Guest Post: Inspiration for Trust Me

The inspiration for Trust Me isn’t rocket science. Raising my boys has been the best fun I have ever had and the hardest job I have ever done. They say raising small children is a handful and raising big children is a heartful, and whilst this is true it leaves out the fun part; the chaos and anarchy that runs riot through all our lives when we are raising kids. Unless we raise them in some sort of boot camp. There is such a delicate balance in raising children so that they are not indulged and spoilt like rotten fruit, nor are they marshalled into militaristic compliance.  As I say, it is the greatest and most underrated challenge. When they grow up and set off into the world they will thank us or blame us and we need to own up to our responsibilities in shaping the people they have become. Thankfully mine continue to inspire me.  Personally my family has  faced so many physical, financial, emotional, vocational, and recreational challenges and yet magically we have always been able to see the humour in almost everything.

I don’t even think I set out to write a book. I’m just an inveterate scribbler  and it just tumbled out of me. The title sprang from a funny event where one of the children was caught in a tree and a friend arrived to address the situation and said “trust me, I’m a vet.” The child nearly laughed himself out of tree.

I wonder if there is any such thing as fiction, because the lives we all lead inform everything we do. Of course I made this story up, but my children and my patients inspire me. When I say the patients are fiction I really mean it. They are a conglomeration of the thousands of people who have passed through my life. More on that next time. I would love to hear your feedback about all the characters in the book, because this book is the beginning of a series, Trust Me, Again, is the next.

So What’s The Book About You Ask?

Beth Carter is a psychologist to many and a single mother to four unruly boys. Patients might almost be manageable, but her boys aren’t. While the household lurches inevitably from one catastrophe to another, Beth finds herself barely managing to hold onto the vital threads of sanity whilst leading her often complex patients through their own remarkable journeys.

Beth finds it to be a lonely venture, leading her to look for love—but in all the wrong places.

About Joan Callahan

Joan Callahan is a clinical psychologist practicing in Melbourne, Australia. She commenced her career teaching English and history at the prestigious Melbourne High School and later retrained in the field of psychology. Joan set up her own private practice and has a heavy forensic caseload, while providing consultancies to commerce, industry, and government. She also enjoys several mediation contracts. She particularly likes working with anxiety disorders, couples, and the full spectrum of psychological disorders.

Joan is the divorced mother of three boys, has three brothers, and three grandsons—not to mention that she taught only boys at Melbourne High School. By her sheer survival as teacher, mother, and psychologist, she considers herself something of an expert on boys. Joan loves her job, going to the gym, making bread, (boring, boring, boring. Next it will be romantic fireside chats and long walks on the beach at sunset!), socializing widely, and travelling around the world as often as she can with the love of her life. Her vast travels around the USA have provided fodder for the third book in this series as the inimitable Carter clan enjoy the wilds of Yeehaw Junction.

Life remains wonderfully hectic. Any similarity between Joan’s life and Beth’s is not purely coincidental. Beth’s patients are pure fiction; her dogs are not. Her boys? Close!

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