The Winning Family is a beautiful book that’s packed full of perspectives and practices that can prevent social ills and disease alike. It was tremendously well received, selling some 100,000 copies on three continents. It was ground-breaking, creating a new market for parenting books that heal the parent and strengthen family systems. It surfed through 5 or 6 publishers as one after another closed, or merged. We finally brought it back into print though our own imprint, Uplift Press, with a completely updated revision for this whacky 21st century!
Here’s a blog post I wrote about the family business - and legacy.
In 2022, while fine-tooth combing each chapter for the book’s 35th anniversary edition, my writing partner, who is also my mother, suffered the ordeal of a spinal fracture. The day she finally went into surgery, my dad went into hospice. Always competing for my attention, those two!
A year ago we launched The Winning Family: Where No One Has to Lose, with my mom being rolled in with a wheelchair, and an absolute love-fest of fans, friends, and parents looking for solutions.
And then I just went ahead and burnt out.
A year later, I’m still trying to get those promotions going.
Even though I love this book and feel it’s important for the world to learn effective communication, parenting leadership styles, tips for healthy touch, and so much more, I couldn’t get it together for the big fall promotion. My mother-in-law died, and finally all the grief of losing people during Covid (my surrogate parents, neighbors, friends, children…) caught up to me at once and I fell into a depression. All that stress activated a gene that made me weak, and sick, so now it was extra-hard to get out of bed, much less get the word out about this book.
Funny story. I was just in surgery this week and the anesthetist pumped me for parenting tips before she would put me under.
I said, “Play with your kids. Build connection. Connect before you correct. Correct in private, praise in public.”
“Wow,” she said. “can you give me an example of connect before you correct?”
“What are your kids’ names?” She whipped out her phone and showed me their pictures. “Taylor is the naughty one and David is my angel.”
“Well, first of all, don’t talk about your kids like that!”
“I know,” she replied, the oxygen mask in her other hand hovering near my face. “There’s good and bad in everyone.”
“Taylor, come here,” I made up a little script for her. “Something’s not right. Let me give you a hug and then we need to talk about what happened.”
“Ohhhhh…got it!” She saw it clearly now! She thanked me profusely, and within a few minutes I woke up in a different room with bandages on my neck.
So, I have yet to reach my first goal of 100 good reviews. Have you read The Winning Family yet? If so, would you please leave a nice review on Amazon? If you haven’t, you can get it in all the places—even Walmart!
This section of my newsletter, The Whining Family, will be dedicated to two things:
As soon as my throat heals up, I’ll post recordings of each chapter for the audiobook (for supporting subscribers), and
“Behind the scenes” essays, a bit like the story above, revealing the deeper discoveries behind the encompassing wisdom. Plus many of my own irreverent parenting methods!
Supporting Subscribers get a free download of the ebook today!
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