Mother and Daughter Writing a Book to Help Tween and Teen Girls

 Over the past few months, I’ve really gotten to know a ton of wonderful bloggers out there. Friendly, supportive, informative, hilarious, you name it. When I heard that Brandy from Happily Blended had written an inspirational book with her daughter, I was real excited for her. As someone with a publishing background, I take a vested interest in that sort of thing so I asked Brandy if she’d like to blog about the book on Mommy’s Busy… Go Ask Daddy. I didn’t want her to simply promote the book (that’d be too easy), I wanted her to share her experience and reasons for writing the book in the first place. And she did in a wonderful guest post below. Thanks so much for sharing, Brandy!

The day arrived, my daughter was turning into a tween and her emotions were going wild. All small issues that came up seemed to be 100% more important to her and more dramatically told to me during our nightly conversations than before and I had no clue what to do.  Kiara is my first born child, and only daughter. What am I to do when it comes to tween drama, and above all, girl tween drama?

The answer came after nights of wondering how in the world my daughter was ever going to be the happy, positive little girl I knew her to be; we would write a book. Writing is something that my daughter and I share a love and creative mindset for, so why not write a book to help her and help others at the same time? Perfect. The plan was set in motion.

Kiara was having troubles with wearing glasses for the first time, needing to have a spacer to ensure her teeth had room to grow and above all, she was having issues with having a split home. Kiara has lived in a split home, meaning she has Dad’s house and Mom’s house, since she was four months old but now. As she started to head into the girly tween years, she needed more female advice, wisdom and support. She had a lot going on, some of which I won’t even begin to put out there in the World Wide Web, and I was the one she came to for help.  I took time to write positive messages on little Post-it notes, writing positive poems and making sure to read Chicken Soup for the Soul age-appropriate stories to her every night. We spent time each evening, after her wild brothers were asleep, talking about our days and making sure to shed light on what we have to be happy for.

Kiara was starting to feel better, she was starting to look to the positive in life and starting to understand that she cannot control how others are, and that she can only control who she is as well as how she personally feels within her own self. My method of notes, conversations and positive story reading worked!  Once we both realized that this method worked, our book began its stages of creation. Being that Kiara is a tween girl with the needs of being social, she didn’t help at first. I think Kiara thought, “here goes Mom on another adventure of some odd thing that will go nowhere but make her happy,” but I didn’t care what she thought, we were going to get this book going and I needed her help!

Positive Girl was born typed on a Word Document and submitted to Kiara often for reviews. Kiara would give me advice on what to change, she would share with me her tween girl wisdom on areas of the book that sounded too adult like and needed a hint of tween touch behind the words. Kiara would also work to draw the perfect picture to have on the cover of the book and she beamed knowing that she was doing something not only with her Mom but for other tween girls who may be dealing with the things she was dealing with.

After multiple attempts at getting the publication copy just right, Kiara and I had finally published our first book of many to come in a series called Positive Girl in June 2012. Positive Girl – The Power of your Thoughts is now available on Amazon.com for sale in both the regular store and Kindle Store. I would highly recommend the paperback copy because this is meant to be a journal type experience and it’s best if you can write in your own copy of the book! Kiara and I do have plans ready for the remainder of the series, but it’s still in the writing stages, and I am sure it will be another wonderful journey of mother and daughter using their creative minds to help others, while also strengthening their mother/daughter relationship.

Brandy from HappilyBlended.com , is the co-author of Positive Girl – The Power of your Thoughts. Connect with Brandy on Twitter and Like Happily Blended on Facebook to keep up with the latest positive happenings!