What Happens to Them When You Change

How do you feel about Change? Is Change the lover you relate to intimately and trust with your very life? A friend you're happy to see now and then but from whom you sometimes need time apart? Or an enemy you fear and keep at a distance? Such heart-wrenching and soul-probing questions bring reader and author alike to a place of enlightenment, deepened relationships, and . . . change. But it can be a long journey from there to here.

Hate change.

Embrace chaos.

Love hate.

Fulfill pleasure.

And if possible, cultivate envy until it breaks through the walls of your desperately desirous heart.

Bathsheba Smithen adopts these principles in order to survive, until things go from bad to worse. When her father, who is also a pastor, suddenly dies of a heart attack eight years after she saw him last, she is left to deal with the clash of emotions between his two rivaling families and-hardest of all-within herself. Issues spin out of control at his funeral, and in the aftermath, so does Sheba's life. To cope with her grief over what was and what might (should) have been between a dad and a daughter, the simultaneous abandonment by her mother, financial struggles, and her new role as legal guardian to two teenage siblings, she must entrust herself to an uncertain hope, even if it means losing some of the people she loves and the habits she has long relied on. She must accept Change.

By sharing her own experiences transparently, Bathsheba hopes to support others who find themselves where she once was-on a dead-end street. What Happens to Them When You Change is an offering of the heart, through which the author aims to help bridge the gap between the change you seek and the resources you need in order to make-or let-change happen. This creatively written memoir will give the helpless teen a shoulder to cry on, the step-mother a listening ear, and the black sheep of the family a will to come back home. As the nightmare fades, the only thing loud is the silence. Will the reader accept the freedom Change brings or remain wed to the shackles of destructive habits-the "Them" of the title?

Unique in style, this book goes beyond a narrative of the author's life to examine the process of change that touches us all. Change, along with other unexpected characters, is memorably personified as part of the author's experience, offering the reader a visual of his or her emotions as well. The subject matter here is universal, with the power to inspire people of all nationalities,ethnicities, and walks of life.