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by Alfonso Wyatt (Author), Ouida Wyatt (Author)
Discovering the impact of our mind's capacity to make meaning under the onslaught of life's daily challenges and struggles is what makes being human so complex. The development and protection of our mental health has always been at the heart of how we function and come to know our real selves. As we consider all that we ask of ourselves, and others, if we live long enough, we realize what it takes to survive our pain, sustain our capacity to live in spite of our trauma and to, somehow, turn our broken hearts into beautiful songs, stories and poems expressing our complex and carefully woven lives.
Soul Be Free III: Different Hues of The Blues, co-written by Rev. Dr. Alfonso Wyatt and Ouida C. Wyatt, so beautifully illustrates the gifts in the sadness that comes with life's pathways being chipped away. The authors offer us a way to see what lies beneath the façade of perceived social and psychological support through to the hardness that replaces hope during those dark days. I am so glad that they decided to write a book that uncovers the truth of what is really going on in the mental health of our sisters and brothers. Alfonso and Ouida lay bare the hearts and souls of those who must choose life and living over all the obstacles and odds against that choice.
In my practice and work as a licensed clinical psychologist in New York and Virginia, treating and consulting in and throughout various communities, corporations and organizations, I have discovered that all of us are asked to appear in our lives as stable, supported, healthy people. And we are not. The presented stories boldly offer the context of people surviving the darkness of their own minds and spirits and, yet, as I have seen in my practice, they reconcile themselves to continue the unrelenting and unquenchable desire to live-even with the tiniest light and the most devastating agony from memories and distorted beliefs people are holding. And some are not.
We have a lot of work ahead of us before real healing for mental health issues is taken seriously and afforded the space in the health discourse it deserves. I believe the way to start the work of creating a new mental health reality, is with truth telling and sharing. It is my belief this book will offer the type of reflective integration that pausing to meditate and contemplate always does. It helps to ask if the life that has chosen you is being recognized for all the gifts and opportunities it brings. From that awareness, I choose to believe readers will declare their own commitment to seek help--wherever it can be found and not stop seeking it until he or she is heard, helped, and invited into a loving healing community of sojourners maintaining good mental health. --- Sonia R. Banks, Ph.D., LCP
