Home Again After Deployment

Not a day goes by without word in the news about our military forces and their efforts to defend human rights and freedom around the world. The debate continues about how many will serve where and when. Thousands of military personnel will be coming home, with many more in the months ahead. In next week’s show we talk about the tough transition these families face when they’re between serving our country and returning home to family routines. Jeanneane Musegades survived her husband’s seven deployments in ten years during his twenty-four years of service. Elaine Dumler wrote the playbook The Road Home to help service members -- both men and women -- who come back home, regain the joy and commitment they shared before their separation from their families. Both women share what works to stay connected during deployment and afterwards. I hope this Woman to Woman® show inspires you -- as it does me -- to take to heart the tremendous sacrifice military families make for our sake and to pray for them every single day!

She's Somebody's Daughter

Of all the topics that break my heart, the one coming up next week is in the top three. It’s about recovery from the horrific crime of child sexual abuse. You wish you didn’t have to even consider such things. But to ignore them is to neglect the secret pain that threatens the body, mind, and soul of its victim long after the crime. You’ll hear, with our first guest, how porn was the driving force behind the abuse of her granddaughters. Then, author Nancy Flowers tells how she survived and overcame her childhood abuse. Nancy now helps others stand up to this “silent epidemic,” as it’s called. In my work as a family counselor, years ago, and now with women wherever I speak, I identify with their anguish and rejoice in their victory. “She’s Somebody’s Daughter” brings us hope for children victimized by sexual abuse and for adults who did not deal with their own abuse in the past. There’s good news, however. Recovery is possible by taking the ugliness and the shame and bewilderment to Jesus Christ. He lovingly leads us to healing and wholeness, as only He can! Find out more, and tell your friends. This is a huge dilemma for women, and we must help each other through to the other side of sexual abuse. While it is an abhorrent subject, if we don’t band together on this one, who will stand up for the children? In the Old Testament of the Bible we read in Ps 94:16: “Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?” That’s a call to us! Get started answering that call this week on Woman to Woman®!

Hooking Up Hazards

My parents and little sister dropped me off at the university, helped clean up my side of the dorm room, took me out to lunch, and then drove off after a few words of wisdom and lots of hugs. I was excited to take on this challenge, thrilled that high school was behind me, and scared to death -- all at the same time! Looking back, I wonder how my parents felt. I know my sister was hit by the emptying nest, for sure. I was volunteering to learn about risk and standing firm on what I knew to be right, yet open to new ideas and behaviors. They came too, sometimes faster than I could handle them. Remember those years in your life? Some of the pressures made us cave and compromise who we were. But we learned from weakness where the real muscle was and used it to recover -- or not. In the end, I emerged stronger, wiser, more educated, and grateful my folks lived three hours away.

Flash forward a generation. When we send our kids off to college these days, it’s still with pride, hope, and a depleted bank account! We worry about their roommates, their studies, their friends, and their career choices. But former campus psychiatrist Dr. Miriam Grossman says we better also worry about them being “unprotected,” and how that is influenced by the campus “political correctness” that endangers every student with its attitude toward “hooking up.” Dr. Grossman is a board certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist, and is concerned about the effect of political correctness in the lives of our youth. She was first a guest on Woman to Woman® for her book, You're Teaching My Child What? Check out my interview with her on the May 15th program. Her latest book is Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student. She is joined by Dr. Meg Meeker, a pediatrician and adolescent specialist, who has authored Boys Should Be Boys -- a previous Woman to Woman show. Let their counsel protect your child against the "Hooking Up Hazards" on next week’s show. As always, program schedules and a host of other useful materials can be found on our Web site.

A Daughter's Journey Home

My oldest daughter finished college and lived with us the next two years during graduate school. By then, her younger brother was in college and her sisters were in their freshman and sophomore years of high school. Talk about a whole new hormonal chapter in our lives! We quickly noticed the need for additional mother-daughter relationship skills.

One of the memories I cherish about Jennifer’s grad school days is that, even though she was in school and working, she’d walk with me around town several evenings a week. It kept me in shape and gave us time to connect. I have to admit, it was great to run ideas past her and grab a little counsel from her wisdom!

Now all three of my daughters are moms and the rough edges we experienced are pretty much smoothed out. It was so worth the struggle and work and prayer. We are bonded now, and while there are always bumps whenever people love one another, our mother-daughter relationships are fiercely loyal and nurture all of us in unique ways.

I know not everyone has experienced this kind of healthy give and take in their mother-daughter relationships. Some of you were treated poorly, or even terribly. Dr. Linda Mintle, a licensed clinical therapist who is a mom and has a mom, knows that, too. It’s why she wrote the book, A Daughter's Journey Home. This week on Woman to Woman®, Dr. Mintle will share insights to help us love, honor, and improve our mother-daughter connections. She’ll even help us realize it’s normal and okay to feel like saying, “I love my mom, but sometimes she drives me crazy!”