Blog Archives
Unwritten Rules
An Educator’s Guide to Constructing Employable Identities combines research and practical workshops to help educators support graduates in developing professional identities, navigating workplace expectations, and shaping their working futures. What motivated you to write this book?
The book grew out of a gap I kept noticing between how employability is talked about and
how it is lived. Public conversation tends to centre on skills, competencies and labour-market outcomes. These matter, but they treat graduates as people carrying a toolkit into a workplace. In reality, people enter workplaces as identity negotiators. Who they become professionally is worked out with colleagues, managers, mentors and gatekeepers, in settings that have their own expectations about who belongs.
Through my research and teaching, I met many capable graduates who struggled, not because they lacked technical expertise, but because they were unsure who they were becoming in professional life. They were decoding unspoken norms, responding to how others saw them and weighing competing expectations, often with very unequal access to opportunity.
This led me to develop the Systemic Identity Negotiation Model (SINM), which treats employability as an ongoing negotiation between people, the social structures around them, and the futures open to them. The book translates that thinking into practical, workshop- based tools for educators. I wanted to move the conversation from “How do we teach students to get jobs?” to “How do we help students become professionals who can adapt, contribute and find meaning as work changes?” Employability is less a destination than an unfolding process of identity construction.
What does teaching systems capital look like when students can recognise unwritten rules but lack the power to influence them?
This matters because awareness alone does not create agency. Systems capital is often reduced to knowing how systems work, but understanding a workplace’s unwritten rules does little good if students conclude they are powerless to act on that understanding. The aim of teaching should not be to persuade students that systems are fair. It should be to help them navigate complexity strategically and ethically.
Unwritten rules are not fixed facts of nature. They are shared understandings, kept alive and occasionally changed through everyday interaction. So teaching systems capital means helping students see where influence is possible, where constraints are firm, and how change tends to happen gradually. A student may notice that networking opportunities are unequally distributed and be unable to redesign that system overnight. They can still learn to build professional relationships, join communities of practice, find mentors and create collective support with peers. In workshops, this might mean rehearsing and debriefing real workplace conversations, mapping where discretion exists in a given setting and developing shared strategies as a group.
Equally, adaptation should never be taught without reflection. Students need language to analyse power, recognise structural inequality and understand that career outcomes are not simply a reward for merit. In that sense, systems capital is both practical and emancipatory. It prepares learners not merely to fit into systems, but to understand them well enough to help reshape them when opportunities arise.
What insights do you hope educators gain from the facilitator reflections, and how might those insights change their approach to teaching employability?
I included them because employability education is not a neutral activity. Educators are participants in the very systems they help students navigate. How a facilitator responds when a student tries on a new professional identity can make certain futures feel possible or out of reach.
I hope readers come to see teaching employability as less about supplying answers and more about creating space for reflection, dialogue, and exploration. The reflections capture moments when participants challenged assumptions, understood concepts differently, or exposed tensions between institutional expectations and lived experience. Those moments are not interruptions to the teaching. They are where meaning is actually made.
A central insight is that employability cannot be reduced to a checklist of graduate attributes. Students arrive with different backgrounds, resources, aspirations and constraints, so the same activity will land differently for different groups. Once educators accept this, their practice shifts from transmission to facilitation. The question changes from “Have I delivered the employability content?” to “How are students making sense of their place in future work?” That puts students’ meaning-making at the centre.
The reflections also invite humility and reflexivity. Employability is a dynamic and contested idea, and educators need to stay open to questioning their own assumptions about success, professionalism and career development.
How should universities and employers assess professional growth in ways that recognise developing identities and address unequal access to career opportunities?
We need to move beyond assessment that looks only at outcomes and begin to recognise developmental trajectories. Conventional markers such as internships, leadership roles, networking success and job offers have value, but they hide big differences in access. Two students can reach the same outcome by very different routes, facing different obstacles and receiving different levels of support.
An identity-based approach asks, “How is this person developing as a professional, and with what support?” Beyond what students have achieved, we should look at how they reflect, adapt, learn, exercise agency and make sense of their evolving professional identities. In practice, that points to reflective portfolios, narrative accounts of learning, mentoring conversations and evidence of growth over time. These methods recognise that development is non-linear and shaped by context.
There is also a caution. Professional identities are not simply declared. They are recognised, or withheld, by others. Assessment is one of the places where that recognition is granted or denied, so who decides, and on what criteria, matters. Reflective methods can favour students who already know how to speak the language of professionalism. Institutions should make criteria explicit, draw on more than one assessor and perspective, and accept a range of legitimate ways of being professional.
Universities and employers also share a responsibility to confront structural inequality. Assessment should not just reward those who have inherited advantageous social and cultural capital. It should value growth, learning agility and the ability to navigate complexity in differing circumstances. Employers can help through transparent progression criteria, fair access to mentoring and sponsorship, and attention to how workplace norms define who
“fits”.
Ultimately, the most meaningful measure of professional growth is not whether someone has become an “ideal worker”. It is whether they are becoming reflective professionals who can keep learning, contributing, and renegotiating their identities across unpredictable careers.
