Boys Cry Too

As a boy growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, John endured years of sexual abuse by his father, a former Baptist minister. John tried to find refuge in the regimentation of a military career and in multiple marriages, but his efforts to deal with the trauma of his experiences led him on a self-destructive path that left a trail of broken people and dreams. His life continued its downward spiral until he reached the ultimate bottom. . .and began his journey toward forgiveness of his abusers and, finally, himself. This memoir is a groundbreaking account, from a man's perspective, of the effects of sexual abuse on all aspects of the victim's life. John speaks out about the details of his abuse and the family culture that enabled generations of abusers to victimize its children. His searing openness throws a spotlight on the darkly kept secrets of childhood sexual abuse, and his story will serve as an inspiration to everyone who longs to embrace their own healing journeys.

Most autobiographies are about famous people. The difference between these people and myself is that my lifes story is a way to explain and share how two little boys lived a life of childhood abuse and the scars this abuse left behind. I did not write this book to feel sorry for myself but to inform others that, Yes, little boys cry too!!! Not enough information is documented on how many little boys and young men have been abused, which I find quite disturbing. However, every time I read a new statistic on the number of boys that have been and will be abused, the percentages keep going up and up. You must remember that in the past, we as boys, were taught never to cry and or to show emotions. Most of us hid the abuse and many still will not reveal what happened to them. Young girls and young ladies are by far the largest group of victims. However, I refuse to be swept under a rug about a situation past and present that leaves scars on all the victims. Yes, today, I can finally come out and say that my brother and I were both victims of verbal, psychological, the severest of physical abuse and yes, sexual abuse. I somehow survived these abuses but sadly my brother did not. He ended up committing suicide at a young age. Three days before his death he telephoned me to admit he was afraid of turning out like our abuser --our mother!. He was afraid he was becoming like her and did not want that life for the wonderful woman he had married and his 10 month old daughter. If one person reads this book and sees the signs of abuse and helps just one child, then I shall die happy knowing that this one child was spared. Also, this book has a meaning other than you feeling sorry for me, as I dont need nor want pity. Neither is this book where I want to air out my famililies faults and failures. To this day, I have never told a person about my young life. I chose to wait until all the people who had made my life a living hell had passed away. What inspired me to open up was an experience that happened to me about 5 years ago, I was living with my former partner in Buenos Aires, Argentina and one day he happened to pick up a folder of old pictures. In the folder were school photographs of me from around the age of first through 6th grade. I saw that he had the pictures spread over the dining room table and had this confused look on his face. Finally he spoke and said, Jim I need to ask you a question, Why in all these pictures do you have marks on your face? He went on pointing out that in each picture I had either a busted lip, scratches and even a black eye. I suddenly went into a panic mode. Somebody saw what I had kept hidden over 25 years and something I wanted to forget. I sat there for at least 2 hours and told him everything that had happened to me from starting my life in an orphanage until I was almost 3 years old and up to the present. The torture in my life did not end the day my Mother put me out of the house at 15/16 years old. My life still had more obstacles for me to face. I was then fighting my own sexuality, I didnt understand what was happening and sadly had not one person I could trust. I needed help and back in the late 60s and 70s there were no organizations available to help. An alternative life style in those days were not accepted anywhere! I was an outcast from what the world called normal and there was no alternatives. I remember boys getting the hell knocked out of them if they were even considered just a little too effeminate. I had my share of two such bullies has a kid and I didnt need that experience again. I realize that times have changed and through this wonderful thing called the media, my heroes in life have showed the public just the tip of the iceberg. Please dont fall in the trap of believing that since times have changed; people have. Today we have people like Oprah, Ricky Martin, and Ellen Degeneres who have brought this fact to the publics attention as w

Let boys cry! This picture book imagines a world in which boys are encouraged to express their full range of emotions. It's Levi's first day at a new school, and he's scared. His father tries to comfort Levi by telling him "Big boys don't cry." Though the father immediately understands his misstep, he can't find the words to comfort his son, and Levi leaves for school, still in need of reassurance. Fortunately, along his walk to school, Levi sees instance after instance of grown men openly expressing their sadness and fear. His learned mantra, "Big boys don't cry," slowly weakens, and by the time he's at school he releases a tear. Once he's there, things aren't so bad after all, and on his walk home he sees everyone he's encountered earlier, feeling better now that they expressed their emotions. Upon his arrival home, he finds his father waiting for him on their porch, tears in his eyes. His father is able to admit that he was scared and the two embrace, closer than before. Jonty Howley's gorgeous debut paints the world we wish existed for our boys, and offers a path there! This story is the truest interpretation of the notion that we should "let boys be boys": let them express the full range of their emotions, vulnerable parts and all!

