The Coping Strategist

It’s that time of year again where I’m without my wife for a week. My children see their mother in the morning when she gets them ready for school and that’s the last time unless I take them to the Sandy Expo Center to see her. Though, it’s all for an unsurpassed, charitable cause.

My wife spends of over 12 hours a day along with many more honorable women who serve on the board and other committees for the Festival of Trees. My readers know that the Festival of Trees is the organization responsible for generating millions of dollars each year for medical care at Primary Children’s Hospital.

Trees are decorated and donated to the Festival to be displayed at a gala and sold throughout the week. Everything is donated, including time, and 100% of the proceeds are given to the hospital for the care and treatment of children.

It has become a tradition in our family and we just accept the fact that we are without a wife and mother for this one week out of the year. The cause is noble and we do what we can to help. Even if that means ceasing to complain.

While I attended the Festival today as a guest, I met up with a very dear friend. Although we hadn’t seen each other for 20 years, our visit was natural and rewarding. His sweet wife mentioned to me that she had downloaded my book, Life After Suicide, and was halfway through reading it.

After our visit, I pondered on this chance meeting with a dear old friend and his wife whom I’d only just met. I considered others that I’ve ran into who have mentioned that they had read my book. I was humbled yet honored to think about the distance my influence was reaching. It made me consider carefully my next decision.

I decided that if I’m going to call myself, “The Coping Strategist,” then I’d better provide my readers a more prescriptive tool for coping. I’m referring to the “jump kit” that I described in Chapter 3 of Life After Suicide. I wanted to provide you with the tools necessary for navigating life’s complicated twists and turns.

All this thinking helped me remember something that had happened to me about a year ago. I was driving home from work and passed a billboard that caught my attention. It spoke to one of my job descriptions as a program manager for the Department of Health which is to plan and prepare for eminent disasters in Utah such as earthquakes and floods. The message went something like this, “Hoping for the best is not an effective emergency plan.”

In my opinion, the same message should apply to eminent disasters in your life. They may not be as devastating as a flood. Your troubles may only measure a 1 on the Richter scale, but it’s imperative that you are prepared for whatever life throws at you.

It’s my job as “The Coping Strategist” to help you plan and prepare for disasters that might shake your foundation to the core. I will show you how to build your armor link by link so that the metaphorical chainmail might spare your anguish in the wake of tragedy.

My next book will be a guide to the seven C’s of coping that I described in Life After Suicide. Watch for it to be released by Easter 2017.

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