Christine Turo-Shields has been a therapist for 30+ years and she loves it. She especially enjoys working with women, because, as she says, “Connection with women is vital.” Due to a conflicted relationship with her mother growing up, she admits that she struggled in relationships with women growing up. As she started providing therapy to women and forming healthy relationships of her own, her life began to change.
She enjoys her work so much that she’s co-written a book specifically for women. We caught up with Christine and talked with her about her book, Transformations: A Woman’s Journey to Self-Discovery, her long-time friendship with co-author Carol Juergensen Sheets, and what she hopes for women who read and work through the book.
What is Transformations: A Woman’s Journey to Self-Discovery all about?
Transformations: A Woman’s Journey to Self-Discovery is a workbook designed to guide women through transforming their lives. With exercises and therapeutic methods for learning self-growth and change, the book promises to “empower you to become the woman you were born to be!”
Christine and Carol had been working on the book for years, and collected a number of exercises that will help you break through obstacles that may be getting in the way of living your best, most fulfilling life.
When you do the exercises, “You will be amazed at the breakthroughs that occur as you feel your feelings, identify your needs, manage anger, promote self-esteem, develop assertiveness, and deal with pivotal family-of- origin issues that will move you into the progressive stages of change.”
If you’re a woman, this book is for you. Christine explains that really, the book is for “Any woman who feels like she has aspects of her life that she wants to transform.”
Interested in purchasing a copy of the book? Grab a copy here or here.
What inspired you and Carol to write the book?
Christine and Carol have been working together since the mid-90s. Their long-standing relationship has taken many paths: friendship, mentorship, and collegiality.
When asked about Carol, Christine is all compliments: “Carol is 10 years older than me, and she’s an amazing woman. We joked that she was like my ideal mother. And at times, my surrogate spouse and my professional mentor. And a very, very dear friend and brilliant woman.” There’s no question that these women are close.
Christine recalls, “We ran women’s therapy groups, we co-facilitated them, for hundreds or thousands of women. We would have to limit it to 12-15 because it just became really popular and we absolutely loved it,” To this day, “Working with women is a huge passion of ours.”
As they were facilitating the women’s groups, they discussed putting together a book, and even got started. Unfortunately, Christine explains that she had to step away from it for a while because her life “got pretty hectic so I just couldn’t attend to it.”
During this time, Carol, who is a certified sex addiction therapist and is also trained in partner trauma and partner betrayal, published her first book. Christine explains that Carol’s book, Help Her Heal: An Empathy Workbook for Sex Addicts to Help their Partners Heal, is “an advocate workbook for men to help them understand what their wives, spouses, or partners’ needs are.” When she saw the book in print, Christine knew it was time to start working on Transformations again.
What was it like working with Carol on Transformations?
“Carol is a taskmaster. She will say, ‘Christine we’re meeting for two hours, and we’re going to focus on the book,’” Christine chuckles as she describes Carol because, as she notes, “I tend to be a little more laid back and chatty and conversational, and she is so laser-focused.”
The process of putting the book together was truly collaborative because they took activities from 10 years of doing therapy with women and wove them together. The main question was always “How do we take women through some of those reflective experiences?”
Because therapy is highly experiential, the primary thought was: “How can we make this available to women?”
Even with the idea in hand, it was hard for Christine to imagine what the book would actually look like. “I couldn’t always envision how you would download what’s in your brain and make it into a book. I’ve always had that desire, but it’s hard to envision,” she says. When she saw Carol’s book, it helped her realize what their book could look like.
Through the same publisher, Sano Press, they published Transformations. Sano Press does a lot of “addiction work and recovery work” which was a great fit for their book on women’s transformation.
“We’ve been blessed to be a part of, to help facilitate, but really just to witness the transformation of women who felt meek or mild or angry and bitter, or wounded and unempowered. We’ve had this wonderful experience helping them shift beyond those emotions, so that’s how the title came about,” explains Christine.
As much as Carol was a task master for the book, Christine monitored the details and made sure they were all as perfect as possible. She recalls, “I do attention to detail really well, so once we had the book in hand, I combed through multiple times.” In fact, at one point, Carol said, “Christine, you cannot do this many revisions.” A great team indeed: someone who can see the big picture, and someone to focus on the details.
In fact, the two made such a good team that they also adapted the content of Transformations into another book specifically for partner trauma: Unleashing Your Power.
What does this book mean to you?
As a child, Christine didn’t have a lot of healthy relationships with women, including her mother. “I grew up with a mom who was alcoholic and rageaholic,” she says. She didn’t realize that she “over-identified with males” because her father “was my mother and father for a while.”
On her own personal journey, creating a network of empowering and encouraging women was critical. As Christine explains, “Carol was very much that for me.”
As she became a therapist and started working with women, though, something began to change: “I began to develop a sense of compassion, realizing that my mom was doing the best she could with what she had. She struggled with illness, she struggled as a recovering alcoholic. And she also struggled with anxiety and depression.”
This newfound compassion allowed Christine to see her mother in “a more loving and compassionate way.” To write a book for women was both personal and empowering for her.
She was disappointed to put the book on hold “when life got overwhelming” because it’s been a lifelong dream to become a published author. But, when you meet Christine, even if it’s just for a moment, she embodies her own strong belief that “things happen when they should as they should.”
She feels the same about Transformations.
Although she felt like she may have disappointed Carol by putting the book on hold, Christine said Carol was always a source of encouragement. So when Christine said, “It’s been a moment, your book is fabulous, let’s get back on it.” Carol agreed and work began once again.
Above all, “Having the love and support of women, and in this case Carol, to work creatively and to give birth to something with such an incredible woman was just… I felt honored. I felt a sense of achievement that we could further share with the world.”
What do you hope women experience or get out of the book?
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
Maya Angelou
Transformations is a book meant for any woman who wants to transform her life. On an individual level, Christine has high hopes for the book.
She says she and Carol wrote the book to help women “develop a sense of self-compassion.” Many women are extremely self-critical, which, Christine explains, has a lot to do with “childhood wounds like mother/father issues and that sort of thing.” But, she says, “It’s vital that women really develop a sense of compassion for themselves, and begin to see themselves and speak to themselves the way they would to a best friend.”
In her experience, most women say harsh things to themselves that they would never say to a best friend. This practice has to change. “Be gentle with yourself where you’re at this moment in time, knowing that you can always improve,” says Christine.
As women begin to have more self-compassion and be gentler with themselves, she hopes they will also come to know that they are resilient: “Knowing that just because you are this way today doesn’t mean you will always be this way.”
Women also have the ability to transform themselves into whoever they want to be. Christine explains that the book also acts as a, “Reinforcement of the idea you can transform yourself into what you want. The power of belief and intention really becomes apparent for the journey.”
As these bigger individual transformations occur, especially for women who may have a history of trauma, Christine wants them to feel that they can do more than just survive. “We want women to thrive. So not just be a victim, not just survive, but thrive.”
Although much of the book is for individual practice, Christine explains that when you transform, it’s not always just about you: “This is not just the transformation of you as an individual, but it’s how you can access support, especially women.”
Because connection between women is vital, Christine hopes the book will help women connect “as opposed to us being competitive and pitting ourselves against each other.” It’s important to be able to “get beyond insecurity.”
For Christine who’s a “consummate extrovert,” creating the book and collaborating with Carol was “life-giving.” Her biggest hope for the book is that “other women find it transformational for them.”