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First Generation Father: How to Build a Healthy and Happy Home When You Come From a Broken One
A powerful, transformative work. A must read for anyone aiming to free themselves, or their family, from a negative cycle of painful dysfunction.
Awards for this book include gold awards from Independent Press Awards, Reader Views Literary Awards, & the Non-Fiction Author’s Association.
A father illuminates a path, showing the exact steps any person from a less than ideal upbringing can take to genuinely heal their past traumas, and break the toxic curse of generational scars.
Anthony Blankenship comes from a broken home. He knows the pain. He’s lived through family dysfunction, trauma, abuse, and poverty. He went on to achieve military distinctions including three Army Commendation Medals, a Joint Service Achievement Medal, and others.
Perhaps you know the pain of a dysfunctinal family life. You have the power inside you to break free.
This book will show you how
· Recognize unresolved traumas from your past, and heal them· Lead your family from a place of genuine strength by seeing leadership as a service to others· Use past pain, anger, and resentment to spur you toward positive growth and change· Understand and master healthy degrees of your warrior, intellectual, and spiritual energies· Learn and apply the “love formula” to establish healthy, lasting, and thriving relationships· Recognize and disarm self-limiting attitudes and behaviors that keep you underachieving· Put it all together to give you unlimited creative power in your life – the golden zone.This book is brutally honest, entertaining, and insightful. Anthony’s unique ability to blend humor and drama into valuable life-lessons will help you make the changes you need now.
Whether you’re searching for ways to radically improve yourself, strengthen your marriage, or practice genuine love, the philosophy shared in these pages will change life for you—and your family—forever.
Awards for this book include gold awards from Independent Press Awards, Reader Views Literary Awards, & the Non-Fiction Author’s Association.
A father illuminates a path, showing the exact steps any person from a less than ideal upbringing can take to genuinely heal their past traumas, and break the toxic curse of generational scars.
Anthony Blankenship comes from a broken home. He knows the pain. He’s lived through family dysfunction, trauma, abuse, and poverty. He went on to achieve military distinctions including three Army Commendation Medals, a Joint Service Achievement Medal, and others.
Perhaps you know the pain of a dysfunctinal family life. You have the power inside you to break free.
This book will show you how
· Recognize unresolved traumas from your past, and heal them· Lead your family from a place of genuine strength by seeing leadership as a service to others· Use past pain, anger, and resentment to spur you toward positive growth and change· Understand and master healthy degrees of your warrior, intellectual, and spiritual energies· Learn and apply the “love formula” to establish healthy, lasting, and thriving relationships· Recognize and disarm self-limiting attitudes and behaviors that keep you underachieving· Put it all together to give you unlimited creative power in your life – the golden zone.This book is brutally honest, entertaining, and insightful. Anthony’s unique ability to blend humor and drama into valuable life-lessons will help you make the changes you need now.
Whether you’re searching for ways to radically improve yourself, strengthen your marriage, or practice genuine love, the philosophy shared in these pages will change life for you—and your family—forever.
204 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 15, 2020
9 people are currently reading
23 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 20, 2021
“First Generation Father: How to Build a Healthy and Happy Home When You Come From a Broken One” by Anthony Blankenship, is a moving force to mend broken hearts from broken homes. Part memoir, part self-help, this author speaks from a place of authority, as he survived a turbulent childhood of violence, poverty, and a broken home.
Some self-help books give good advice, but not all are written by an author who’s lived it, survived it, and turned it around to help other people who are going through the same thing, or have gone through the same thing in the past. Blankenship covers (and this is paraphrasing): Confronting the past and the scars, the effects of trauma, understanding primal energies, finding the proper balance, tools for the healing process, turning pain into growth, parenting your son from the golden zone, parenting your daughter from the golden zone, discipline with love, from poverty to prosperity, overcoming addictions, seeing from a higher perspective, forgiveness, and more.
Blankenship’s personable, straight-forward style is easily digestible. From paperboy to basic training, to the trauma he lived in childhood with a malfunctioning family, he paints pictures readers can relate to, but offers uplifting, commonsense advice people can start using immediately to mend their broken psyches and lives. Recovering from a broken home can sometimes make people feel like a hamster racing endlessly in a wheel, trying to outrun a painful past and break free. But trauma doesn’t let go easy, and this author shows you how it can successfully be accomplished.
The author’s powerful and charismatic personality shines through the pages, and I highly recommend it to those caught in the cycle of a broken home, and to the professionals who work with them, like teachers, clergy, counselors, etc. “First Generation Father: How to Build a Healthy and Happy Home When You Come From a Broken One”, by Anthony Blankenship, is that special book you’d like to put in someone’s hand to help them begin their healing journey.
Some self-help books give good advice, but not all are written by an author who’s lived it, survived it, and turned it around to help other people who are going through the same thing, or have gone through the same thing in the past. Blankenship covers (and this is paraphrasing): Confronting the past and the scars, the effects of trauma, understanding primal energies, finding the proper balance, tools for the healing process, turning pain into growth, parenting your son from the golden zone, parenting your daughter from the golden zone, discipline with love, from poverty to prosperity, overcoming addictions, seeing from a higher perspective, forgiveness, and more.
