The Joy Thief: A Story of Trauma and Hope

Product Description The Joy Thief! is a story that helps children and adults to discover more about a subject that is often difficult to understand. Demonstrating the subjectivity of trauma, The Joy Thief! highlights how a seemingly ordinary occurrence can have a significant impact upon the wellbeing of a child, particularly if left unaddressed. Challenging the idea that trauma only occurs during more "serious" incidents, The Joy Thief! leads us to conclude that such occurrences, or rather our responses to them, may be more significant for children's mental health than we would perhaps like to admit. The story of The Joy Thief! encourages help-seeking, while challenging adults to consider the way they handle such situations. The story is written in a person-centred fashion, seeking to normalize a range of outcomes that children may experience following a traumatic experience - including the little-acknowledged phenomena of imaginary "friends." Whilst highlighting positive themes of intersectional diversity, The Joy Thief! also challenges us to consider issues of parental absence, inattention, and invalidation within the context of the needs of children.Above all, The Joy Thief! is a story of hope. "This book demonstrates beautifully a gentle reminder to parents about the way that children can perceive the world and then models to children how talking about difficult things helps. Supporting better mental health and wellbeing for children is invariably about how the adults around the child respond to what is so often in front of our noses, yet we fail to always see." -- Lisa Cherry, schools, services & systems consultant, and author on trauma-informed & relationship focused practice (Twitter: @_LisaCherry)"The Joy Thief! is a joy to read and is a beautifully illustrated book with inviting and fun colours. The language is simple, using the idea of rhymes to communicate the powerful and crucial message of children sharing their fears and worries with a trusted grown up, so they can get rid of their Joy Thief and be happy. Learning to share our innermost anxieties and not hold onto trauma is an essential lesson that we need to teach at an increasingly early age." -- Deborah Somerset, safeguarding trainer and trauma-informed consultant. (Twitter: @DLSSafeguarding)"Sean McCallum has written a lovely book with vivid colors, rhyming text and a message. He describes how the unexpected appearance of spider frightens a young girl and the subsequent distress that builds up with repeated suppression of the memory. With psychological underpinnings, this book explores the impact of keeping upsetting thoughts pent up as well as the benefit of being able to share them with someone you trust. Highly recommended." --Laurie Zelinger, PhD, ABPP, RPT-S, Board Certified Psychologist, author of Please Explain Anxiety to Me and Please Explain Alzheimer's to MeLearn More at www.TheJoyThief.NetFrom Loving Healing Press Review "This book demonstrates beautifully a gentle reminder to parents about the way that children can perceive the world and then models to children how talking about difficult things helps. Supporting better mental health and wellbeing for children is invariably about how the adults around the child respond to what is so often in front of our noses, yet we fail to always see." -- Lisa Cherry, schools, services & systems consultant, and author on trauma-informed & relationship focused practice (Twitter: @_LisaCherry)"The Joy Thief! is a joy to read and is a beautifully illustrated book with inviting and fun colours. The language is simple, using the idea of rhymes to communicate the powerful and crucial message of children sharing their fears and worries with a trusted grown up, so they can get rid of their Joy Thief and be happy. Learning to share our innermost anxieties and not hold onto trauma is an essential lesson that we need to teach at an increasingly early age." -- Deborah Somerset, safeguarding trainer and traum

Health, Fitness & Dieting

McCallum, Sean

Mental Health

Loving Healing Press

The Joy Thief! is a story that helps children and adults to discover more about a subject that is often difficult to understand. Demonstrating the subjectivity of trauma, The Joy Thief! highlights how a seemingly ordinary occurrence can have a significant impact upon the wellbeing of a child, particularly if left unaddressed. Challenging the idea that trauma only occurs during more "serious" incidents, The Joy Thief! leads us to conclude that such occurrences, or rather our responses to them, may be more significant for children's mental health than we would perhaps like to admit. The story of The Joy Thief! encourages help-seeking, while challenging adults to consider the way they handle such situations. The story is written in a person-centred fashion, seeking to normalize a range of outcomes that children may experience following a traumatic experience - including the little-acknowledged phenomena of imaginary "friends." Whilst highlighting positive themes of intersectional diversity, The Joy Thief! also challenges us to consider issues of parental absence, inattention, and invalidation within the context of the needs of children. Above all, The Joy Thief! is a story of hope. "This book demonstrates beautifully a gentle reminder to parents about the way that children can perceive the world and then models to children how talking about difficult things helps. Supporting better mental health and wellbeing for children is invariably about how the adults around the child respond to what is so often in front of our noses, yet we fail to always see." -- Lisa Cherry, schools, services & systems consultant, and author on trauma-informed & relationship focused practice (Twitter: @_LisaCherry) "The Joy Thief! is a joy to read and is a beautifully illustrated book with inviting and fun colours. The language is simple, using the idea of rhymes to communicate the powerful and crucial message of children sharing their fears and worries with a trusted grown up, so they can get rid of their Joy Thief and be happy. Learning to share our innermost anxieties and not hold onto trauma is an essential lesson that we need to teach at an increasingly early age." -- Deborah Somerset, safeguarding trainer and trauma-informed consultant. (Twitter: @DLSSafeguarding) "Sean McCallum has written a lovely book with vivid colors, rhyming text and a message. He describes how the unexpected appearance of spider frightens a young girl and the subsequent distress that builds up with repeated suppression of the memory. With psychological underpinnings, this book explores the impact of keeping upsetting thoughts pent up as well as the benefit of being able to share them with someone you trust. Highly recommended." --Laurie Zelinger, PhD, ABPP, RPT-S, Board Certified Psychologist, author of Please Explain Anxiety to Me and Please Explain Alzheimer's to Me Learn More at www.TheJoyThief.Net From Loving Healing Press

