It has been a really negative year for everyone, you can't even turn on the news without seeing more negativity.

Fighting and name calling are becoming par for the course. Our own government is acting more like a class of preschoolers than a leadership body made up of mature adults. Not just one party, but both are playing the "I don't like you so you can't come to my birthday party" game.

I used to joke that maturity was overrated, but a little bit of maturity wouldn't hurt any of us right now. If you have a truth to speak, then by all means speak it but the minute we resort to including personal attacks and name calling we can no longer consider ourselves responsible adults.

One of my favorite parenting experts is a woman named Susan Stiffelman, she calls her parenting approach Passionate Parenting

Through her program I have learned many things, but most of all she has taught me the futility of power struggles. The more you seek to control another person, the more they resist that control, and the faster you lose the control you seek.

Perhaps she should expand her book to explain that that applies to every situation, not just our own children. We can all share our views as loudly and even as aggressively as possible, but if it is important enough to share then it should be our goal to try to get other people to hear and hopefully understand us?

When we shut them out before they even get a chance to hear it, what is the point of saying it at all?

It has been a year since I made the commitment to remain positive no matter what the situation. I picked a bad year to do it, and as hard as I have tried I still have a very long way to go.

Along the way I have had to cut out a lot of activities, going to my much loved locals only site is just one of those things. Not because anyone there has been unkind to me or attacked me in any way, but because the negativity is not only a physical but an emotional drain.

Those who teach positive living say that it takes five positives to counteract a single negative. If so then the cloud of negativity hanging over this country is going to take centuries to conquer.

Those same experts also teach that we should not focus on what we don't have, but what we do have. Instead of focusing on what is going wrong, we are supposed to focus on what is right.

I'm not saying that it is a bad thing to speak your mind or to disagree with what is going on in the government right now. I'm just saying before you complain, see if you can find a way to turn that complaint into positive action.

One thing I have always stressed to my children is that bitching has never solved a single problem. Instead of focusing on the problem, focus first on the lessons we can learn from it and then focus on finding the solution.

My children understand this concept, but so few adults seem to these days. Even my children know that smart people use their brains, the rest resort to calling names.

What are we teaching our children right now?

That is is better to hate than to love?
That it is better to complain that to take action?
That it is okay to call other people names as long as you don't like them?
That anyone who does not agree with you is the enemy?

Children do learn these lessons whether we mean to teach them or not, and it might seem okay to teach them to attack that which they do not like but... there will be times in every child's life when they do not like us.

When those lessons come back to us, they sometimes hurt.

One area of our life affects every other. If we insist we are teaching our children respect but can't offer respect to our neighbor or even our president, then we aren't teaching them respect at all.

We are teaching them to hate, and we really have no right to be surprised when that hate comes back home. Teach them love, and compassion, teach them to speak their truth respectfully, teach them to create not to destroy.

Haiti isn't far from anyone's minds right now no matter what you are doing it hovers right there at the back of your mind. It is just so senseless, it is hard to be reminded that sometimes life doesn't make sense... and death never does.

When something so incomprehensible happens I always loose faith in life just a little. I think all of us do, at least to some extent. It's hard to believe in the goodness in life when something so incredibly bad can happen without notice.

Then I see people so moved by the plight of a stranger that they offer help in whatever way they can, and my faith in life returns a little. Life feels a little more solid. When people find a place in their hearts for someone they have never, and probably will never meet, when for a moment they do not see the differences, they see the commonality, then life seems a little less senseless.

It always amazes me when something so beautiful can grow out of something so indescribably ugly. Nothing we can do can give the people of Haiti what they have lost. Behind all of the death tolls and damage estimates are real people. Countless numbers of real people, human beings just like us. Just like any of us.

As ugly as it is, tragedy teaches us that no matter who we call enemy, no matter who we call friend, deep down we are all human, and no matter who you are pain still hurts.

As ugly as life can sometimes be, that beauty is there too. We create that beauty when we look past ourselves and reach out to a stranger.

For each and every one of you that has done something to help the people of Haiti, I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

Thank You.

My first book is about to be released in print. It's exciting, but at the same time it is frightening. I'm still not positive that I said what I wanted to say exactly the way I wanted to say it, but I think I came pretty close.

Most of the books I have read regarding abuse survivors have been overwhelmingly negative, they talk about the after effects, the nightmares, the flashbacks, the fear of intimacy, the inability to trust.

Those things certainly are byproducts of abuse, but along with the negative consequences come a great many skills that can actually help us when we see them for what they are.

Yes, survivors often have every reason to view the world as a negative place, but in the end that negativity only hurts us. The world is also a positive place, full of life affirming experiences. Life is beautiful but first we have to choose that beauty.

I can't tell you how often I have heard survivors describe themselves as broken, I have done so myself many times, but most of us really are far less broken than we imagine ourselves to be. What has been broken can be fixed, but far too many give up the hope of healing before they even start.

Life itself is a path that each of us must travel, and healing is only a part of that path if you choose to follow it.

Sometimes we tend to think of healing as a destination, thinking that some day we will finally be able to say, "that's it, I am healed." When we focus only on the destination we are missing the greatest things that life has to offer, it is the journey that is important, and as long as we keep ourselves moving towards healing, we can and will heal.

If we keep putting one foot in front of the other, if we just keep going no matter what gets in the way we will heal, but healing is a process, and that process continues throughout our lifetime.

In the end, where we have been isn't near as important as how far we have come.

"We are men, we are women, we are young and we are old. We all have our own unique stories, it hardly seems we have anything in common at all, but we are a family. We are a family because of what we do have in common. We are a family joined not by blood, but by spirit.

We are survivors, and we are stronger than any of us truly know or understand."

Excerpt from the upcoming book
'Sister, Survivor'
by Ayngel "Boshemia" Overson