Blog - Luanna H. Meyer, Ph.D

A Breast Cancer Guide for Spouses, Partners, Friends, and Family: Using Psychology to Support Those We Care About

by Stephen N. Haynes, Luanna H. Meyer, and Ian M. Evans

https://www.routledge.com/A-Breast-Cancer-Guide-For-Spouses-Partners-Friends-and-Family-Using/Haynes-Meyer-Evans/p/book/9781032046495

Our practical, science-based guide for supporters of women with breast cancer is now published and available from Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group) Publishers, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other bookstores.

This 2022 book offers advice and information about how to provide the best emotional and practical support you can when helping someone with breast cancer to cope, recover, and thrive–while maintaining your own physical and psychological health. As authors, we translate psychological evidence into concrete and doable advice for caregivers, validated by our own first-hand experience with breast cancer. Different chapters review diagnosis and decision-making along with the range of cancer treatment options including lumpectomies and breast-sparing surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, mastectomies, and going flat or choosing breast reconstruction. We cover issues around privacy and disclosure with practical advice about when and how to tell family members, children, and friends. The guide includes a chapter on metastatic breast cancer and end-of-life for women who will undergo treatment for the rest of their lives, and concludes with a chapter on taking care of yourself as support person.

Family History: Fact versus Fiction

By Luanna H. Meyer Ph.D

In 2018, I published my first novel Bella’s Legacy, a family saga across four generations in 20th century America. The novel is primarily a story of the women’s lives–opportunities taken and lost as they faced historical events and family circumstances. Following its publication, Christine Sleeter invited me to contribute an article to the special issue she was guest editing on Critical Family History, appearing in the open-access journal Genealogy.

My paper describes the process of researching family history. My journey included visits to museums, archives, libraries, courthouses, and the communities where family members had lived in three states–Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Bella’s Legacy is fiction, but the characters are the product of the places where they had lived, worked, and experienced the historical events of their times. My father’s autobiography inspired me to begin the research, but I decided not to attempt to re-construct the lives of ancestors based on what I learned. Instead, I chose the option of telling the stories of those who came before us in a manner that did not violate their privacy or presume to know their truths. Fiction can be a mechanism to honor the lives of ancestors while, at the same time, unmasking uncomfortable realities and confronting the myths that endure across so many family histories.

After all, as Durie cautioned us, one can never really know the truth of the lived lives of others: one can only strive to diminish the deception (Durie, 2017).

My article is available for download and printing at no cost in Genealogy 2020, 4, 44, and the doi is 10.3390/genealogy4020044

The Durie reference: Bruce Durie (2017). What is genealogy? Philosophy, education, motivations and future prospects. Genealogy 1:6.

Bella’s Legacy, a novel by Luanna Meyer

By Luanna H. Meyer Ph.D

As a young girl in Michigan, Bella Colquhoun knows she’ll be a writer. It’s not easy for a woman in the 1920s to have a career of her own. She decides to never marry, but Ray promises to support her dreams. No one could have anticipated the railroad accident that would claim his life, teaching Bella things she never wanted to know about investigative journalism.

She moves to New York to attend Columbia University, but she never loses touch with the families back in Michigan, brought together by a nephew given Ray’s name. She eventually researches the family tree and decides to record the interrelated stories of extraordinary women who never quite became who they thought they would be. Across four generations, Bella traces the stories of women confronted by societal challenges as they struggle toward more than ordinary lives.

Bella’s family saga begins with European immigration to the Midwest and moves with the younger generations across 20th century America into the Pacific and even Africa. From women’s suffrage to civil rights, the Titanic to the Great Depression, these women face conflict with spouses and family members related to gender roles, childbearing, politics, and education. Yet, they find the strength to be someone, driven to rise above the challenges of a work-in-progress America.

Reviews of Bella’s Legacy by Luanna Meyer

“Luanna Meyer’s engaging novel Bella’s Legacy, exploring four generations of a family, focuses on women struggling to find their place in the world despite limitations of social convention, familial duties and economic circumstances…. Meyer’s well-research work artfully provides context with interesting historical details about the Titanic, Pearl Harbor, anti-Vietnam protests, and more…. a creative, character-driven story. It will challenge readers to reflect on women’s place in society, now and yesteryear.” –-BlueInk Review

“Teen pregnancy, marital strife, racial tensions, and ambitious husbands are among the problems the characters face…. Historical tidbits appear throughout the narrative, and the work strives to tell some of the lesser-known aspects of American history…. A sprawling novel that provides a satisfying exploration of women’s experiences across generations.” –Kirkus Review

