We Are Here Overview
Are you aware of a little gremlin sitting on your shoulder spewing lines of emotional baggage, interfering with seeing, hearing and understanding your partner? How are the internalized voices of your mothers and fathers and your unconscious wreaking havoc in your primary relationship? Are you aware of how you react to your beloved, and wish you had done it better? We Are Here illuminates, illustrates, teaches tools and skills; educating couples in a graphic novel format of approximately 250 pages. This will be the first in a series.
The target audience is premarital, married, or couples in long-term relationships in their 20s to 40s. We Are Here will be useful for and applicable to couples of different/all races, ethnicities, gender and sexual orientations, giving it broad cultural relevance. Additional audiences are as a textbook for graduate school counseling programs, and for therapists/psychologists to recommend to clients. We Are Here as a GN is needed as the genre is more accessible. Many people don’t have time/interest in reading a prose couple book of a few hundred pages (over 20K written). The graphic novel format allows people to quickly see, read, learn, digest, and practice tools and skills for relationship success. The GN format will reach audiences that already read GNs, and also those who have never read one before.
We Are Here Plot Summary
The book takes place within the therapy room, with flashes to other locations (the couple’s home, their childhood homes, and others as needed to convey important content). While Ben and Grace’s presenting problem is experiencing a roommate-like relationship which they aren’t happy about, most presenting concerns are the surface topic. Generally, the true cause underlying couple issues are connection and communication which are symptoms of an attachment breach.
All tools and skills presented will be applicable to a multitude of topics. Their dog, Fractal, will teach certain principles of love, forgiveness, compassion, loyalty, and being in the present. Jo is the therapist. Other characters will play roles as needed (e.g., the mother and father voices and the unconscious).
The couple will learn and practice tools and skills, falter, and recover, and eventually become experts on themselves and each other. They will understand and feel what an emotionally connected relationship is and be able to sustain it a fair amount of the time. The focus is on the process of communication and learning tools. Another aspect is to normalize that couples need to work on their relationship after saying, “I do.” At the end of each chapter, there will be a “Put it Into Practice” page with specific things to do, and a few tips.
Contact Information
Please contact me directly. The best ways to reach me are: canderson.connect2@gmail.com or 650-847-0030
Thank you again.