Boys Don't Cry is a book that will make sense of depression and anxiety for people who might not recognise those feelings in themselves or others. Suicide is the single biggest killer of men aged 20-45 in the UK. Depression and undiagnosed mental illness are huge contributors to these deaths as they're often more difficult to diagnose in men. And those men don't tend to talk about the typical symptoms or visit their doctor. Meet Tim. For nearly a decade he kept his depression secret. It made him feel so weak and shameful he thought it would destroy his whole life if anyone found out. And Tim is not alone. After finally opening up he realised that mental illness was affecting many men around the globe - and he knew that wasn't ok. A brutally honest, wickedly warming and heart-breaking tale about what it really takes to be a 'real man', written by one who decided that he wanted to change the world by no longer being silent. This is Tim's story, but it could be yours too.

As The Giving Tree turns fifty, this timeless classic is available for the first time ever in ebook format. This digital edition allows young readers and lifelong fans to continue the legacy and love of a classic that will now reach an even wider audience. "Once there was a tree...and she loved a little boy." So begins a story of unforgettable perception, beautifully written and illustrated by the gifted and versatile Shel Silverstein. This moving parable for all ages offers a touching interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another's capacity to love in return. Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk...and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree, and the tree gave and gave and gave. This is a tender story, touched with sadness, aglow with consolation. Shel Silverstein's incomparable career as a bestselling children's book author and illustrator began with Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back. He is also the creator of picture books including A Giraffe and a Half, Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros?, The Missing Piece, The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, and the perennial favorite The Giving Tree, and of classic poetry collections such as Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, Every Thing On It, Don't Bump the Glump!, and Runny Babbit. And don't miss the other Shel Silverstein ebooks, Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic!

Did you know that wrestlers have feelings? Knights do too. Even superheroes feel sad sometimes. In fact everyone has feelings - even dads who love their children! Now in paperback, children will love to recognise the feelings in Keith Negley's bold illustrations which accompany a fun-to-read aloud narrative. Parents can enjoy and engage with children in a light-hearted discussion about emotions and how they affect us all.

"Maggie is earthy and real, full of love and knowledge, especially on raising sons." - Steve Biddulph "Maggie's perspective on raising boys is spot on. She writes with humor and depth, providing insight and strategies for many of the most important issues facing moms. There is a lovely ease to her writing and a powerful honesty. I hope every mother of a son (and everyone else!) will read this book. The future of the world, to a great extent, depends on how we raise our boys." - Michael Gurian, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Wonder of Boys and Saving Our Sons If we can see the world through boys' eyes a little better, we will make different choices in the way we mother them… and we will find them less confusing, and love them more deeply. Mothers of sons are worried about raising their boys in a world where negative images of masculinity are front and centre of our media, almost every day. Not only that, but statistically our boys are still struggling in many ways. Even though we live in a time where we recognise that nothing in gender is fixed, it remains a fact that the influence of a mother on her son is massive. A mother of four sons herself, Maggie Dent draws on her personal experience - and over four decades work as a teacher, counsellor and now author and speaker - to help build understanding, empathy and compassion for our boys. Maggie shares her five key secrets that every mum needs to know and uses the voices of men she has worked with and surveyed to reveal what really matters in a boy's relationship with his mother and other mother figures. Maggie is one of Australia's most popular parenting authors and educators, and her seminars about boys have sold out all across Australia and in the UK. She is finally sharing her insights, her reflections, and (as always) her humour around mothering boys to help you be the mum your son needs you to be.

Until the 70s and 80s anthropologists studying different cultures had mainly confined themselves to the behaviour and idea systems of adults. Psychologists, on the other hand, working mainly in Europe and America, had studied child development in their own settings and simply assumed the universality of their findings. Thus both disciplines had largely ignored a crucial problem area: the way in which children from birth onwards learn to become competent members of their culture. This process, which has been called ‘the quintessential human adaptation’, constitutes the theme of this volume, originally published in 1988. It derives from a workshop held at the London School of Economics which brought together fieldworkers who in their studies had paid more than usual attention to children in their cultures. Their experience and foci of interest were varied but this very diversity serves to illuminate different facets of the acquisition of culture by children, ranging in age from pre-verbal infants to adolescents. Evolutionarily primed for culture-learning, children are responsive to a rich web of influences from subtle and indirect as in their music and dance to direct teaching in the family guided by culture-specific ideas about child psychology. Some of the salient things they learn relate to gender, status and power, critical for the functioning of all societies. The introductory essay provides the necessary historical background of the development of child study in both anthropology and psychology and outlined how future research in the ethnography of childhood should proceed. The book concludes with an annotated bibliography providing a guide to the literature from 1970 onwards.