“Young widowhood, lost babies, triumph and regret, conflict and reconciliation, dreams taken up and dreams deferred—these are some of life’s turning points that Bella’s Legacy explores…. The book’s historical context is meticulously researched, and the characters are vividly brought to life. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it!” –Christine Sleeter, author of White Bread and The Inheritance

“This is a very important book—it’s a family saga about several generations of women, some in poverty, all dependent on their historical context to get by in the world…. I cheered for the triumphs of these women facing educational challenges, financial worries, health problems, drinking husbands, and parents who could dictate what a daughter’s life would encompass. This is a beautifully written and insightful story of what it means to be a woman for the past 130 years of American history. I wholly recommend this book.” –Cherri Randall, author of The Memory of Orchids

“Meyer…has a great command of the emotions associated with her characters and their personal struggles, without bogging her style down with them. So often the historical aspects of a story that takes place in the past suffer when it comes to balancing those overarching, set-in-stone details with individual stories and their issues…. Bella’s Legacy is a beautiful work that I think has great potential as a more involved novel depicting the many struggles of women in the 1900s.” –Judge’s Commentary, 27th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards 2019

So, You Have a Story to Tell

By Luanna H. Meyer Ph.D

Ian M. Evans and I are doing a writers’ workshop entitled “So, You Have a Story to Tell” at the Nairn, Scotland, Book & Arts Festival in September 2018. Our workshop for beginning writers is to encourage new fiction writers to persist with the confidence of knowing everyone has at least one story to tell. Ian has already published three novels–Forgive Me My Trespasses (Archway), Menace (Austin Macauley) and The Eye of Kuruman (Pegasus) with a fourth The First Village (Pegasus, in press), while I am currently looking for a publisher for my first novel Bella’s Legacy (and have started work on my second). The Nairn Book & Arts Festival is in its 15th year. Check it out at www.nairnfestival.co.uk, @Nairn_Festival on twitter, or Nairn.Festival on Facebook.

Women’s March on Washington D.C. January 21, 2017

By Luanna H. Meyer Ph.D

I will be participating in the Women’s March on Washington D.C. on January 21, 2017, the day after the inauguration. Stunned and sickened by the election results and what this could mean for America, I believe we need to make clear that women, men, children–all of us–will not allow this president-elect to deny or belittle hard-won rights. Peaceful demonstration and free speech are among those rights. Please join this inclusive rally and march if you believe in democracy for a nation that seems to be home to far too many people who wish to replace it with hatred, racism, sexism, demagoguery, and bigotry against those who have been victimized far too many times and for far too many years. The national Facebook page for the March shows attendance growing by more than 1,000 attendees an hour, with the goal of one million together in D.C. for this opportunity to be seen and heard.

This is a moment of crisis for this country. For me personally, there is an irony and a sadness in this new reality and the timing of it all. I was born in 1945, the year that the world could no longer fail to acknowledge that white Europeans led by Germany had murdered more than six million people because of their religion, culture, disabilities, and political beliefs. That was also the year that two atom bombs were dropped by the United States on two cities in Japan, killing hundreds of thousands immediately and many more for years to come in the aftermath of radiation. This coincided with forcing Japanese-Americans to give up their homes and accept placement in internment camps against their will, based solely on race and in the absence of any evidence that they were a threat to this country’s national security.

It took some time for America to realize that the 1950s were “perfect” for only a few–those who were white, non-disabled, and middle class, whatever that means. Even now, not everyone accepts that a nation that benefited white European immigrants by distributing land stolen from the indigenous peoples of North America is a nation of immigrants, so that it is the height of hypocrisy to now deny immigration to others also seeking to escape poverty, tyranny, and death for them and their children.

By the 1960s, our country began shifting the national agenda towards advocacy for peace and civil rights, with hope that the United States would continue to evolve. The Constitution must be a living document–not interpreted literally as originally designed to protect slave-owners and those who stole from, victimized, persecuted, and murdered Native Americans and African Americans–and denied the vote to women.

Now I am 71 and am no longer confident that the nation we are leaving to our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren is respectful, kind, and dedicated to justice for all. Something very bad has just happened that seemed unthinkable but now has become real. It saddens me to realize that I may not be around to see a just nation affirmed by its citizens once again. Please join the Women’s March on Washington D.C. and actions everywhere and elsewhere to stand up for our rights and those who daily are being denied their rights.

Mahalo for listening.