Answers Network

1-13-20: Answers for the Family Host: Allen Cardoza & Co-Host: Terry LaDow Interviews Erin Thomson & Rob Danson

As homeless numbers spike in LA, more and more organizations are seeking volunteers to help battle the epidemic. Erin Thompson from Inner City Law Center’s Homeful.LA and Rob Danson from Food on Foot will discuss how you can volunteer to help our homeless neighbors in need.

As one of the leading online hubs for volunteering, advocating and donating towards homeless prevention in Los Angeles, Inner City Law Center’s Homeful.LA links eager Los Angeles County residents who want to make a difference with homeless organizations including the nonprofit Food on Foot.

Erin and Rob share how volunteers with Food on Foot distribute nutritious meals and clothing to approximately 150 homeless and low-income individuals every Sunday in Hollywood. Food on Foot also empowers homeless people to earn their way off the streets with an astounding 85% success rate.

Graduates from their jobs and housing program leave the streets with a full-time job, a fully-furnished apartment, a life-skills education and a huge boost in confidence. More info can be found at homeful.la and foodonfoot.org.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: VOLUNTEER FOR THE HOMELESS COUNT!
The 2020 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count is around the corner. Knowing where our homeless neighbors are is key to making sure they get on their feet. Join us and thousands more on January 21, 22, and 23.

Host Allen Cardoza Interviews Peter Seth

Once in a while a novel comes along that profoundly touches on a topic that is tragic, socially taboo, and at the same time as “real” as it gets.

A little-known fact is that the United States is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation’s prisons and jails — a 500% increase over the last forty years. According to a study entitled, “Demographic Patterns of Cumulative Arrest Prevalance by Ages 18 and 23”, nearly one in three Americans have been arrested at least once by the age of 23. By the ages of 28 to 33, about 20 percent of men with at least a high school diploma, but less than a bachelor’s degree, hold some kind of criminal conviction or guilty plea.

Imagine being one of those young people, who through a series of bad choices in friends, finds himself or herself convicted and imprisoned for being an accessory to a very serious crime. Now, fast-forward years to the day of your release and imagine what you would do when you got out. Can you?

It our interview with Peter Seth, he will share the in-depth research he compiled when constructing this stunning sequel to his best-selling novel, What it Was Like.

When I Got Out is chilling, thrilling and deeply touching, all at the same time as Peter weaves a story filled with challenges many ex-cons experience when the world they left behind, and the world they never knew, collide.

ABOUT PETER SETH

Peter Seth is a writer living in Los Angeles. He was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island. He wrote and directed the award-winning short film Lunch With Louie, which appeared in more than thirty-five festivals around the world. When I Got Out is his second novel. His first — What It Was Like— has been greeted by praise from readers all over the country. Check out the 5-star reviews on Amazon.com and the high rating on Goodreads.com.

12 30 19 Gabriella van Rij interviews Caleb Woods on Answers for the Family
http://answersforthefamily.com

Harnessing Darkness traces the struggle of living with mental illness. Through sections aptly titled Birth, Life, Death, and Rebirth, Caleb Woods gives readers the experience of what it’s like to live in the mind of someone who struggles with a roller coaster of emotions on a daily basis.

Caleb chooses to open the doors of his mind, allowing you to see not only the dark, but the light. Caleb lets each nightmare, depressed thought, and abundance of anxieties come to the surface with harrowing and hopeful poems about the struggles of living with mental illness and growing up gay in the Bible Belt. Experience loss, pain, heartbreak, and hope with Harnessing Darkness.

ABOUT CALEB WOODS

Caleb Woods began writing at a young age, first to cope with bullying at school and later to soothe his depressing thoughts. Growing up in the small town of Pisgah, Alabama, he was surrounded by religion and found it increasingly difficult to reconcile his faith with his sexual orientation. Caleb was told he would spend an eternity in hell for being gay – and he believed it. He was first officially diagnosed with PTSD in high school after his closest friend died unexpectedly. He moved away to college but ignored his symptoms and didn’t seek help for his mental illness. After years of suffering silently, he began to accept his sexual orientation and eventually met his now husband, Luke.