Blankenship’s personable, straight-forward style is easily digestible. From paperboy to basic training, to the trauma he lived in childhood with a malfunctioning family, he paints pictures readers can relate to, but offers uplifting, commonsense advice people can start using immediately to mend their broken psyches and lives. Recovering from a broken home can sometimes make people feel like a hamster racing endlessly in a wheel, trying to outrun a painful past and break free. But trauma doesn’t let go easy, and this author shows you how it can successfully be accomplished.
The author’s powerful and charismatic personality shines through the pages, and I highly recommend it to those caught in the cycle of a broken home, and to the professionals who work with them, like teachers, clergy, counselors, etc. “First Generation Father: How to Build a Healthy and Happy Home When You Come From a Broken One”, by Anthony Blankenship, is that special book you’d like to put in someone’s hand to help them begin their healing journey.
June 20, 2023
This book is about exactly what it says in the title. I found it very practical and heartfelt, that avoid complex physoanlysis. It stresses the importance of being a father, strong family ties, and being a head of your household by leading by example and being of service to others.
I especially enjoyed the fact that the last chapter of this book talked about forgiveness, not only of others, but ourselves as well. Often we are our own harshest critics.
I especially enjoyed the fact that the last chapter of this book talked about forgiveness, not only of others, but ourselves as well. Often we are our own harshest critics.
March 23, 2024
About 1.5 stars.
Blankenship has a great idea and initiative. He is transparent about his own life, traumas, and shortcomings. And from time to time he has some great folksy observations about taking personal responsibility for one's life.
But there are two things that are very off-putting to me about this book. He has a subtle and vague spirituality that will be uncomfortable for both materialists (such as his vague view of providence or destination which comes out in places such as when he says life will make you apply certain lessons before allowing you to move on) and people with any particular spiritual convictions, such as Christians. Whatever your spiritual preference is, it's ok to him as long as you don't take it too seriously. Which is to say (from the voice of the book), if you are a new agey feeling person who draws the line just where the loudest voices of the 2020s tell you to draw the line, that's just cool. Otherwise, convert. I would prefer either a cool clinical empirical approach, or an open confession of personal spirituality, rather than the adulterated blend.
And second, he just loves his profanity. This is a trend in self help, I know. Just look at the titles in that section the next time you are in the book store. And I'm even willing to grant the rare use for dramatic effect. But when you have multiple adjectives getting the -a** suffix added on for no other reason than to be vulgar, and all the well known 4 letter expletives are making a regular appearance, this is gratuitous and distracting. He literally talks about 'teaching s**t' to kids. Is that REALLY what you say to dysfunctional dads to help them engage appropriately with their young children? So I know it's trendy, but I don't think the trend is good.
Will you find some good ideas here? Sure, just like you will listening to random clips of Oprah. But as Robert Frost said, "There are two types of realists: the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one, and the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I'm inclined to be the second kind. To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form." And so it should be with writing books.
Edit:
I meant to mention his frequent use of the current little t truth. "Speak your truth." Speak his truth. etc.
Blankenship has a great idea and initiative. He is transparent about his own life, traumas, and shortcomings. And from time to time he has some great folksy observations about taking personal responsibility for one's life.
But there are two things that are very off-putting to me about this book. He has a subtle and vague spirituality that will be uncomfortable for both materialists (such as his vague view of providence or destination which comes out in places such as when he says life will make you apply certain lessons before allowing you to move on) and people with any particular spiritual convictions, such as Christians. Whatever your spiritual preference is, it's ok to him as long as you don't take it too seriously. Which is to say (from the voice of the book), if you are a new agey feeling person who draws the line just where the loudest voices of the 2020s tell you to draw the line, that's just cool. Otherwise, convert. I would prefer either a cool clinical empirical approach, or an open confession of personal spirituality, rather than the adulterated blend.
And second, he just loves his profanity. This is a trend in self help, I know. Just look at the titles in that section the next time you are in the book store. And I'm even willing to grant the rare use for dramatic effect. But when you have multiple adjectives getting the -a** suffix added on for no other reason than to be vulgar, and all the well known 4 letter expletives are making a regular appearance, this is gratuitous and distracting. He literally talks about 'teaching s**t' to kids. Is that REALLY what you say to dysfunctional dads to help them engage appropriately with their young children? So I know it's trendy, but I don't think the trend is good.
Will you find some good ideas here? Sure, just like you will listening to random clips of Oprah. But as Robert Frost said, "There are two types of realists: the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one, and the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I'm inclined to be the second kind. To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form." And so it should be with writing books.
Edit:
I meant to mention his frequent use of the current little t truth. "Speak your truth." Speak his truth. etc.
August 17, 2024
A good self help on becoming a father when you don't have good examples from your upbringing. Key to this is balance. Traumatic developmental pain can lead to reacting with wrong lessons learned. Blankenship gives solid peer advice on being strong and disciplining without being abusive.
June 14, 2022
This was a very nicely put together heartfelt look at bettering oneself at being a better parent, healing past hurts, and so forth. It was very personable and gripping.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews