Cover To Cover with Debby Show

0:00Welcome! You are listening to Cover to Cover, hosted by Mary Elizabeth Jackson, a show featuring lively conversations with cutting-edge authors from around the globe. From debut to multi-award-winning to inspirational, you will find a new author and book to love. Mary is a special needs advocate, educator, speaker, and an award-winning author who brings that edge to dive deep into the writing world, sharing the journeys behind the stories and tips and tools for all things in the writing world. Now, here's Mary. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cover to Cover. I am Mary Elizabeth Jackson, and this is on Brushwood Media Network, and this is America's number one syndicated network. Thank you, Brushwood Media, and thank you to the over 350,000 listeners around the globe. I just heartfelt thank you so much for listening and supporting and, you know, just being

1:06a part of this journey. I hope that you are able to get good content and maybe some valuable information at times in these interviews. And if you're on a journey of some sort, maybe you get some wisdom out of some of these individuals because all of us are on a journey. All of us have a story. So we all have things to share with each other that can make the world a little bit of a better place. Now, if you're on social media, please connect with me on Facebook, a LinkedIn or Instagram or X and TikTok, Threads, or Blue Sky. That's the places that I am, and I'm always posting about my shows and other things. So I am also have a website, MaryEjaxson.com, you can stop by there and get any, yeah, I have some free downloadables, I have some leads to my shows and books. And then I also have information for parents who are raising children that have needs because that is a very, can be a very difficult world to maneuver through. And it's very important to have support, to feel supported throughout that journey because

2:10it helps the journey go a little bit smoother because it's usually pretty, can be pretty bumpy. Today, I have a new guest on and this is a debut novel for her. So I'm going to do this real quick before we even introduce her because I love to support authors who are debuting, so here we go. Hi. Very excited for you. All right. So my guest today is Debbie, Joe Lentstrom and Debbie, how are you? I'm doing good. Thank you so much for having me on there. I am so excited for you to be here. And so Debbie found my show and then she messaged me and she was like, hey, I have a book and can I be on your show? And I was like, hey, okay, so it took us a little more time to get here, didn't it, Debbie? So yes, she's in California and we're very early, you know, doing this interview. Now she's a licensed marriage and family therapist and school psychologist based in California. She's years of experience working with individuals and families.

3:12She brings a deep understanding of human behavior, relationships, and generational dynamics to her fiction. So this is her debut novel, Debbie has honed her craft through coaching, writing workshops and a lifelong passion for storytelling. Inspired by real history and emotional truths, her work explores how the past shapes who we become. Okay. So Debbie also has, happens to be the sister of a rather infamous serial con artist. And while paper roses, which is her debut novel, is a work of fiction, it draws inspiration from real life experiences. All right. Well, it seems to be sort of, let's see, I've had a couple of things like this, based on historical, you know, stories, and some of those can be the best, right, Debbie? That's right. Yeah. Go ahead. It is good to dig deep. And what made you decide you wanted to write like this book? Yeah. So I've been wanting to write a book like this for a long time on what happened is my, I was seeing there, the middle of COVID had all my equipment on because I was doing

4:17evaluations and I get this call from the New York Times and my sister's been arrested again. It's like her third arrest and they wanted to know what my reaction was. And I was like, what? I mean, I kind of knew she was going to be arrested anyway to just kind of revolving door. When she got arrested for doing something really big, stealing a million dollars from a German kid, it just set up a lot of emotions in me. One of them, believe it or not, was shame because, you know, I didn't think that our family was like this. It just kind of like had me spinning and I thought, you know, I've got to write, writing is a really healing kind of thing for me, and I thought I've really got to write our story. And in order to write our story, I was going to have to go back a couple generations because it's really about multi-generational trauma and I wanted to figure out what happened specifically in my mother's family where we all, all three of us girls really struggled growing up. Part of the reason why I'm a school psychologist, but we struggled mightily. And my sister took a different path. And so I went back to 1940s Morocco to start the book and then just kind of, in the end,

5:22people are telling me they really get an understanding of how we all got to be, how we were just based on what my mother went through. And then if you go back even further, it's probably what her mother went through and it's about breaking the cycle. Amen. You know, I'm in the middle of a gross writing project and that's one of the key themes is breaking that generational abuse curses and things and it's a three, you know, three generations of trauma. And so I understand completely where you're talking about and even all of our families, right? Everybody's got trauma and something somewhere, right? Right. And it's our job, Debbie, isn't it? What she's saying is it's our job to stop that trauma from going on. We have to stop and heal ourselves. Even if you don't think that you need healing, you probably need some sort of something, you know, to help you to wherever in your life that maybe you have repeated patterns going on even and I'm not saying it has to be anything major, right?

6:23It could just be, okay, why do I keep doing the same thing over and over again? You know, or keep the same people keep showing up. And so facing those things and healing ourselves is one of the greatest gifts we can ever give ourselves and then on to our family, you know, if we have children because we really don't want to hand that stuff down into our kids, it's sort of like the sins of the father, right? And the Bible, you know, those down. So what was it like for you? Because two things here, you know, because you are a psychologist, I do want to ask you, what is your thought and how do you help people who, like you took the path of psychologist, your sister did not with that sibling relationship? Yeah. So I think, I think coming from, I think people bring themselves to their, to their job. And I think it's helped me a lot. I mean, I've been doing this for over 30 years and I think the more I do it, the more empathy that I look more empathy I have, also the more realistic I am, I was just talking to a colleague yesterday.

7:23I think the key, honestly, is early, early, early, early intervention. Hey, man. Very early. I'm talking about, do as the child is born, identify the family, then needs help and give support to that mother early, because I've been working high school for 20 years and it's kind of a little bit sad that I've come to this conclusion, even though high school is wonderful, don't get me wrong anywhere we can intervene is great. Well, and I stand on that podium with you, Debbie, as an advocate because that's one of the things I talk a lot about is how much early intervention, and I'm talking from the viewpoint of like a child with autism, the earlier they are diagnosed, the more they can overcome. And I've got two kids who are nonverbal that are flourishing and doing very, very well. But it took a lot of years and it took a lot of therapies and it takes a lot of sacrifice, you know, and the family really has to pull together. But the thing is, it's doable and, you know, I'm sure for you being a high school psychologist,

8:24it is, it's really heartbreaking to you to see these kids come in, and if they'd only had a little bit of help, how much more, how much more empowered they would be in their life. Yeah. And it's like, I'm, you know, speaking of autism, I'm diagnosing high schoolers. This is a 17 year old, you know, and sometimes what happened is sometimes children of color don't get identified, or there's certain populations that don't get identified, there's other populations that maybe a little over-identified, but mostly a lot of girls now we're finding you're masking, and so they're not getting identified, or people that just don't know, or, you know, people that look like they're not autistic, you know, when they go to the doctor. Well, it doesn't have a face. There is no face of autism. Everybody looks the same, yes. Yeah. So that's the part I feel good about helping families because I finally have a label for it, but I am not just with autism with everything, with my sister, you know, with psychopathy, you know, kids that aren't just born evil.

9:25And so I think as soon as maybe, you know, if you could, we can just identify families that need help, you know, because a lot of times people don't even want to admit there's anything wrong. Like in my sister's case, you know, right? Most people don't. Now tell everybody what is psychopathy, because I, that what is that, that's what you said, right? So I think, you know, I don't, that's not something that they have in the DSM, but it's, it's basically, um, it's like a sociopathic type of behaviors. It's, it's like a personality disorder that you see in adults, and it's a lack of, it's a lack of conscious. You don't have a conscience, you know, you don't have a ability to empathy, like empathy is very low empathy, and also extreme, don't really fear anything. So danger is just kind of not a big deal, right? When you do anything, you go into a bank and rob it, and also not really understanding consequences. There's a lot of things that go along with that, but you know, they do a lot of harm.

10:26People with psychopathy do a lot of harm, um, and then in some ways, they're very dangerous. But if you can catch that, like in the book really is about, you know, what, what happened when we were all children, what happened when my mother was a child, when, when I was a child, even though it's fiction, it's fictionalist, and my sister, what, what I saw in her, because I'm nine years older than she is, and there are certain traits that I saw in her very early on, you know, very early on in my parents were just not equipped to raise children. Yeah. They weren't equipped to raise children because of their own generational wounds. Well, and it's also interesting when you have, you have several children all raised in the same family, and like you didn't turn out like this, but she did. So then some of that has to be genetics or some sort of, yeah, mental illness that's there. What was that like? Because not everybody gets a call from the New York Times. So what was that like? Well, well, I wish I would say, I wish I could say it was a shock, but with my sister,

11:27and with people in my family in general, with my sister, I knew something big was going to eventually happen because of that complete lack of fear. And I have been following her. We don't have a relationship because in some cases it's just too dangerous to have a relationship with someone because she's very much like a, she's very much like a cult leader. She can convince anybody in anything. So I don't have much, but I've been following her and I knew that she was doing some pretty deodorant YouTube channel. She had started her own restaurant, I mean, like right out of not long out of prison. And so I knew that she was doing some things that were not like, we're really shady because that, that's how she operates. So I wasn't surprised, but at the same time, just all these emotions like game, believe it or not, I go like, I should be the one wearing the orange jumpsuit because I was always the scapegoat in the family, I was the responsible one as the oldest. So just a lot of, a lot of things went through my head and here I am holding a big job trying

12:30to negotiate that. So I started writing just to try to figure out, I've always wanted to know why people are the way they are. Yes. I know. Me too. It's a very fascinating thing. So why, the first of all, how the heck did she get out of prison and then open a restaurant where does she, you know, have the cash flow and things like that. But then, you know, you said she can talk people into things. What did she do that, you know, cause the New York Times to call you and say, hey, can we talk to you about your sister? Yes. She had, she had a, she had a lot of connections because people really like her. And she had managed to get to Monica, who is the ex-wife of Jason Kidd Vaskapal player, tire her as kind of like a personal assistant. She had just come out of cancer. She was dealing with cancer recovery. Okay. Somebody had recommended my sister, so my sister comes in and quickly becomes indispensable to the family, just completely like the, the heartbeat of the family starts taking care

13:32of the kids. Meanwhile, she's stealing from their college fans. She's basically opened up accounts and gemotic kids' names, got power of attorney. So, and started diverting all of the emails that like any email that there were any of these credit card accounts, she would like instantly go into spam trash. She had a notary come in and notary again, power of attorney. And so this poor woman who was recovering from cancer and not a stupid woman, very bright woman. She, she called me. I talked to her and several other Tracy's victims. By the time she realized that she was missing money, it was like over $300,000. And then it got to over a million dollars because sister convinced her she was on a redemption tour, which is, you know, if you can convince people that you've been redeemed and that you found God, and then you do it again, right, being over a million dollars. So, is yours, did you have to get your sister's permission to write this story or did you

14:33just change all the names and everything? Well, it's, it's really about 50% true. I changed the names and not just that she's a public figure at this time. So she's, you know, your sister? Yeah, she's okay. Yeah. And I didn't really, it's not so much about her, honestly. People that are reading it are saying it's probably the last third of the book. It's about sister relationships, but the first two thirds of the book is more about families and how they're going back to Morocco. I didn't really realize how spiritual it was, but how the main character gets through. A lot of people, it's about their spirituality and there is kind of a spiritual redemption that all three of the narrators go through. Okay. What did she find out about your mom when you were doing the research? Well, you know, my mom has been gone for almost 30 years. Okay, I'm sorry. It's okay. She died of leukemia. What I found out was what she went through in Morocco at the time of, you know, World War II and Nazi occupation is when she was born.