Despite a happy marriage, Caleb continued to suffer with symptoms of PTSD. At their peak, the night terrors and panic attacks finally drove him to seek professional help. His doctor quickly confirmed that PTSD was the diagnosis and it wasn’t something to be taken lightly. Today, Caleb receives treatment for PTSD, panic disorder, and depression by attending reoccurring therapy sessions. Throughout these years, Caleb wrote poetry about his specific struggles surrounding mental illness and growing up gay in the Bible Belt. In his debut book, “Harnessing Darkness: Expressing Mental Illness Through Poetry,” Caleb reveals his most personal thoughts – some dark, some light, some suffering, some uplifting, but all existential.

12-16-19 Host Allen Cardoza interviews Dr. Kelli Harding on Answers for the Family
| http://answersforthefamily.com

Discover an eye-opening and provocative new way to look at our health based on the latest groundbreaking discoveries in the science of compassion, kindness, and human connection.

The Rabbit Effect: Live Longer, Happier, and Healthier with the Groundbreaking Science of Kindness by Dr. Kelli Harding is a brand new, evidence-based framework for health that synthesizes vast amounts of medical and public health data. It critiques our medical system for compartmentalizing patients and treating their illnesses as disparate issues instead of essential and interconnected parts of a whole.

In this not-to-be-missed interview, Dr. Harding shares how The Rabbit Effect provides an empowering and radical new way to think about health and wellness. She will describe how the research proves that the way we live, work, play and treat each other greatly affect the body in profound ways, altering metabolism, immune functioning, mental health and the course of disease.

12-9-19 Host, Answers for the Family host, Allen Cardoza, interviews Kris Francoeur http://answersforthefamily.com

When your life is shattered in an instant, can conscious and deliberate gratitude and connection to nature help you find joy and hope again?

Of Grief, Garlic and Gratitude follows the first thirty months after Sam Francoeur’s death from an accidental opiate (prescription) overdose. His mother, Kris Francoeur, shares her journey from the first crushing days to her eventually being able to find light, joy, and hope again through the practices of conscious and deliberate gratitude, unconditional acceptance of others, and making strong connections to the natural world. Her story helps to grieve families feel that hope and joy will return, no matter how devastating and permanent loss.

Of Grief, Garlic and Gratitude approaches grief with both a very clear understanding of the realities of the process and also shares a very personal and honest account of living with grief. It presents healing and hope without relying on religion, formal psychotherapy, or pharmaceutical resources. Kris’s story reminds readers that even as people struggle with mental health issues and addiction, they can still bring joy and love to the world, and everyone is worthy of love and acceptance.

ABOUT KRIS FRANCOEUR

Kris Francoeur, writer, and educator, is a grieving mother who has found joy and light again through the practices of conscious and deliberate gratitude, unconditional acceptance and connection with nature. With Master’s degrees in both Counseling Psychology and Educational Leadership, Kris writes with authority about grief and moving forward in our very busy and stressful world.

A published author of fiction, Kris has published three romance novels (More Than I Can Say, That One Small Omission and The Phone Call) with Solstice Publishing using her pen name Anna Belle Rose. Kris lives in beautiful Addison County, Vermont with her husband and youngest son, a small herd of alpacas, a flock of chickens and several hives of bees. Kris loves to spend time with her family (including an older son, daughter, and grandchildren), sp

12-2-19
Answers for the Family Host, Allen Cardoza, Interviews Dana Suchow
http://answersforthefamily.com

We are currently living in an epidemic of self-hate, where children as young as four years old begin to compare themselves to others in unhealthy ways.

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), by the age of 10, over 80% of girls and boys are afraid of being fat! Entering their teens years, over 50% of girls and nearly 33% of boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives. 53% of 13-year-old American girls are unhappy with their bodies. This number grows to 78% by the time girls reach 17.

Overweight girls are more likely than normal-weight girls to engage in such extreme dieting with many demonstrating partial or full syndrome eating disorders.

Dina Borzekowski, professor at Johns Hopkins school of public health notes: “Social media may have a stronger impact on children’s body image than traditional media. “She also emphasizes that children most at risk are those with more exposure to media messages and less exposure to rational, clear messages from supportive adults.

As an eating disorder survivor, our guest Dana Suchow knows firsthand how harmful these thoughts and messages can be to young minds, and she works tirelessly to help parents stop eating disorders in children before they start. Dana will discuss topics that contribute to eating disorders, such as bullying, depression and anxiety, social media usage and more.

