Cowboys Are Not Supposed To Cry

When did we come to believe the best thing you can do with death is ride off from it? In Cowboys Are Not Supposed to Cry, Mark W. Schutter tells his story of living a life with grief that began in his midtwenties. The death of his young wife left him alone, and although life was tough, he vowed to show the world that he was tougher. Remarrying and having a daughter, to onlookers, from the outside, life seemed happy again, until in an anguished night of prayer, Mark heard the words that to be the husband and father he wanted to be, he must: reconcile the past embrace the present redeem the future Cowboys Are Not Supposed to Cry is a story that will challenge you with questions that often have no answers about death, life, love, and the way we think about grief. In this memoir of love, loss, grief, and healing, Mark shares his experiences, trying to be who he thought everyone expected him to be. This account, written from the unique perspective of a man, questions what society deems acceptable behavior for grieving men and their healing. This journey is one we all must face, full of deep love, painful loss, and the healing of the soul. Mark pulls back the curtain to show how death is only the beginning. You will carry your grief; the joys and sorrows occupy the same space because healing is never perfect, and that is okay because there is always hope. Grief is not something you just get over, and even the toughest cowboys may sometimes cry.

Shane Morgan's world is shattered when his mother is killed in a car accident. His father and hero, a famous rodeo star, drowns his sorrow in booze and soon is just a rodeo clown with a drinking problem. Then the two inherit a small ranch, and Shane looks forward to having a real home, making friends, and getting through a whole school year in the same place. But things don't go well at school or at home. In fact, Shane and his father seem to be growing further and further apart. Will his father ever change? Will things ever be different?

Still suffering from his mother's death and the subsequent alcoholism and estrangement of his father, a rodeo clown, Shane hopes things will be better when they go to live on a farm in Alberta. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Scout McBride was born into ranching life in the West Texas desert outside El Paso. He learned to ride a horse almost before he could walk, grew up communicating with animals around the harsh land, and spoke Spanish with his first friend, a boy from Mexico. It was a tough environment for one so young and as Scout follows a rugged path to becoming a man, he knows that to emulate the men he admires, he must keep one thing in mind: Cowboys don't cry.

Though he thinks of himself as a cowboy, Tommy is really a bully. He's always playing cruel jokes on classmates or stealing from the store. But Tommy has a reason: life at home is tough. His abusive mother isn't well; in fact, she may be mentally ill, and his sister, Mary Lou, is in the hospital badly burned from doing a chore it was really Tommy's turn to do. To make amends, Tommy takes over Mary Lou's paper route. But the paper route also becomes the perfect way for Tommy to investigate his neighbors after stumbling across a copy of The Daily Worker, a communist newspaper. Tommy is shocked to learn that one of his neighbors could be a communist, and soon fear of a communist in this tight-knit community takes hold of everyone when Tommy uses the paper to frame a storeowner, Mr. McKenzie. As Mr. McKenzie's business slowly falls apart and Mary Lou doesn't seem to get any better, Tommy's mother's abuse gets worse causing Tommy's bullying to spiral out of control. Poignantly written, Kristin Levine proves herself a master of gripping and affecting historical fiction.

The cause of the number-one killer of apparently healthy infants between the ages of one week and one year—Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)—continues to defy science. This cruel mystery intensifies an already painful experience for bereaved parents, who frequently blame themselves for their baby’s death. This book explores how parents grieve, the meanings and casual explanations they attribute to a SIDS death, the effects of their grief on family relationships, and the strategies they use to cope and carry on. Karen Martin’s grounded theory study describes in detail the experiences of mothers and fathers whose babies died of SIDS ranging from less than one to over twenty-five years after the baby’s death. Her work makes an important contribution to health fields and to the social science of medicine, and is a critical resource for family doctors, public health nurses, counsellors, ministers, and all those working with grieving parents.