Hello! This is one of my tour stops during my one-week book tour for Falling Through the Ceilig: Our ADHD Family Memoir. This virtual book tour is organized by Write Now Literary Book Tours. This tour runs Feb 11-15,2019. Follow the tour here. Book your own tour here WNL.
Genre: Disabilities, Nonfiction, Self-Help
ISBN-10: 0692099883
ISBN-13: 978-0692099889
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Audrey Robinson Jones left Kansas to attend Wellesley College, graduating in 1972 with her degree in anthropology/sociology, planning to be a social worker. Instead, she worked in healthcare administration for almost 30 years with her husband, including running his multi-office pediatric practice for 24 years. She also earned master’s degrees in healthcare administration and business.
She became managing partner of an airport concessions company and purchased two business franchises with her sons. At the same time, she and her husband built a loving home with three sons. As life unfolded, her sons and husband were diagnosed with ADHD. Managing businesses and four ADHD males took its toll on her health.
In 2008, Audrey was stricken with an almost fatal autoimmune disease. Recovering and retired, Audrey remains a vital force, including participating with Larry in several international health missions trips. At home, she continues to lead a local food pantry, something she’s done for over fifteen years, in addition to family advocacy activities.
Larry Albert Jones, MD, grew up in the 1950s with an overprotective mother and grandmother in a poor section of Memphis, Tenn. His childhood was greatly impacted by the village of educators and church folks who recognized his intellect. That village launched Larry to Wesleyan University, Johns Hopkins University and The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Unfortunately, he lost his mother to cancer before his 20th birthday, but his path was set. He began to notice how much time he required to maintain his college GPA as he prepared for medical school. Keeping his eye on the prize, he persevered, never considering that he would later be diagnosed with ADHD.
For at least 20 years of his career as a pediatrician and parent, he did not link his children’s symptoms and signs of ADHD to himself. While being an effective and popular clinician, he lived in denial about his own diagnosis. Larry is currently a departmental medical director for the SSM Healthcare System. With treatment and counseling, Larry is pursuing community projects, including facilitating a STEM program with elementary school students in Ferguson, MO.
A blend of love, humor and real-life irony, Falling Through the Ceiling makes sense of the nonsensical, shedding light on the challenges of living with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). These stories offer the real-deal reality of living with a house full of ADHD, including the ups, downs and chaos of what happened and the consequences of such. The authors, a married couple of 45 years, offer experience, practical insight and what they learned from counselors, research and their own mistakes to assist people coping with children and adults who are affected by ADHD.
Sharing their personal life challenges with the effects of ADHD, this is a real, sometimes painful, story written to help families recognize and navigate to controlling chaos and unlocking the gifts of ADHD in their children and themselves.
Falling Through the Ceilingsummarizes our experiences in the context of the Sankofa Proverb. The Sankofa bird is a mythical West African bird with its head turned backwards carrying a precious egg in its mouth. The Ghanian meaning is “forever forward never backwards”, interpreted as you must know your past to not repeat it. We have shared our lives working through ADHD and building on what we have learned. In the spirit of the Sankofa bird, we have continued to nurture our precious eggs, our sons and our marriage.
The book evolved from our passion to relate our experience of Hope and Healing, even if it would be a painful story to tell. By being both candid and often humorous, we wanted other families to know that they are not alone. We also knew that we needed to highlight the dangers of being enablers to other parents, to help them recognize and unlock the childhood and adult gifts of ADHD.
As an ADHD affected family, we could not find books about ADHD to help us to understand what can go wrong in families like ours. We knew other parents who were also in denial about professional assessments of ADHD. Yet, we had learned, with difficulty, how to work with multiple generations of children that are affected with ADHD, and wanted to offer hope and concrete do’s and don’ts to families rather than “just suffer through” clinical directions.
From “Suffering in Silence” to “Frustration and Resilience”, we share the struggles that we survived. Discussion and acknowledgement of ADHD in African American families has historically been the silent enemy among us.
Our objectives are:
· Lead a frank discussion of the visible and hidden effects and costs of ADHD to our families, highlighting the gifts.
· Provide a blueprint for elucidating causes and effects of hitting the wall and ever-increasing possibilities through diagnosis and treatment.
· Support our sons as they use their ADHD gifts to create their own paths from “Frustration to Resilience."
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