Alberta Sequeira: Author, Speaker and Instructor
Alberta H. Sequeira was born in Pocasset, MA. Her father, Albert L. Gramm, was a One Star Brigadier General in the Army, and she spent her childhood in various towns across the different states traveling. She lives in Rochester, MA with her husband, Al.
She is the author of her first memoir, A Healing Heart; A Spiritual Renewal (2006). Her book is in the process of being re-published by Riverhaven Book Publishing Company with the new title A Spiritual Renewal; A Journey to Medjugorje by the end of January 2012. It’s about her relationship with her father, Brigadier General, Albert L Gramm, and her spiritual changes after his death. Miracles take her on a ten day pilgrimage to Medjugorje a tiny, remote village in Bosnia where she witnessed four of six visionaries having apparitions with The Blessed Mother.
June 19, 2009, her second memoir, Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round; An Alcoholic Family in Crisis (2009), was self-published by Infinity Publishing. Its about the authors young marriage with two daughters that turned to fear, confusion and abuse from her alcoholic husband. The sequel Please, God, Not Two; This Killer Called Alcoholism (2010) is the continuation of their lives, and the story follows her daughter, Lori Cahill, going down the same destructive path as her father. Riche died in 1985 at forty-five years of age and Lori died in 2006 at the age of thirty-nine from the same alcohol addiction. Lori’s name was added to her father’s gravestone and put to rest with him.
REVIEW: Truth in every page
By meme – This review is from: Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round: An Alcoholic Family in Crisis (Paperback)
I have been unable to read a complete book for the last 8 years and this one I couldn’t put down. Not only is it an easy read but anyone who has been in an alcoholic marriage will find comfort in this. This is not a self help book but it gives you the realization that someone else has felt exactly what you felt and you were not crazy.
REVIEW: Highly recommended by William R. Potter for Reader’s Choice Book Reviews
Please God, Not Two works as a stand alone, however I recommend you read it and the prequel together to obtain full effect of this poignant story. This is a candid look into alcoholism. Sequeira makes no excuses for herself or for her daughter. She writes with the best of intentions–to help others struggling to save a family member caught in the relentless grip of this disease. The information is well presented and Sequeira’s experiences are described with a desperate honesty that will have you reaching for tissues in many scenes. Direct links to purchases all books are below.
Alberta is a co-founder of Authors Without Borders and co-authored with their book Loose Ends. She is a co-host to the NBTV-95 Cable TV Station from New Bedford, Massachusetts. Ms. Seuqiera has been interviewed on numerous Cable TV Shows, radio blogs, and newspapers. She also teaches a three hour workshop in “Bring Your Manuscript to Publication.” Ms. Sequeira presents a talk on “The Effect of Alcoholism to the Whole Family” to private and public locations. She also offers a talk on “My Spiritual Changes Within” after her trip to Medjugorje.
See her full bio and media appearances at www.albertasequeira.com or email her at memoirs@albertasequeira.com.
Daily Sayings
IT IS MY CALLING TO TREAT EVERY HUMAN BEING WITH GRACE AND DIGNITY, TO TREAT EVERY PERSON, WHETHER ENCOUNTERED IN A PALACE OR A GAS STATION, AS A LIFE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD.
Sheila Walsh. Contemporary, American Singer, Speaker
Study raises alarm on uni alcohol abuse
Almost half of university students drink at risky levels and one-fifth regularly face alcohol-fuelled abuse and assaults, a Perth study has found.
CATHY O’LEARY MEDICAL EDITOR, The West AustralianUpdated January 19, 2012, 2:10 am
In a first in Australia, a survey of more than 7200 WA undergraduates aged 17 to 25 found 48 per cent had exceeded national guidelines to prevent acute harm from alcohol at least once in the previous month.
On average, female students drank five standard drinks in a session, and male students drank almost nine.
Local students were heavier drinkers than international students and those aged 17 to 19 drank more than older students.
Results from the Curtin University study, led by public health researcher Jonathon Hallett, were published in the international journal BMC Public Health this week.
They revealed high rates of so-called second-hand effects from drinking, with 19 per cent of students reporting being insulted, pushed or assaulted in the previous month by others who had been drinking and one per cent of students saying they had been sexually assaulted in that time.
One-quarter of the students said they had recently babysat drunken friends.
Researchers called for more to be done to address hazardous drinking by students early on in university life.
McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth director Mike Daube said the findings were concerning and showed the culture of binge drinking was alive and well.
“University students are clearly at very high risk and we need to develop policies and programs that will reduce the exceptionally high levels of drinking,” he said.
“It is especially worrying that so many students report second-hand effects of alcohol resulting from drinking by others.”
Professor Daube said patterns for alcohol use were very different from those for smoking. Those with higher levels of education were less likely to smoke than others but were just as likely to drink at harmful levels.
“There is clearly a need for broad community measures to reduce alcohol harm and programs for teenagers as they start student life,” he said.
“These should include tailored educational programs and curbs on the mass of alcohol products and promotions that target young people.”
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Author: Alberta
I read this article and said, “My God, what is happening to our children and every person around this world with abusing thier bodies and minds for the beginning thrill taking alcohol or drugs?” Kids aren’t happy with these substances and take the other step to go further and steal parent’s medicene and sniff chemicals found in the house.
I remember a year, maybe less, before my daughter died and was struggling to get off her addiction, she said to me, “This may sound foolish to you, Mom, but my best time was when I was drinking.” To her, it probably was. She drown her sorrow of her father’s death away and found confidence in herself drinking.
Lori didn’t realize she had all the qualities that she was looking for, beauty inside and out; a great sense of humor, laughter that filled the house, and talent to be who she wanted to be.
When a young child, and that’s what they are at ten years old and painfully younger, starts on this path they don’t realize that it’s a destructive one. I repeat, “It’s not that this abuse may, would or could kill. It will. It’s a matter of time. No one wants to look twenty or thirty years ahead of what drinking or taking drugs will do.
Stop and think of reality. Where does this substance go when traveling through your body; kidney’s heart, lungs, and most important, your liver. How much abuse can these organ’s take? Please, stop and get help with your addition. It’s takes more of a person to say you need help. No matter how much someone else loves you, you have to take the steps. You have the ability to do this unless you wait for the demon to grab a hold of you so tightly, you won’t be able to dig yourself out of this. Family and friends can only love and support you.
Family History of Alcoholism May Affect Adolescents’ Brains
By Janice Wood Associate News Editor
Reviewed by John M Grohol, Psy.D. on January 18, 2012
A new study has found that the brains of adolescents with a family history of alcoholism respond differently while making risky decisions than the brains of other teens.
Researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University discovered that two areas of the brain — the prefrontal cortex and cerebellum — demonstrated atypical activity while completing the same task than their peers with no family history of alcoholism.
“We know that a familial history of alcoholism is a significant risk factor for future alcohol abuse,” said Bonnie J. Nagel, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at Oregon Health & Science University. “We were interested in determining whether adolescents at heightened risk for alcohol use made more risky decisions during a laboratory task compared to their lower-risk peers.”
The researchers also wanted to investigate risk factors in youth who had a family history of alcoholism (FHP), but were not drinking yet.
“This is the first study to examine the neural substrates of risk-taking in FHP adolescents who are substance naïve,” added Megan Herting, a PhD candidate in behavioral neuroscience at Oregon Health & Science University.
“A previous study looked at young adults who were drinkers, therefore, it is hard to say if the differences found were purely a pre-existing neural risk factor for alcohol use. Alcohol use may also differentially impact the brains of those with and without a family history of alcoholism. The current study is a very novel and important piece of work showing that the brain is doing something different during risky decision making in substance-naïve FHP adolescents.”
The researchers recruited 31 youth — 18 FHP (12 males, 6 females) and 13 without a family history of alcoholism (FHN) (8 males, 5 females) — between the ages of 13 and 15. All had little to no alcohol involvement before their participation in the study.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine brain responses during a Wheel of Fortune (WOF) decision-making task, which presented risky versus safe probabilities of winning different amounts of money.
“While our study found that FHP adolescents did not perform significantly differently on the WOF task compared to the FHN adolescents,” said Nagel, “we found two areas of the brain that responded differently.
“These areas were in the prefrontal cortex and cerebellum, both of which are important for higher-order day-to-day functioning, such as decision-making. In these brain regions, FHP adolescents showed weaker brain responses during risky decision-making compared to their FHN peers. We believe that weaker activation of these brain areas, known to be important for optimal decision-making, may confer vulnerability towards risky decisions with regards to future alcohol use in adolescents already at risk for alcoholism.”
