Interview with Deanna Beech
Why did you write the book?
The book really wrote itself. I stumbled onto the phrase while trying to find a way to draw an anxious child out of his preoccupation with his fear that his father was going to die. Normally this would be one of those fears of childhood that has no basis in reality and is just part of developing object permanency, but we were on a small Army post in Italy and the 173rd Airborne Combat Unit was deployed to Afghanistan. It was a hard deployment and we had lots of wounded and killed in action. Saying, “It’s okay.” or “He’ll be fine.” would have been absurd. Kids know when you’re lying. So, instead we focused on what we knew to be true at the moment. At that moment we were lucky because we had not had any bad news and the child had recently received a phone call from his father. We then took this deeper and started to find other things that were lucky about the day and quickly moved to making it a game. I then taught it to his mother and they would play it whenever he was having difficulty. This helped concretely bring him, and us, back to the hear and now, which made the anxiety bearable.
What was your inspiration for the book?
I was inspired to write the book because the tools work. They work for lots of situations, not just deployments. When you have something that you truely believe would be helpful for others to know about, you have to share – at least I do.
What do you plan to do with the funds you raise?
The money that I raise by this campaign will go towards funding the publication of this book, and if there is any left over it will go towards publishing the next book in the series. That book will teach how to help children review their day to identify positive events and how to confront situations that didn’t go well by deciding a course of action to address the problem.
I am a writer, mom, military spouse, psychologist, runner, amateur carpenter, and more – as we are all more than the sum of our titles. As a writer the impetus for my work came from my experiences helping the families of the US Army 173rd Airborne unit during their 2007-8 & 2010 deployments to Afghanistan. As a result, I developed tools that translate psychological concepts into actionable resiliency strategies for children.