Unintended Consequences

Kathleen Regan

Description

This memoir reads like fiction, yet is very much genuine. It is at times a gut wrenching account of the journey this mother traveled to have a family and then to get help for the very same. It has twists and turns all along her long-traveled road and details in depth the complexities of a blended family and the emotional undercurrents within. You experience her joy, sadness, frustration, tenacity, and angst as well as her ability to channel those emotions to gain control of her life and generate positive change and productivity. Following her journey brings the reader to her mastery over life events as she blends resilience with hope and finds peace.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 29 mars 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645367246
• Langue: English

Extrait

Unintended Consequences
Kathleen Regan
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-03-29
Unintended Consequences About The Author About The Book Dedication Copyright Information Acknowledgements Chapter 1 March 2014: A Tragedy Unfolds Chapter 2 1968: Starting Out Chapter 3 My Early 20s and My Short-Lived First Marriage Chapter 4 Back to School Chapter 5 1975 – 1978: Mark Chapter 6 1978 – 1980: Work and Home Chapter 7 On the Home Front Chapter 8 1980 – 1986: Our Family Begins Chapter 9 1986 – 1992: Trouble Brewing Chapter 10 1992 – 1993: Living in Crisis Chapter 11 1993: The Break Chapter 12 The Aftermath Chapter 13 1995 – 1996: The Program Chapter 14 1996: The Search Chapter 15 1996: The Journey Home Reunification Chapter 16 Moving On Chapter 17 1996 – 2000: Spiraling Downhill Chapter 18 2000 – 2008: Mark Tomas’ Adult Years and My Moving On Chapter 19 2000 – 2013: Changing My Course Chapter 20 2000 – 2013: Opening Our Arms: Making Change Happen Chapter 21 2014 – 2019: Life After the Event
About The Author
Kathleen Regan is a writer, mother, and psychiatric nurse with over 30 years’ experience. Her memoir is both intense and dramatic as she draws the reader into her family’s experiences. She is able to blend her psychiatric expertise with her personal accounts of tragedy, sadness, hope, and resilience. This is, at times, a haunting tale of a troubled child and the author’s myriad attempts to master difficult systems to obtain help for her son. She also navigates the complexities of the adoption world and blended families. This honest account narrates her mastery over the emotional turmoil generated by years of crises, through her channeling her energies to help other troubled children and her transition to a calming lifestyle.
Kathleen has previously published a non-fiction book: Opening Our Arms; Helping Troubled Kids Do Well , Bull Publishing, Boulder, Co (2006), articles for professional journals, and a variety of pamphlets. She is currently working on a young adult novel.
About The Book
This memoir reads like fiction, yet is very much genuine. It is at times a gut wrenching account of the journey this mother traveled to have a family and then to get help for the very same. It has twists and turns all along her long-traveled road and details in depth the complexities of a blended family and the emotional undercurrents within. You experience her joy, sadness, frustration, tenacity, and angst as well as her ability to channel those emotions to gain control of her life and generate positive change and productivity. Following her journey brings the reader to her mastery over life events as she blends resilience with hope and finds peace.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Beth, Andrew, and Mark Tomas.
Copyright Information
Copyright © Kathleen Regan (2019)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Ordering Information:
Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Regan, Kathleen
Unintended Consequences: A Mother’s Memoir
ISBN 9781643782362 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781643782379 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781643782386 (Kindle e-book)
ISBN 9781645367246 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019935072
The main category of the book — Family & Relationships / General
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street, 28th Floor
New York, NY 10005
USA
[e-mail]
[phone]
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the staff of Austin Macauley, without whom this memoir would not exist. I am extremely grateful to my two first readers, both published authors in their own rights. Firstly, I am thankful for my friendship with Carolyn Parkhurst, an acclaimed fiction novelist. Her support and suggestions led to a richer manuscript with more emotional depth. Ellen Ratner, a recognized non-fiction author who was not only my friend, former boss, and a make-it-happen dynamo, but also perceptive, and her suggestions in showing parallels between my personal experiences and my professional life in generating changes for humane care for children made the manuscript clearer and more finely knitted. It was under her tutelage in my early career that I came into my own and developed a sense of competence and confidence.
I am also extremely thankful and blessed for my staff at the Child Assessment Unit. Together we did great things for a large number of troubled youngsters and their families over a thirteen-year period. I am appreciative of all the Psychiatric Nurse Leaders and Program Directors who were supportive of the innovations we initiated. They visited us and observed us in action on the unit and then went back to their units and programs to move forward in more humane care of children. Most importantly, our endeavors were in large part due to Dr. Ross Greene. His brilliant approach to managing and understanding explosive children laid our foundation and was the framework around which we built our model of humane care of children.
I am grateful for the friends who supported me and watched over me during the years of acute crisis—Kathy, Debbie, Heidi, and Chris, all helped me through difficult times. I also credit my fantastic friends from Adoptive Families Together. They provided my education of the complex issues of adoption, and their strength in the midst of their own crises was inspiring. My college roommate and later-life friend Doreen was instrumental in supporting my move and welcoming me to my new home in Florida. Lastly, I am fortunate to have found friends who were welcoming—to all my VR buddies, you helped me find peace and made my lifestyle transition much easier than I had thought possible.
My gratefulness extends above all to my parents, who instilled in me a sense of social justice and their parenting gave me an inner strength upon which to draw from in difficult times and enabled my persistence and resilience.
Chapter 1