Herting noted that higher-order — or executive — functioning is also important for things like attention, working memory, and inhibition.
“Differences in brain activity may impact the ability of FHP individuals to make good decisions in many contexts and, in particular, may facilitate poor decision-making in regards to alcohol use,” she said. “Taken together with other studies on FHP youth, these results suggest that atypical brain structure and function exist prior to any substance use, and may contribute to an increased vulnerability for alcoholism in these individuals.”
The researchers believe these findings can help develop better prevention programs based on family risk factors.
“These findings may suggest a neurobiological marker that helps to explain how family history of alcoholism confers risk,” said Nagel. “Furthermore, our research may aid clinicians who work with high-risk youth to develop effective prevention strategies for these adolescents to promote healthy decision-making.”
Having a family history of alcoholism is just one of many factors involved in future alcohol abuse, the researchers note.
“While having a family history of alcoholism may put one at greater risk for alcohol abuse, personality and behavioral risk factors are also important to consider,” said Nagel. “The combination of genetic and environmental factors is very different for everyone, so some individuals may be at higher risk than others, and certainly there are genetic and environmental factors that can also protect against alcohol abuse. Future research will need to determine the relative influence of these traits on alcohol abuse risk to be able to design specific prevention strategies for different high-risk populations.”
The results of the study will be published in the April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
Source: Oregon Health & Science University
Author: Alberta
I believe with no doubt, from my ex-husband’s family history, that alcoholism is a hereditary family disease. I also think that doctors and counselors should study more “WHY” a person drinks or takes drugs more than studying the disease.
Introduction/Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round
Nominated in 2009 for the “Editor’s Choice Award”
Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round is now in e-book form.
Richie Lopes was born on January 2, 1937. He had been born into a family fighting alcoholism, a disease that had been past down from generations of family members. His mother and sister battled their addiction leaving Richie and his sibblings with little security or happy times in his young growing years.
By the time I had met Richie, I was at eighteen, and he was already drinking. Being a young girl coming from a happy family life, I had no knowledge, education or awareness on what alcohol abuse was all about or what it could do to a person. It wasn’t until we got married and had two daughters, Debbie and Lori, that I came to see how alcoholics can’t stop at one drink. They drink until they slurr their words, get into arguements, and can’t remember a thing the next day.
Slowly, I became an enabler without realizing it. In the late sixties and up, I kept silent to our problems with our families. Small arguments turned into abusive moments with the girls witnesses things they shouldn’t have in their lives. I should have protected them more than Richie.
Our once happy, family life turned to fear, confusion and abuse. While I thought I was protecting our children and foolishly thinking they needed their father, I innocently damaged our daughter’s emotionally. Instead, I brought fear into Lori’s life that continued up until her death.
It took a lot of strength for me to open up about our lives that I had kept behind closed door for over seventeen years to write Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round; An Alcoholic Family in Crisis (2009). I watched a loving husband and father turn into someone I didn’t know. This man who hated his family for drinking and the life he swore never to bring into our family became the same person with abusive behavior.
After many times of suffering physical abuse and being lucky not to have been killed, I left a man that I once loved to survive. By then, my daughters had seen too much and lived without knowing love in a family. The horrible, sufficating disease passed down to Lori.
My memoir shows how we all get on the merry-go-round to keep the abusive action going within the family. Making demands without breaking down would have stopped years of our family’s mental and physical suffering.
Feburay 10, 1985 at forty-five years of age, Richie died from this awful disease. Now I waited to see if my daughers would abuse alcohol.
Introduction: Please, God, Not Two; This Killer Called Alcoholism
Lori Lopes (Cahill) was born July 29, 1967 at Morton Hospital in Taunton, MA. She was my second daughter coming into the world four years after the birth of her sister, Debbie Lopes (Dutra) on May 14, 1963. I had lived in North Dighton, MA for over thirty years.
Lori had a personality once she started to walk and discovered the world and the people in it. By two years old, she delighted in any comical gesture of hers to make people laugh. She continued this wonderful habit throughout her life. Our house filled with her friends since Lori seemed to be the leader of the pack. I enjoyed each moment my daughter’s girlfriends, and at times the boys in the gang, come over to our house. I knew where they were and loved all the neighborhood kids.
On the outside, Lori made everyone around her think that she was delighted with life and the friends she had. But, she hid her pain deep down inside her including away from me, her mother. At the age of seventeen, Lori and Debbie at the age of twenty-one lost their father when he was only forty-five years of age from cirrhosis of the liver.
