Beverly Smallwood

mind & b o dy: beverly smallwo o d

‘This wasn’t supposed to happen to me’ Dr. Beverly Smallwood

STORY BY ROBYN JACKSON PHOTOS COURTESY FARMER PHOTOGRAPHY AND DR. BEVERLY SMALLWOOD Bev Smallwood feels your pain. She has survived the loss of loved ones, including her father; more than one failed marriage and diagnosis with a potentially fatal disease. She was a teenaged mother who struggled to make it through college while married to an alcoholic. She once had her life threatened with a gun. She took care of her mother while she was dying of Alzheimers disease. And, like thousands of other South Mississippians, she survived the fury of Hurricane Katrina. As a psychologist for 25 years and founder of the Hope Center in Hattiesburg, Smallwood deals with people suffering through trauma and loss every day. Her experience helping her clients get their lives back on track led her to write her latest book, “This Wasn’t Supposed to Happen to Me: 10 Make or Break Choices When Life Steals Your Dreams and Rocks Your World.”

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($22.99, Thomas Nelson Publishers). “I’ve been through a lot of personal trauma myself,” Smallwood says. “We’re going about our everyday lives, and one day, the world crashes in on us.” Smallwood uses a faith-based approach to dealing with life’s traumas, whether it’s the loss of a child, the end of a marriage or job, or a crushing medical diagnosis. “Hope” and “faith” are words that appear on page after page of her book. “When things happen, you do have choices,” she says. “I identified what I feel are 10 critical choices that make or break the rest of your life.” Those 10 critical choices include: Denial or reality; victimhood or responsibility; why or how; doubt or faith; bitterness or forgiveness; guilt or self-forgiveness; isolation or connection; depression or grief; avoidance or courage; and powerlessness or purpose.

Her editor at Thomas Nelson Publishers, Debbie Wickwire, said it’s those 10 choices that make Smallwood’s book stand out from the myriad of self-help books on the market. “They are choices that will be made whether through a conscious decision or not,” Wickwire says. “The beauty of this book is that it quickly identifies those choices and empowers the reader to make the right choice. I’ve not seen a book with this 10 choice plan especially written in a way that so clearly defines the choices.” Smallwood, who was born and raised in Columbia, weathered her first storm in life when she was nine years old and her father, a minister, died of cancer. As if that wasn’t enough, she and her mother had to move from the church-provided parsonage because he was no longer pastor there, so she lost her father and her home almost simultaneously. That’s enough to rock anyone’s world.

“I had questions, big questions,” she writes in the introduction to her book. “I was reeling from a crisis of faith. Why did this happen? I kept wondering. It didn’t seem fair. I thought God was supposed to protect us from pain like this.” What she has learned through her own experience and in counseling thousands of others during her career is that you can’t choose the things that happen to you, but you do have the power to choose what happens in you. “Every significant crisis in your life is a turning point,” she writes. “You can choose to allow bitterness to corrupt your spirit and rob you of your future. You can stay wounded because you refuse to acknowledge you have a problem. You can carry the burden of hurt all by yourself and not take advantage of the support of others. You can remain trapped in tossing endless questions at fate or at God. You can hold onto the ‘Why me?’ victim mentality or the chronic blame game. Or – you can choose the attitudes and behaviors that enable you to recover emotional health, rediscover meaning in your life, and reformulate a plan for your future. By choosing to face the facts, concentrate on what you can control, forgive others and yourself, connect with supportive others, do the necessary grief work, have the courage to face your fears, and use what has happened to you to make a difference to others – you can

reclaim a life worth living.” Smallwood became a psychologist after a six-year career as an elementary school teacher, but she wasn’t satisfied with that job. One morning while she was praying, she felt God calling her to become a counselor. She got her master’s degree in school counseling but could not find a job, so she applied to the doctoral program at the University of Southern Mississippi and earned a degree in psychology in 1981. She spent five years working in the community mental health field, then went into private practice in 1984, opening the Hope Center. “My practice has always been a combination of clinical work and speaking,” says Smallwood, who travels extensively each year leading seminars and giving motivational speeches. “As a teacher, I liked to do workshops. It was kind of a natural for me because I’m a teacher at heart.” She started giving talks and

workshops locally, and has since spoken in the Netherlands, Africa and Singapore. She says about 25 percent of her time is now spent on speaking engagements. “I love it all, but the office work takes a lot out of you,” she says. “When I do a clinical day, I do a long clinical day because it frees up a big block of time for the speaking engagements. It’s very highenergy and a change of pace. It energizes you, rather than takes so much out of you.” She has taught her 10 choices to inmates at the Rankin County prison facility and teaches a Sunday School class for women in recovery on the 10 choices. As an expert in surviving trauma and workplace issues, she has been featured on MSNBC, Fox News and CNNfn, as well as in magazines including Self, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal and Entrepreneur.

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