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Coming Out, Coming Home: Helping Families Adjust to a Gay or Lesbian Child resources

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xviii  Acknowledgments encouragement and for introducing me to CUP. I also wish to thank the external reviewers whose feedback helped me enrich this work. I was lucky to find two really smart, really sensitive research assistants in Bethann Albert and Rita Velez Carreras. Their assistance with interviewing and analysis was invaluable. I also wish to thank my transcribers, Linda D. Phillips and Astrid Hufnagel, whose accuracy and countless hours of hard work greatly contributed to the success of this project. I owe an enormous debt of thanks to my home institution, the School of Social Work at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and especially Dean Emeritus Mary Edna Davidson. Her support and belief in my abilities during the early years of my academic career helped give me the confidence to write a successful grant proposal. My current dean, the talented and mas- terful Richard Edwards, along with my colleagues at Rutgers, supported me with their words of encouragement and their willingness to put up with my absences when I was busy writing. A special thanks to you all. I was initially introduced to family therapy by Professor Max Siporin when I was a Master of Social Work student at the State University of New York at Albany. I distinctly recall being inspired by a videotape he presented in class showing Virgina Satir’s sensitive work, which, as a student, I suspected was magic. (Now, as a seasoned clinician, I am certain of it.) My formal family therapist training really began at Project Strive, Inc., a home-based foster care prevention program where David Bosworth, the executive director, had the wisdom to hire Anne Itzkowitz from the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center to train us in structural family therapy. From that point on, I was fortunate to have received training and inspiration, either through formal programs, work- shops, or consultations, from Salvador Minuchin, Carl Whitaker, Michael Kerr, Monica McGoldrick, Insoo Kim Berg, Steve DeShazer, and Maurizio Andolfi. I am grateful to have known and learned from these gifted individu- als, and each has left an imprint on my thinking and my clinical work. A very special thank you must go to my dear friend and mentor Michael P. Nichols. Good teachers model and demonstrate skills for their students to copy. The really great ones help their students find these abilities within themselves. In his ongoing support of my work, including his sensitive review of previous drafts of this book, Mike pushed me to find the heart and smarts inside of me and gave me the courage to infuse them throughout the text. Having him in my life has been a gift for which I am eternally grateful. My mother and father taught me many valuable things. One is to always aim high. From an early age they taught me the sweet pleasure of achieving 01_lasala14382_fm.indd 18 3/10/10 12:50:45 PM

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