An award-winning speaker and coach, Dana works with parents and teachers to help adults raise kids who love their bodies and themselves. She will share powerful tools parents can implement right away to help kids know they are loved and accepted regardless of what their body looks like.

We welcome you to learn more about Dana’s outstanding work and to jump in and start discovering some “ah ha” moments and practices to bring your family closer together and raise healthy, self-confident kids and teens who know they are loved, no matter what!

ABOUT DANA SUCHOW

In 2012, Dana founded DoTheHotpants.com as a fashion blog, but once she realized fashion’s unattainable beauty standards were fueling her eating disorder, Dana made the difficult decision to leave the industry and focus on eating disorder prevention and activism.

In 2014 Dana founded #MyBodyStory, an ongoing storytelling series created to uplift girl’s and women’s voices that so often go unheard.

In 2016 Dana co-founded The Ripple, a nonprofit nationwide activist collective focused on helping women make waves in their communities. In 2018, Dana was awarded the Girl Up #GirlHero Award by This Is Us star and activist Chrissy Metz.

An international speaker, for years she has worked with audiences of 10 to auditoriums of over 1,000 and works with all school levels, from Elementary School to College, appearing in person or by video.

Dana lives in New York City and holds a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. You can find her on Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Network, Vogue, Huffington Post, Yahoo, ELLE, Seventeen Magazine and more!

11-18-19
Answers for the Family Hosts, Allen Cardoza & Gabriella Interview Robyn Spizman

While it can be easy to feel like it is impossible to make a positive difference in these divisive times, the enclosed advance reading copy of Loving Out Loud: The Power of a Kind Word by beloved television personality and New York Times bestselling author Robyn Spizman promises that our words can go a long way in that regard, especially when we share them out loud.

“I wrote this book to share the magic of loving life and each other out loud,” writes Robyn. “It isn’t just love in the romantic sense of the word, but rather the ability to profess out loud feelings we have when we adore, cherish, or care about someone or something. In the pages that follow, you’ll discover the secret to a life well-lived. How every day we can wake up joyful, stay positive, and set a little love in motion.”

Loving Out Loud offers readers creative ideas and practical insights for cultivating kindness in their lives while connecting more deeply with the world around them.

“Let this book be your road map to a life well-lived. It celebrates how the power of a generous thought and loving-kindness is transformative,” writes Robyn. “I’ve seen it change lives, build better relationships, and make a person smile from the inside out. I’ve watched how parents and children have formed lasting bonds, and friends and family have reunited. By loving out loud and ‘saying’ it forward, we can rest assured we are doing our best to be a blessing to family, friends, and those around us.”

ABOUT ROBYN SPIZMAN

Robyn Spizman is the author of Loving Out Loud. She is an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author and popular keynote speaker who has appeared in the media for over three decades, including NBC’s Today show more than thirty times.

11-11-19 Gabriella van Rij interviews Kristi Hugstad on Answers for the Family Radio Show http://answersforthefamily.com
Ever since author Kristi Hugstad’s husband, after years of struggling with clinical depression, completed suicide in 2012 by running in front of a train, she has dedicated her life to helping to abolish the stigma of mental illness and suicide.

That mission is what inspired her to write the enclosed advance reading copy of Beneath the Surface: A Teen’s Guide to Reaching Out When You or Your Friend Is in Crisis (New World Library, September 10, 2019), which speaks candidly to today’s youth — and the parents, teachers, and coaches who love them — about the anxiety, depression, and suicide attempts that far too often accompany the unique challenges that face their generation.

“Teens today experience some complex issues, all of which may be caused by or may contribute to depression or other mental illnesses,” writes Kristi. “This book offers information on eating disorders, anxiety, substance abuse, self-harm, bullying, technology addiction, peer and academic pressures, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”

Each chapter of Beneath the Surface addresses a different cause or aspect of depression and suicidal thoughts, many of which are a normal aspect of growing up. The book includes real-life examples of young people who have suffered depression firsthand to help readers recognize the risk factors and warning signs and offers practical exercises to help them quickly and confidently identify whether they or someone they know are in need of help, and if so, what to do and where to go for it. Depression can strike anyone and does not discriminate. This book can save lives.

