Hello Everyone:

Please forgive the apparent silence, but we have been dealing with a trojan virus that made it impossible to post new blogs.

I have an exciting series of parenting blogs coming your way for December, so stay tuned for those.

In the meantime, I just had an article published by the American Management Association, called Good Leadership in Challenging Times. Click here to read it.

Warmest Regards,

Coach Paul
www.lifechangingcoaching.com

“And if your home is just another place where you’re a stranger, and far away is just somewhere you’ve never been. I hope that you’ll remember, I am your friend.” – Rich Mullins

Life-Changing Coaching by Paul Edward is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative Works 3.0 License.

I never thought the day would come when I would ever agree with something that Jesse Jackson said. But I suppose that hell got a little colder this week, because, for once, he and I are of the same mind. For those of you who didn’t catch it, this past Wednesday, the Reverend Jesse Jackson made this typical, over-the-top statement: “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” Normally, I would be offended by such a bombastic declaration, but this time I found myself amazed by Jesse’s insight. You see, for a long time I’ve been struggling with an embarrassing identity issue. So Jesse’s statement on Wednesday provided me with much needed clarification.

While I believe that our healthcare system does need some fixing, even overhauling, I would vote against the current healthcare proposal in a heartbeat. Therefore, in Jesse’s world, I should no longer count myself as a black man. It turns out that Jesse’s announcement was right on target, but probably for a different reason than he thought. What Jesse didn’t know is that for the past several weeks I have been eating Activia for breakfast. And thanks to Jamie Curtis, slowly, but surely, I have been turning into a middle aged white woman. How did Jesse know?

Warmest Regards,

Coach Paul
www.lifechangingcoaching.com

“And if your home is just another place where you’re a stranger, and far away is just somewhere you’ve never been. I hope that you’ll remember, I am your friend.” – Rich Mullins

Life-Changing Coaching by Paul Edward is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative Works 3.0 License.

On June 22, 2009, 20-year old celebrity soul singer Chris Brown pleaded guilty to one count of assault on his former girlfriend, 21-year old celebrity soul singer, Rihanna. What was most disturbing about this case was that Rihanna said that the February 8th attack for which Chris Brown was convicted, was not the first time that he assaulted her, and yet she continued to stay with him. Sadly, Rihanna’s story is all too common.

A national study conducted in 1996 reported that 1 in 4 women were sexually or physically assaulted by their current or former spouses, cohabiting partners, or dating partners at some point during the relationship. Another study reported that every year approximately 1.3 million women were physically assaulted by their male relationship partners.

The fact that even superstar, celebrity women like Rihanna, Pamela Anderson, and Tina Turner find themselves trapped in abusive relationships should be a wake up call and warning to the rest of us. These are women who have tremendous power and resources, yet they still wind up staying with or going back to the men that are hurting them. Imagine what is happening with the women who don’t have the same options.

The solution to this problem is not as simple as it seems. The traditional approach is to tell the person to get away from the abusive partner as fast as she can. But that is not always safe or possible. A 2000 study reported that 1,247 women were killed by their romantic partners that year; many of those women were trying to end the relationships with their abusive men, but didn’t make it out alive. Human beings are designed to be in relationships with other human beings. That’s why I advise the women who write to me about their abusive relationships that the first thing they need to do is identify a safe person whom they can confide in. Once they develop a safe support network, then they should start the process of leaving the toxic partner. And in my book, Moving Forward, I teach them how to do that without putting themselves at risk of further harm.

Women who end their relationships with their abusive partners without having a safe network to support them invariably return to those same toxic partners. On the other hand, those who leave their abusive partners and go into safe support networks, rarely look back.

What do you think?

Coach Paul
www.lifechangingcoaching.com

“And if your home is just another place where you’re a stranger, and far away is just somewhere you’ve never been. I hope that you’ll remember, I am your friend.” – Rich Mullins

Life-Changing Coaching by Paul Edward is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative Works 3.0 License. .
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