Featured Book of The Month --Pacific Book Review, August 2010
2010 Silver Award Winner: Non Fiction - Relationships --Readers Favorite Award
"In order to fully experience love, you must first find it within yourself."
This powerful, yet compassionate book was born as the result of a dream, and it's relationship to the author, Judith Anne Desjardins. She has bared her personal journey of healing and finding her true identity, connecting the reader with this subject. Combined with her professional wisdom, she has produced a comprehensive book for the reader based on the Holistic approach to create a healthy life, belief in self-empowerment, responsibility and personal transformation.
Most of us have heard the phrase "the past can ruin your future" or the term 'Inner Child.' These terms and their significance are thoroughly explained. J.D. believes children have five emotional/psychological needs, developing their own coping mechanisms as a child. Whether one or all of the needs were met, or not met, defines how the child will react in their adult life, even in the capacity to give or receive love. Thousands of people reach a traumatic point in life, when they realize they are not making healthy or fulfilling choices. Many spend years repeating the pattern of failed relationships, leading to self doubt, poor self esteem, even developing physical ailments.
She teaches the value of our conscious and unconscious. That forgiveness has to be learned, it does not erase the event or wound, but can set you free. If you do not resolve your personal issues, they become like a toxin having the capacity to destroy your life. Included are chapters on dating and developing relationship skills. It is imperative to have a solid relationship with your own self, in order to maintain a healthy relationship with others.
Judith Desjardins has maintained a 33-year holistic psychology practice. Having been raised in a military family, she learned appreciation for multiple cultures and religions. She has been an educator in the U.S. as well as Canada, but emphasizes her greatest achievement to be her marriage, children, their spouses and grandchildren.
It has taken her 15 years to prepare this straightforward, life altering, self-help guide. Take the time to participate in the provided exercises and analysis. Review now finished, I intend to take my time with it. I have renewed energy in my own search and understanding of what I need to do, not to mention Hope! It is my pleasure to give the Highest of Recommendations! --Cheryl Heinrichs, Allbooks Review
The night before her wedding, Judith Desjardins sits alone in her room, sick with dread. She is stilled by the consuming fear that she’s going to get it all wrong, all over again. She’s been married and divorced twice already and even though this time it feels right, she can’t ignore the nugget of fear and doubt that tells her something is wrong.
Something is wrong. Like many couples, Desjardins and her husband are illprepared for the onslaught of post-honeymoon marital issues which, if ignored, insistently eat away at the fibers of a marriage. But more than this, as an individual, Desjardins is deeply flawed. If she yearns for a healthy marriage, she must first learn to heal herself. It is with this spirit of self-examination and healing that Desjardins offers readers Creating A Healthy Life and Marriage, an all-encompassing guide to fostering healthy, happy relationships.
Divided into eight sections, this book takes readers through a step-by-step process of internal transformation. Placing great emphasis on the importance of the individual’s relationship with one’s self, Desjardins guides readers through a provoking examination of childhood relationships. Using the term “Inner Child” to describe the “authentic self,” readers analyze unmet emotional and psychological needs rooted in the formative years of their development. This assessment of the inner child forms the basis of Desjardins’ theory of holistic healing: because “body, mind, emotions, and spirit” work in synthesis to produce healthy individuals, and by extension, a healthy marriage, a reader must confront and recognize the wants and needs of his or her inner child and in doing so, recognize the deficiencies in his or her own character.
Each chapter builds on the skills honed in the previous section, with active exercises assigned for each major emotional investigation. These “homework assignments” are thoroughly constructed and move beyond superficial self- help jargon. Though the litany of self- help questionnaires is both visually and psychologically exhausting, the questionnaires pose probing, often uncomfortable, but necessary questions about family history and personal traits. The book is not meant to be a quick, browse-at-random self- help manual. There are expectations placed on the reader--he or she is required to be an active participant in his or her own healing.
One of the major strengths of this book is the inclusion of excerpts from the creative work of Desjardins’ own therapy clients. As a licensed clinical social worker and a practitioner of holistic psychotherapy, Desjardins’ use of creative writing and art therapy is exemplified through the work of her clients and gives readers a realistic sense of how the process of transformation unfolds in real lives.
A comprehensive and interactive guide for building lasting relationships, Creating a Healthy Life and Marriage will appeal to readers both married and single wishing to invest serious time and effort into the journey of self-healing and improvement.
- Shoilee Khan, ForeWord Reviews, September 2010.
USA Book News, The National 'Best Books 2010' Award Winning Finalist in 3 Categories: (Health: Psychology/Mental Health, Self-Help: Relationships, Spiritual: Inspirational)
WINNER Allbooks Review Editor's Choice Award 2011 Category: Health
Second Place Winner RebeccasReads Written Art Awards 2011 Nonfiction: Self-Help
Second Place Winner
RebeccasReads
Written Art Awards 2011
Nonfiction: Self-Help
First Place Winner
Reviewers Choice Awards 2011 - Relationships
