but also as a tool to educate civilian youth about the military family experience.

This is especially important now because the military is so isolated from the rest of society. It's very different from World War II, when a teenager was almost sure to find others on the block who had a family member involved in the war effort.

Although the four young bloggers in the book are fictional, the stories are real ones taken from the lives of teens Dr. Sherman actually knows.

The four kids blog about:

• Pride in parent's military service
• Confusion, anger and sadness over deployment
• Challenge of reconnecting after homecoming
• Finding a "new normal"
• Divorce
• Teen depression
• Excitement of homecoming
• Dealing with parent's emotional and physical challenges post-deployment
• Resilience and post-traumatic growth

See the website www.SeedsofHopeBooks.com for more information.

"How do your siblings feel about your book?"

I'm often asked, "How do your siblings feel about your book?"

My older brother plays an important part in my book, just as he has in my life. He recently blogged about what it's like to be in a book (mine), and he picked up on one of the most important things I learned while writing:

Each sibling has a different childhood. We might live under the same roof with the same parents, but we arrive at different times in our parents' lives. All sorts of things change in the time between our births: the stresses vary, the income fluctuates, and the temperature of the marital relationship rises and falls.

My brother John (to whom I refer in the book as "Jay," his boyhood nickname) would have written a much different book— an angrier book— he says. We both recognize that it's my perspective, not his or anyone else's, that appears in The Box from Braunau.

However you look at it, my brother is one of the most interesting and engaging people I know. He's always digging into a mystery. John's a guest columnist on the website of America's premier cultural prankster, Joey Skaggs, where his LiteratEye column appears on Fridays. He also maintains a news blog on literary deception. If you're intrigued by literary fraud, or if you want to see what John says (scroll down to #34) about being in my book (or any book), check out his posts.