Deprecated: Function create_function() is deprecated in /home/customer/www/deborahvlock.com/public_html/tkskill.php on line 1
Deborah Vlock – Author, blogger, kid-driver, thing-finder, you name it

Publishers Weekly reviews Parenting Children with Mental Health Challenges

Vlock brings her personal experience as the mother of two children with mental health challenges to a realistic, empathetic guide targeted at ensuring her parenting peers “don’t try taking this trip solo” and “feel stronger and better,” rather than isolated and overwhelmed…. Her advice feels both relatable and reliable, coming from personal experience—her own as well as that of other parents—and from mental health professionals. Parents in the same boat as she will find this a valuable addition to their self-care toolbox. (Nov.)
Read the Whole Review!

From “On Animals and Virtue”

She was an unlucky mare, an erstwhile school horse: sway-backed and tired and hungry for love. I was unlucky myself, and did not mind her ungainliness…

Read

From “An Anguished Choice To Help A Son With Mental Illness”

For years, [my son’s] death wish trumped everything. If he could not perform the act himself, then he wanted me to do it for him. It was the one and only sacrifice I could never make for him.

Read

From “The First Time With Charlotte: New York City, circa 1996”

Every one of our hook-ups, if you want to call them that, as alien and lovely as Victorian horsehair upholstery against bare legs.
Read

From “Angst Begets Art: On Finding Beauty In A Life Of Anxiety”

The riches we bequeath to our children can largely be reckoned in currencies of fear.
Read

From “Breasts are not a Requirement”

The first time I tried on a pair of falsies, I was 35 and built like a string bean.
Read

From “Small Change”

One night in the slow, hot crawl of late summer, our cat spontaneously combusted.

(nominated for the Pushcart Prize)

Read
EARLY MORNING SUNLIGHT FILTERS THROUGH BALSAM FIRS AND FERNS AT TWITCHELL LAKE - NARA - 554393 - Public Domain - Anne LaBastille, 1938-, Photographer (NARA record: 1422473)

From “I Was Mighty”

We grew up near the mountains and the woods. We knew from forests.

Read

From “Dentist of the Wild West”

Right while I’m getting my braces, and saliva I can’t swallow is pooling in the back of my mouth, Doc Hallowell tells me about square dancing.

Read

From “Benjy, Awake”

On a blossom-scented spring day, my son Benjy, almost eleven and off kilter, begged me to help him kill himself.

Read

From ”There Be Mental Illness Here”

Ten years ago, things were already going steeply downhill but I was not prepared to admit it.

Read

From “Dialogue”

Ute Schmidt’s first lesson, upon arriving in Boston, is that Americans talk fast and laugh at things that are not funny.

Read

Subscribe to my newsletter!

The Latest from Deborah at Psychology Today

read-my-blog-on-psychology-today
Share