The Recalcitrant Stuff of Life is a story of searching – for friends, for forgiveness, for truth. A detailing of friendship dragged through the Amazon jungle and spit out through the stars with the aid of decades, DMT, and well-meaning debauchery.\nRoosevelt “Rosy” Robinson is a broken man living a purgatory existence in Peru. Two of his oldest friends from Canada—Stanley “The Deuce” Doucette and Ishmael “Ishy” Lords—have pressing news to deliver. Never have two individuals been so ill-equipped to navigate the “Gringo Trail,” but this is precisely what they must do to track down Rosy in one of the most inaccessible places on the planet.\nAmbitious, gritty, and raucously entertaining, Sean McCallum’s debut novel takes readers from Toronto and New York to Lima, then across the Andes, down the Amazon River, and into darkness. Bristling with tragedy, regret, and a little ayahuasca, The Recalcitrant Stuff of Life screams into the void with electric urgency, reveling in what it means to be alive.\nThis book grabs readers by the wrist and leads them headlong into an authentically raw examination of love and friendship. It's a moving tale of the places we go to seek forgiveness.\nEditorial Reviews\nLauren Sapala, transgressive author of The INFJ Revolution, Between the Shadow and Lo, and West is San Francisco:\n"Extraordinary, profound, and intensely alive, this book stays with you. It’s a heady mix of the suffocating jungle bleakness of Hunter S. Thompson’s Rum Diary brewed together with the magical boyhood winters of Kerouac’s Maggie Cassidy.\nOpening with a quote (or rather, a mathematical equation) from the iconic polymath Benoit Mandelbrot, The Recalcitrant Stuff of Life gives an enigmatic precursor to the intricately layered narrative within. From the first chapter, we’re immersed in the squalid, heartbreaking intensity of Iquitos: a sprawling Peruvian metropolis where it’s easy to get lost, and even easier to lose yourself.\nRosy—consistently drunk and emotionally damaged—is one of the lost ones, and, as we follow the path of his past memories and the curve of his current anguish, we begin to understand with chilling clarity why he's chosen this particular place to enact his downward spiral.\nSkipping forward and backward in time, we live through every important memory. We’re introduced to his tight inner circle and how they grew up together. We watch him on the night he falls in love at first sight, then the torturous aftermath. When we come back to present-day Iquitos, he meets the girl who will change everything for him, and--because we’ve seen every essential thread of meaning woven through the tapestry of Rosy’s life--we know this was always meant to be.\nMeanwhile, Ishy and The Deuce, his two best friends, have undertaken their own quest down to Iquitos to find Rosy and bring him back before it’s too late. We follow each storyline until they merge into an electrifying conclusion. There, we finally learn about the horrifying event that drove Rosy to run away from his life and bury his soul deep underground.\nThe Recalcitrant Stuff of Life challenges the reader on so many different levels: Narcissistic characters undermine our assumptions with acts of great kindness, then shatter that illusion the very next page by doing something despicable. Vindictive femme fatales reveal a history of exploitation and abuse, dissolving the mask of rage by showing the wounded little girl beneath. Every character, every turn in the narrative is like that. You think you know where you are, what your opinion is, what’s wrong with everybody, and then McCallum twists the knife until you realize you know nothing—and you never did.\nAny reader looking for an antidote to the commercial literary pap churned out by mainstream publishers will instantly fall in love."

The Recalcitrant Stuff Of Life

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Outcast Press

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Books by McCallum, Sean

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McCallum, Sean. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Joy Thief: A Story of Trauma and Hope

The Joy Thief: A Story of Trauma and Hope

The Recalcitrant Stuff Of Life