Welcome to me!

Hello fellow blogger,
I'm starting off slowly since I always feel guilty about writing something when I should be editing my book and getting it off to an agent or publisher.

The book is tentatively title: "Tormented Souls: Saving Teens from Suicide" thus this blog. I lost my 18 year old son on August 11, 2005. Cameron suffered from depression and substance abuse compounded from losing his birth dad when he was 15. I tried to save him from himself but I just was not able to.

After his death, I began researching like crazy. I had to know more about suicide, depression, bipolar disorder, drug abuse (methamphetamine in particular), and anti-depressants. It occurred to me since I had done all this research that I could easily turn it into a non-fiction book but decided to add in a memoir along the way about our life with Cameron during those last three tormenting years of his life. I'm not sure agents care about mixing the two but my goal is to make mentors of teens aware of drug abuse and depression in a teen. Also exactly where to go for help. Not just say 'get help.' That is not helpful when your teen is doing drugs - you can't think straight. You don't know what to do!

So that's my purpose in life right now - get my book out there and then hit the speaking trail to save more teens. I truly don't feel like they want to die, they just want out of their misery and suicide is one way to do so.

You can help me in my mission by learning more about similar topics and sharing them with parents of teens, church clergy that mentor teens, teachers that mentor teens, parents of teens that have teens visit at their home. If you're in contact with a teen, then you can very well be a mentor and make a difference - perhaps in saving a life!

Signing off for today. Let me know what you think of my first entry here in Blogger land.

ccz