March 2014:

A Tragedy Unfolds
I was volunteering at my church, folding flyers for the coming Sundays mass. It was Friday, March 14, 2014; at about 10 o’clock in the morning when my cell phone rang.
I answered it to hear my ex-brother-in-law, Bernie, say, “Hello, Kathy. This is Bernie.”
I wondered why he was calling me, but I simply responded: “Hi, Bernie.”
Bernie then said: “Are you alone?” Stranger still , I thought.
I responded, “No, I’m at my church, folding flyers. Why?”
Bernie went on to say: “Find a place where you are alone and sit down.”
Wow, I still have no clue what this is all about . I walked into a nearby meeting room, closed the door, and took a seat on one of the couches. “OK, Bernie, what’s up?”
Bernie then related, “Kathy, Mark has died.” Before I could ask how and what was the medical cause, Bernie went on to tell me, “Mark was found this morning, and it appears that he was shot several times. The police are here at the house and Mark Tomas is being taken in for questioning. The TV crews are arriving so you need to call Beth and Andy right away before this is on the news.”
I felt dazed, numb, in shock maybe, but I knew I had to call my children right away. I called Beth and also told her to sit down. Then I reported: “Beth, Bernie just called me. Your father has died. I’m so sorry, honey. He told me that Mark was found with several gunshot wounds and Mark Tomas was being taken in for questioning. He said that a lot of police were at the house and TV crews were arriving. I’m leaving now to go home. Can you come over now?”
Beth was crushed and crying but said she would leave work and would call Bernie for more details before she drove to my home. Next I called my son, Andy, at his work in another state and relayed the same horrible news. He was also upset and crying, and said he too would call his uncle for more details. Mark Tomas was my eldest child and he was now thirty-four years of age. Andy followed two years later, so he was now almost thirty-two, and Beth was born in 1986, so she was about to turn twenty-eight years old.
I left the church and drove home. Luckily, it was in the next town, only a few miles away. I was able to take local roads and did not have to deal with traffic. I do not remember driving home, but I entered my home and sat down. That did not work, so I got up and began pacing around the room. I lost all sense of time that day. And I don’t know if Beth arrived in an hour or if it was two or three hours later. Beth had been in contact with both Bernie and Andy and had learned more information in the course of that day. As she filled me in with details, it was frustrating to her that I couldn’t seem to hold on to the information she was telling me.
I would ask the same questions over and over. She finally suggested that I take something to calm my nerves. I did take an Ativan 0.5milligram pill to see if it would help in making me feel less dazed and foggy. This was the death of my ex-husband. But he had been my husband for thirty-one years. He was the most significant person in my adult life. And in the first decade of our marriage, we had been happy as life partners. He was the father of my children. We had so much history together, some happy, some sad. And we had agonized, together and separately, about our oldest son. Now I was alone, trying to be a supp