I hope the occasion was as momentous for the UPS driver as it was for us. We certainly didn’t hide our excitement, jumping up and down like we did, as he unloaded on our doorstep six heavy boxes. For those boxes marked the delivery of Robin’s just published book.
As Robin put it in a letter to her colleagues, "It may be the most important thing I ever do." "It" meaning the edited compilation from 13 authors (including herself) of EMDR Solutions—Pathways to Healing, just published by W. W. Norton. A year and a half ago, she had the idea. Today, she holds it in her hand.
EMDR is a therapeutic protocol that makes trauma go away. It is a simple, powerful technique that appears to change the way traumatic memory is stored in the brain. It is a thoroughly researched and vetted technique, practiced by 40,000 therapists, and has the approval of the major professional societies. Therapists and clients love it, because it works.
Robin’s book is a cookbook for therapists. How to do EMDR with children. Mentally retarded clients. Couples. Dissociative clients. Anxiety disorders. Generational trauma. There are chapters that are going to have a profound effect on thousands of people’s lives, such as the first truly effective treatment for phantom limb pain, published for the first time in this book. Given that the Department of Defense has recently placed EMDR in the highest possible category as an effective treatment of PTSD, this chapter could not be more timely.
I feel a bit of ownership of this work, as I cooked most the dinners and kept up the house while my spouse added another 20 hours onto her work week for a year. I also did the cover photo and the author’s portrait, though she was one of the hardest subjects to please that I’d ever shot.
Robin insists that I include here the last paragraph of the acknowledgements, as they appear in the book:: "What can I say to my husband, Doug Plummer? Let me count the roles: photographer, computer system administrator, transcriber, website manager (emdrsolutions.com), chef, differentiated container of my crankiness and occasional ranting, hand-holder, playmate, cheerleader, and my beloved. Your presence continues to be a blessing in my life." 
yay robin! the cover looks fabulous and i'm sure the book is great! love you both...
nina
Posted by: nina | July 06, 2005 at 09:25 AM