15:35What she went through with her own family and also at school really shaped who she was. She was one of the first, she did tell me this, one of the first girls in Morocco ever diagnosed with anorexia. So this is like 19. I want to say that really 1950s and they couldn't figure out what was going on and they decided that she needed to go to the hospital and at the hospital, they thought, oh, she's got a fever. Let's starve her. So they start to read and more and it took a European doctor coming in to the hospital because this is Rabat Morocco to diagnose her properly with anorexia and they of course they didn't do any treatment after that. I just like fed her and released her from the hospital and she did struggle with eating disorders. You know, I remember as a little kid, you know, having a lot of like characteristics and celery in the house. So that was part of it, like her personality disorders, her issues and then my mom and dad together. Okay.

16:36You know, something that's interesting, I do know that that's why a lot of girls don't get diagnosed with autism until later because it shows up as like depression and eating disorders and, you know, and I'm sure you've seen that in your work, haven't you? Yeah, well, they're masking. Yes. Yeah. You know, they're using, they're doing everything they can to get through the day. Yeah. And they're masking and I, you know, I do wonder about my mom in a autism really because she was so naive in that a lot of ways and if she said left, you should have gone right. I think for her, it was also the cultural piece, like coming into another country, my father was a service man, that's how they met in another country and not understanding. But I do, she had this night of the day that if you told her something, she would just like automatically believe it. And so I think my sister was just able to, you know, kind of like maneuver her way and manipulate her around her. Hmm. Well, what, you know, your book is, it's going to cover lots of different things.

17:39And I, I know that I, I had a conversation, another interview with a therapist who talked about the history of psychiatry in the United States and our culture and how much it, there needs to be some change to it, you know, where it's gone wrong and where it's gone right, those kind of things over the last, I don't know how many years, 50, 100 years or more. So it's very interesting the way that things are treated in the past with individuals and the way things are treated now. And, and I, I, I'm, I'm like you where I believe that if we're, we can give kids tools very early on in their life to be able to help themselves with their mental, emotional health, understand what's going on in their body, understand what's going on in their mind and their thoughts because when they're kids, right, they're, some of those are large, you know, in middle

18:40school, high school, but the world would be a different place if we could teach our kids this stuff early on, you know, much healthier, much healthier. Well, I have to say that there've been some days in the last month, I don't know what it is, but I work with it. We have, we're lucky enough to have two school psychologists at our high school, it's a charter school. And there've been some days where we just want to cry. I'm sorry. Yeah, and because we've got these, you know, it's about an individual, usually it's about an individual kid, where we just want to sit there and cry, just because that, you know, the system is broken. And so I know exactly what you're saying. Yeah, it is broken in so many ways, you know, and, and so where do we start? So I think there's a lot of us out here in the world trying to make the world better. And it feels like we're climbing up a big, big mountain. Yeah, you know, my book is actually hopefully, I tried to make it be a roadmap because the character of Abby, who's based on me, goes through a lot of stuff. A lot of

19:43it happened in real life. A lot of it was kind of moving chess pieces around. And I want people to understand in a lot of ways that it's not their fault. You know, a lot of times in families, there's like a scapegoat. There's a golden child. Right. Oh, um, even in my sister's case, you know, she went to Japan as a 15 year old to be a child model. And she was not a child model in Japan. And she was, I believe she was trafficked. Oh, no. And two, she spent two, um, summers in, in Japan. So I think that's another area where we really have to look out for in high school is girls being trafficked, you know, it's happening underneath their nose. And so, how does that shape your personality when you're 15 years old and you're in a foreign country and your parents think, oh, well, this is like fabulous. Like, oh, my daughter's going to be a model, you know, because this is like a long time ago and people were very naive. Yeah. Yeah. The world is a really different place now. I, yes, absolutely. And we do have to be careful. And I, you know,

