Helen's Story
Glasses, braces, being picked on and being excluded — you name it — and it happened to me when I was growing up! Maybe that's your story, too. But, the biggest, longest, and worst hurt was having an extremely difficult relationship with my mother that lasted until she died in 1998.
Often and unprovoked, she would explode in anger and use words like fists against me. It was so painful and I felt so defenseless — even as an adult. Sometimes I coped by trying to be funny and laugh away her comments, but the hurt and the injury to me were still there. Sometimes I would become silent; sometimes I walked away; sometimes I just went numb but always there were tears. Whoever said sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you was totally wrong. Words sometimes hurt worse — bruises and cuts heal — but wounds made by angry and spiteful words stay open in the heart and may never get well. My goal became to "find my voice."
Soon after she died, I thought about my 750 students at the school where I served as school counselor and how they suffered from similar, if not worse, situations with their parents and even older brothers and sisters. I knew that they too had to "find their voice" and to be able to stop their bullies from continuing to hurt them.
To tell you the truth, I was just about to give up thinking that I could make any difference when I was divinely inspired to create The Peace Rug in 1999. The missing words that I needed in order to "find my voice" with Mom became the language of The Peace Rug. The language is like a script for a play and is practiced to become a part of you whether in a home or school. When someone says something that is teasing or hurtful, you use those words on The Peace Rug, and things are better in just minutes.
I'll never know for sure if The Peace Rug could have made a difference between my Mom and me, but I certainly believe that it would have.
The Peace Rug is dedicated to her.
Bio
Dr. Helen McIntosh has a doctorate in Counseling Psychology, is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Certified in Reality Therapy, speaker, author, and inventor of The Peace Rug®. She spent 18 years in public education. As school counselor, she wrote the book, Eric, Jose & The Peace Rug® to help students resolve conflicts with peers. With it, she developed the tools students needed so they would no longer remain "victims."
Fox News has shown interest in her work in school violence. She has written for Guideposts and ParentLife, and has been reviewed in HomeLife magazine, BookPleasures.com, Good News Tucson, Chattanooga Times-Free Press, and Daily Citizen newspapers. She has appeared on Everyday with Marcus and Lisa, Deeper Living TV, and many radio interviews. She has recently been featured on the cover of Boomer Times and Senior Life which is inserted in the Miami Herald, Miami Motherhood, Esperanza magazine and www.hopetocope.com, and has done radio interviews for World Talk Radio on Voice of America and www.wwnnradio.com. She is a guest columnist on LifeTwo.com, The Christian Post, and other websites and blogs.
The Peace Rug®, which she invented, is used by children all across America and in parts of Canada to resolve conflicts. It is manufactured by Shaw Industries, a worldwide leading carpet manufacturer based in Dalton, Georgia. It is also included in Kathy Ireland's rug collection with Shaw Industries.
Her most recent book Messages To Myself: Overcoming a Distorted Self-Image (June 2009) is published by Beacon Hill Press.
Her work before this includes the appendix in Lifting Our Eyes: Finding God's Grace Through the Virginia Tech Tragedy (Penguin/Berkley, 2007) where she wrote the section entitled "Tears and Fears: Working Through Grief and Trauma." It includes "Helping Others With Grief, Helping Others With Trauma, and How to Reframe PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)."
Visit Dr. McIntosh's websites: www.peacerug.com and www.helenmcintosh.com for more information.
If you wish a more extensive CV for other media or informational purposes, please contact Dr. McIntosh at Helen@helenmcintosh.com.
