Aired Thursday, 18 August 2016, 6:00 PM ET

Author and retired clinical therapist, Sally Waite is Dr Kevin’s guest. Sally Waite in Sally’s own words: I am a retired clinical social worker with a new career! sea star stories is the result of my efforts to write and illustrate stories for children to help them understand their often complex parents.

In my practice, I worked with children from ages two to ten, often with their parents, guardians, foster parents, or adoptive parents present. The children told me their stories in drawings, puppet play, and in the sand. These stories haunted me and I wondered how I could help the children understand and accept what had happened in their families of origin, events which made no sense to them and yet now impacted them each and every moment of their young lives.

“Everyone was angry in my family, that’s just the way it was!” said one child as she made a scene in the dollhouse with police arriving to question her problem grandma and having tea instead.

TWO PILLS is my first story, and the second story, Pocket Time, is written & waiting for my illustrations. The third story resides in my mind’s eye and concerns a dad moose who kills a mom deer. Now that I have the time to devote to story telling, I can find and share the stories of the families I knew and loved that I couldn’t find during my years of practice. A whole new world is unfolding as I immerse myself in these projects.

I view sea star stories as a vehicle for helping children with trauma and also their families, their therapists and teachers as well as the general public.

You can find out more about Sally: http://www.seastarstories.com/