It wasn’t until Lori’s last two years that the family came to realize that she had been following the same path as her father. She had deeper problems that kept her frightened all her life, making her lose confidence in herself, and turned to alcohol abuse, and I think drugs played a part in her silent suffering.
How does a parent miss the signs, especailly after losing a husband nineteen years earlier? Easily. Lori never came and told me she was hurting or had been mentally upset with past trumas in her life. It had been the physical, and mental health breakdowns that opened the door to her illness, including being bulemic. Her second marriage fell apart, and I blamed the weight loss to the stress she had been under.
On November 22, 2006 after three alcoholic rehabilitation stays, Lori died at thirty-nine years of age at the Charlton Memoiral Hospital in Fall River, MA. She was laid to rest with her father at the St. Patrick Cemetery in Somerset, MA.
God gave me a loving, happy, beautiful daughter who filled all our lives with joy. She left us her two children, Joe and Meagan. Debbie and her husband, Brian, took Lori’s children to live with them and their children Kerri and Michael. Meagan became the nurse Lori had hoped to be and Joe became a Marine December 18, 2009. I see her each time I look in their eyes.
Please, God, Not Two; This Killer Called Alcoholism (2010) is the sequel after self-publishing Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round; An Alcoholic Family in Crisis (2009).
It’s a very honest, painful and emotional story of losing a child to a demon that became her killer. People say authors write to heal. I haven’t healed. Every parent losing a child in any way, has to go on living. It’s how we live that counts.
I turned my life to speaking engagements on “The Effect of Alcoholism on the Whole Famliy.” For a shy girl, who couldn’t talk in public, I’m now reaching out to other families of abusers and the abusers themselves. God has a way of putting a path in front of us. We have to decide if we want to travel down it. If we open our hearts to Him, the decision is easy.
My trust and love in God has me taking this dark journey along with other sufferers hoping to find a light at the end of visiting each location to give a speaking engagement. Like the alcoholics state; “It’s one day at a Time.” But, I know He leads me. If I stumble, I just get up and keep going. Seeing the faces of lost souls controlled by this killer, gives me peace when they hug and kiss me while thanking me for coming to talk to them.
Purchase at:
http://www.amazon.com/Please-God-Not-Alberta-Sequeira/dp/0741460297/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302185366&sr=1-1
See my other memoirs below!
Please, God, Not Two; This Killer Called Alcoholism
My sequel is also in e-book form. It could be called a book of “What Not to Do!” Read how I became an enabler and innocently helped my loved ones go deeper into their addiction. It’s a book of lessons from someone who did it so wrong.
Order it at:
See my other memoirs below!
Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round An Alcoholic Family in Crisis
Nominated in 2009 for the “Editor’s Choice Award”
Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round is now in e-book form.
This is a memoir that hides nothing from the reality of the affects of alcoholism on the whole family. The story follows an ordinary family with two daughters living with security and happiness until Richie turns their lives to upside down with fear, confusion and abuse from his drinking.
No begging or pleading, helped Richie come to realize the seriousness of this killer. He loses his business and family and dies in 1985 at the VA Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island at forty-five years of age to this horrible, worldwide disease.
Ride the merry-go-round of emotions as everyone continues the same habits of life without making any demands. Alberta innocently becomes an enablers only pushing Richie deeper into his addiction.
A Healing Heart A Spiritual Renewal
A Healing Heart received the “Reviewers Choice Award 2008 Semi -Finalist”
Ms. Sequeira’s first memoir A Healing Heart had been published in 2006. It’s a powerful and emotional story about the author’s relationship with her father, One Star Brigadier General, Albert L. Gramm, when she learns he has cancer. It’s at this moment in time that she realizes that she had waited too long to learn about his WWII battles throughout Europe, like the “Battle of the Bulge, Metz and Lorraine.” He had been one of the commanders in the 26th Yankee Division. Follow the author to Medjugorje in Bosnia on her ten day pilgrimage to find peace. It’s a heart-warming story.
A new title A Spiritual Renewal; A Journey to Medjugorje will be given to A Healing Heart with a new book cover. Riverhaven Books from Whitman, Massachusetts will be republishing the book, hopefully, by the end of January 2012.
Book can be purchased through PayPal at: www.albertasequeira.com. Large discount until the stock of books are sold before it’s new print is gone.