20:48I did interview a former police officer. He's a lawyer and he does training for this kind of stuff. And he says that a kissing is sex trafficking across the country. And he says that, you know, I asked him, you know, where are we in this, in that fight and that journey. And he said, we haven't even scratched the surface here in the US, which is very sad to hear. And this is sending somebody to another country. And this is their personality. It's still forming is this is a child who should have been in high school. Right. Under the watchful eye and, you know, her family and, you know, having that guidance and, yeah. Right. And so, I mean, I think I landed in the right place job was. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I, it was hard to find the time to write this book because it's a big job. So I would, you know, go and out sleep for a spend the weekend. But it was really important to me to write it. Sure. Yeah. And so that was, you sort of touched on this, but I was going to ask you, what are you hoping that people will take out of paper roses? Yeah. So, well, I know what I, when I read a really good piece of fiction because I think

21:51fiction has that transformative power. I always, there's always this feeling like the next day. It's like, I can't forget. There's things that I learned about myself. There's things that I just just took my breath away. And I'm hoping not everybody because everybody's going to get something different out of a book, depending on where they come from. But I'm hoping that some people can read it and go, Oh my God, you know, I, I really feel something. And I really learned something. And that it's one of, like I said, that's one of the reasons why I love fiction, why I wanted to fictionalize it. I wanted to take these chess pieces and move them around. I wanted to give my dad a really good edit, you know, when he died, he was alone. Well, in the book, when he dies, there's someone to help him take the journey to the other side. There's a lot of things that were very healing. And I think for other people too, I hope will be healing when they read the book. Oh, I hope so too. I hope it will help them get started on their own journey of, you know, whether they trace back or what, I mean, I know, and we're almost out of time, but, you know,

22:55I was an adult before I was able to do some healing with my own father and really understand that he was not the best father he could have been in this lifetime to me or my brothers because he wasn't taught, you know, he wasn't, it wasn't, it just, he wasn't taught how to do it, you know, and so we do, you know, need to look at our, our, our parents and their parents and, and this is not about blame. This is about understanding your past and your history and maybe why you do things the way you do them so that then you can heal. And what it does is it sort of, it takes the weight off everything and we're, you know, it's not about blaming. It's about, okay, what do I need to do to be the best version of myself that I can be? So I can be the best mom or friend or daughter or wife or whatever you are sister, you know, and so I'm really glad that you've written this book to help motivate that for others. And I hope that's what they get out of your book too. Do you have another book on the horizon? Well, I'm actually, okay, so first thing I want to say, amen to what you

24:00just said, because I could have written it, grown it down memory, you know, or mommy dear, it's kind of thing where I'm doing a lot of learning. And I really wanted to understand the next book that I have in mind, actually, I really have to, I have to think about this because I want to write about an love story. I'm speaking about girls who are getting diagnosed. I'm about a girl who's maybe on the autism spectrum. And I want her to be obsessed with Japan. And I do want her to be a sister story about her sister in Japan. And she doesn't know what to do. Like going back and a little bit of a love story too, a little bit of the characters aren't perfect, but it ends up okay in the end. So that's kind of what I'm thinking of. I like that. All right, well, you have to let me know. So, okay, paper roses is still hot off the presses. You'll have to go get a copy and you need to support Debra in you can or Debbie. You can get a nice review for her. Debbie tell everybody where they can contact you if they want to connect with you. Okay, well, I am on Debbie show.com and it's

25:05Debbie, D-E-B-B-Y, S-H-O-W. And then I'm also on Instagram. I've got a Facebook author page. Of course, some stack. And a lot of different ways can connect with me. And I think we're to hear from anybody. Yeah, absolutely. Share your family story and journey with Debbie. She'd love to hear about it. So I'm saying a prayer right now for you with all your students. And you are able to effectively help them and empower them because you may be that one light in their life. So I'm praying for you for that. And thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for everyone around the globe wherever you are listening. And I will be back soon. Thank you, Debbie. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being a part of our audience today. Please share the show with your friends and tune in for the next episode of Cover to Cover for all things in the author world.

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