About the Book
Book: Trekking Toward Tenacity: Your Family’s Roadmap to Stronger Mental Health
Author: Chris Morris
Genre: Parenting / Christian Living / Mental Health
Release date: September 24, 2024
Empower your children with the gift of tenacity through these practical, meaningful tools for their mental and spiritual health.
Trekking toward Tenacity walks through Psalm 139 verse by verse, discovering how we can help our children develop mentally healthy habits. The goal is to coach our kids to be more tenacious because we live in a tumultuous world. It can be hard to stay focused on God and on mentally healthy habits in that tumult, but this book gives concrete ways to help kids to do just that.
By teaching parents practical application steps to implement with kids of all ages, ranging from preschool to adolescent, this book will give them new tools to support their families in the quest for better mental health. It will provide rock-solid encouragement for parents who are stressed out and wondering if they’re making the right choices for their families. It provides counterintelligence against the onslaught of increased risks of mental health challenges for children and young adults today.
Click here to get your copy!
About the Author
Chris Morris is a certified mental health coach dedicated to promoting understanding of mental health issues within the church. Because of a lifelong struggle with depression and suicidality, Chris became committed to breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health and encouraging others to seek after holistic health.
As a writer and speaker, Chris has shared his personal story and insights with audiences across the country, inspiring many individuals to take control of their own health, break free from poor theological teaching placed upon them, and seek the support they need. He has published several books on mental health, the most recent being Resilient and Redeemed. His work has been featured in a number of media outlets, including CrossWalk, The Mighty, and Fathom Magazine.
Chris is deeply committed to creating a more compassionate and supportive world and church for individuals living with mental health issues. Through his writing and speaking, he is a powerful voice for change and a beacon of hope for those in need.
More from Chris
I literally wrote the book that I wish I had 20 years ago when I was raising my kids. Being a parent today is tumultuous. Especially in a post-COVID world, mental health is a strong contender for the biggest challenges facing our kids. There are plenty of books out there that give us theories on how to raise our kids, and plenty of books that are full of devotionals to walk through with our kids, but shockingly few books dedicated to coaching our kids to have tenacity.
In my experience, tenacity might be the biggest difference maker between seeing our kids move successfully through life and floundering. It’s a given that challenges will come, whether those struggles look like not making the varsity basketball team or something more serious. We simply have to help our kids know how to walk through the missed opportunities and hard times that will inevitably come into their lives.
Trekking Toward Tenacity does just that. We walk through Psalm 139 verse by verse and pull out practical, meaningful tips, tricks, and conversations to have with our kids to help them develop resilience. News flash: there’s no magic potion we can give our kids that gives them bounce-backability. Instead, this is found through conversation about life and God.
My favorite part of this book was writing the age-appropriate activities in the center of each chapter. Instead of only giving you theology or child psychology data without any practical application, Trekking Toward Tenacity includes specific activities you can try out with your kids. There’s obviously no guarantee that these ideas will work, but I can tell you that they worked for other kids. These are pie-in-the-sky concepts, but activities that have been tried in the real world.
If you’re looking for a book that will arm you with skills to coach your kids on how to develop tenacity in their lives, this is the book for you!
Interview with the Author
- Does writing energize or exhaust you?
Can I say “yes,” because both are true in different ways? Being able to form words into sentences that are coherent and meaningful, which have the ability to impact my readers, is the most energizing thing in the world. I am always thinking of my readers as I write my books because I want to them my books with my readers in mind. Otherwise, who exactly am I writing for? But at the same time, crafting words in this way isn’t a natural process for me. It’s hard brain work, the type that take a lot out of me. This means that writing is also exhausting. But it’s the best kind of exhaustion because it’s work that matters in the end.
- How did writing this book grow you spiritually?
Trekking Toward Tenacity gave me the opportunity to reflect back of my time as a parent and see what we did well, what worked, and what wasn’t so great. My wife and I were always doing the best we could at the time, knowing what we knew at the time, but I am also comfortable saying that our oldest suffered under some mistakes that we made as young parents. He literally was the guinea pig, poor guy. It was wonderful to reflect back on the last almost thirty years and have a bird’s-eye view on our parenting. I was able to see that God really did guide our faltering steps, and that we really did do a lot of things well. Being able to review that journey was so rewarding and filled me with gratitude for the goodness of God even in our ignorance and youth.
- What do you like to do when you are not writing?
I am a bit of a movie buff. I like Marvel and DC superhero movies. I enjoy a good horror flick. I like some comedies, though not often the raunchy ones. I love being transported to a different time and place for a few hours, no matter the details. Along the same lines, I am also an avid reader. I read everything from fantasy to theology, along with a solid dosing of Calvin & Hobbes comic strips. Other than that, I play board games with my friends and occasionally make some attempts to stay in shape by running (don’t worry, I’m not going to run any marathons any time soon though).
- Share something your readers wouldn’t know about you.
I am a giant at 6’7”, but there are a couple of weird things about that. The first is that my wife is 5’2”; we joke that her neck is always hurting from looking up at me and my back is always hurting from bending over to listen to her soft-spoken voice. The other thing that’s pretty funny is that I’m afraid of heights. More specifically, I’m afraid of falling, but it amounts to the same thing. Most people haven’t met a giant who’s afraid of heights.
- When did you start writing?
There’s a sense in which I’ve always been writing. I won a state contest as a freshman in high school for a real-life account of my childhood. Later in high school, I was the managing editor for the school newspaper. The desire to write faded for a few years during college and into my twenties, but it resurfaced as a blog in the 2010’s. Before I knew it, I had thousands of people reading my blog posts about faith and chronic illnesses. I soon expanded to include mental illnesses in my writing, all based on my own personal struggles with the things happening in my family. I guess I have always had a way of universalizing my experiences to make them applicable to others.
Blog Stops
Its Mama Safe, January 16
Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, January 17
A Reader’s Brain, January 18 (Author Interview)
Guild Master, January 19 (Author Interview)
Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, January 19
Artistic Nobody, January 20 (Author Interview)
Texas Book-aholic, January 21
Aryn the Libraryan, January 22
Back Porch Reads, January 23 (Author Interview)
Locks, Hooks and Books, January 24
Simple Harvest Reads, January 25 (Author Interview)
Mary Hake, January 25
Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, January 26
Fiction Book Lover, January 27 (Author Interview)
Happily Managing a Household of Boys, January 28
A Modern Day Fairy Tale, January 29 (Author Interview)
Giveaway
To celebrate his tour, Chris is giving away the grand prize of a $75 Amazon gift card, a copy of Trekking Toward Tenacity, and a free Audible copy of my previous book Whispers in the Pews: Voices on Mental Illness in the Church!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.