ABOUT KRISTI HUGSTAD

Kristi Hugstad is the author of Beneath the Surface: A Teen’s Guide to Reaching Out when You or Your Friend Is in Crisis. Ever since her husband completed suicide in 2012, after years of struggling with clinical depression, by running in front of a train, she has dedicated her life to helping to abolish the stigma of mental illness and suicide.

A certified grief recovery specialist and a grief and loss facilitator for recovering addicts at South Coast Behavioral Health, Kristi frequently speaks at high schools. She is also the host of The Grief Girl podcast and lives in Orange County, California.

11-4-19 - Answers for the Family Interview with Lisa Boucher
Guest Host: Seth Hall

Women tell me they drink because they have problems—the truth is that they have problems because they drink. The solution stares us in the face, but we don’t like the answer, so we move on to something else: antidepressants, therapy, self-help books, yoga, holistic healers—the list goes on . . . my God, just don’t tell me to quit drinking.

The real question that needs to be asked is how can you live a joyous, fulfilling life when alcohol—a depressant—gets invited along on every occasion? I am passionate about shifting the scales and helping women of all ages find their joy.

The lives of mothers and their children often follow one another like beads on a necklace. Through these humorous, yet tragic stories of women, award-winning author Lisa Boucher’s latest book, Raising the Bottom is a little book of big experience that will help you answer the questions: Do I drink too much? Is it possible that my search for fulfillment can end here? The truth is revealed in these pages and the answer is YES!

Based on a collective, three hundred years of experience from women who have been there and done that—you won’t be bored with statistical data and theoretical explanations from talking heads who spout theory but have little practical, first-hand knowledge or experience on how to dig yourself out of even the deepest hole. Aimed to start a social conversation about behaviors women partake in and thoughts that women have about drinking, but no one is brave enough to confront—until now!

Please join us as we travel on a journey with Lisa that is all about changing and saving lives. It’s all about Raising the Bottom.

ABOUT LISA BOUCHER

For the past twenty-eight years, Lisa has worked with hundreds of women to overcome alcoholism, live better lives and become better parents. She was prompted to write Raising the Bottom when after twenty-four years of working in hospitals, she realized that doctors and traditional health care offer few solutions to women with addiction issues.

She is dedicated to not only help women recover from alcoholism, but has extended her reach to educate and help corporations deal with the growing addiction problem that has permeated every sphere of American life. An author of five books, she holds a BA in English, and is the mother of twin sons. She currently resides in Ohio with her husband.

Raising the Bottom is her fifth book. She was prompted to write Raising the Bottom when she realized after twenty plus years of working in hospitals, that doctors and traditional health care offer few solutions to women with addiction issues. Raising the Bottom was proud finalist in the 2017 USA Best Book Award.

10-28-19 - Answer for the Family Interview with Professor Carla Yanni
Host: Gabriella van Rij - http://answersforthefamily.com

Against the backdrop of sweeping societal changes, communal living endured because it bolstered networking, if not studying. But housing policies often enabled discrimination according to class, race, and gender, despite the fact that deans envisioned the residence hall as a democratic alternative to the elitist fraternity. In “Living on Campus,” Rutgers University Professor Carl Yanni focuses on the dormitory as a place of exclusion as much as a site of fellowship, and considers the uncertain future of residence halls in the age of distance learning.

Background: Every fall on move-in day, parents tearfully bid farewell to their beloved sons and daughters at college dormitories: it is an age-old ritual. The residence hall has come to mark the threshold between childhood and adulthood, housing young people during a transformational time in their lives. Whether a Gothic stone pile, a quaint Colonial box, or a concrete slab, the dormitory is decidedly unhomelike, yet it takes center stage in the dramatic arc of many American families.

This richly illustrated book examines the architecture of dormitories in the United States from the eighteenth century to 1968, asking fundamental questions: Why have American educators believed for so long that housing students is essential to educating them? And how has architecture validated that idea? “Living on Campus” is the first architectural history of this critical building type.

ABOUT PROFESSOR CARA YANNI

Carla Yanni is a professor of art history at Rutgers University. She is the author of The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States (Minnesota, 2007) and Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display. She earned her doctorate in art history from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.