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The book offers practical workshops designed to develop learners’ professional identities, encouraging them to reflect on their past, present, and future identities while providing educators with the tools to support their learners’ employability trajectories. These workshops not only boost learners’ employability but also provide educators with opportunities to reflect on their own practices. The book concludes with strategic recommendations for tertiary institutions, employers, learners, and facilitators.
This indispensable resource is designed for educators in higher and further education who are keen to enhance graduate employability within their institutions.
Grief Is Lonely
Shattered but Unbreakable shares your story about losing your husband and young daughter in an accident, and another daughter to suicide twenty years later, and how grief transformed your life while faith, love, and community helped you move forward. What led you to share your family’s story?
I held this story back for a long time.
Not because it was too painful to tell, though it was. I held it back because I didn’t want the attention. A story like mine draws eyes, and I didn’t want them on me.
In April 2003, I was twenty-eight, a year from finishing nursing school, with four little ones at home. A car accident took my husband, Paul, and my oldest daughter, Cassie, on the same afternoon. I was left raising three children under five. The baby, Aria, was thirteen months old.
Twenty years later, I lost her too. Aria, at twenty-one, to suicide.
For years I only told it when I was asked, in living rooms and at women’s events, and the same thing kept happening. Afterward, a woman would find me in the hallway or the parking lot and say, “That’s my story too. Nobody talks about this.” Then she would ask if there was a book.
There wasn’t.
What finally changed my mind was realizing the story I was holding back was never really mine. It was not a story about my pain. It was a story about what held me when nothing else could: a God who stayed, friends who showed up without being asked, a love that outlasted everything that tried to break it. His story of goodness, not my story of loss. The more I sat with that, the more I felt Him leading me to share it, and keeping it to myself started to feel like keeping something that was never only mine to keep.
So, I wrote it.
I wrote it because grief is lonely in a way people don’t expect, and because the version of faith most of us are handed in the worst week of our lives is all platitudes. “She’s in a better place.” “God needed another angel.” I wanted to put something in a grieving woman’s hands that told her the truth: God did not spare me any of it, but He carried me through all of it. And she is not doing this wrong.
I also wrote it as a nurse. I know what grief does to the body, to a marriage, to the job you have to go back to. Nobody warns you. I wanted to.
How has your understanding of healing changed since your earliest experiences with grief?
In 2003, I thought healing meant getting back. Back to who I was, back to normal, back to a life that made sense. I thought if I worked hard enough and prayed hard enough, I would arrive somewhere called “better” and stay there.
That is not what happened.
What I learned, the slow way, is that there is a version of you that existed before the loss and a version that had to learn how to live after it. They are not the same person. You can’t go back. You can only move forward, differently.
Healing stopped meaning the pain was gone and started meaning the love had somewhere to go. It meant carrying the loss, not erasing it. It meant letting something new exist beside the ache. Spring doesn’t erase winter. It grows alongside what remains.
By the time I lost Aria, I was, in a strange way, a grief pro. I knew grief lives in the body. I knew the fog would come, that the world would go quiet after the funeral, that anniversaries and ordinary Tuesdays would level me. I knew to let people in. I knew what to ask for.
None of that made it hurt less.
But it changed what I expected of myself. I stopped measuring my healing against anyone’s timeline, including my own. Some days survival is the strength. Some days getting through is the victory.
And I stopped thinking of healing as something I do. I did not just survive. I was sustained. God was not rushing me toward healing. He was protecting what little light remained.
That is the difference twenty years made.
What are some practical ways people can support someone who is grieving without unintentionally creating additional burdens?
Don’t ask. Do.
“Let me know if you need anything” is a kind sentence that quietly hands the work back to the person who can barely breathe. A grieving person does not know what she needs. If she does, she will not ask. So, look around, figure out what you would need in her place, and do that.
Bring the coffee. Drop off a meal in a dish she never has to return. Fold the laundry. Sit in the carpool line. Send the text that says, “Thinking of you today, no need to reply.”
When my daughter died, my friend Nancy asked if I had something for Aria to wear. I said no. She didn’t press. She asked what size, and a few hours later she was at my door with three dresses to choose from. That is what help looks like. It takes the other end of something too heavy to carry alone.
Say their name. The deepest fear of the grieving is that the world will forget. You will not remind us of our loss by speaking it. We never forgot. You will remind us that their life mattered.
Don’t try to fix it. The people who hurt me most were rarely unkind. They were uncomfortable, and they tried to make the discomfort go away with words. Grief doesn’t need a commentator. It needs a companion.
And stay. The casseroles stop. The cards slow. The world moves on, and that is usually right about when the fog lifts and the full weight finally lands. Put the anniversary on your own calendar. Text on the hard day you know is coming. Show up a year later, five years later. The friends who kept me standing across twenty years are the ones who simply never forgot.
What would you want to say to a reader who is currently living through the earliest and most overwhelming period of grief?
If I could sit with you right now, I wouldn’t try to say the right thing.
I would just sit across from you and let you be exactly where you are. Numb, shattered, confused, functioning too well, or barely functioning at all. You are not doing this wrong. Grief does not have a correct posture.
I remember mornings when I woke up with a weight on my chest so real it felt physical. Before my eyes even opened, I would remember. I would say it out loud and take a few deep breaths just to get out of bed. In those first days, I could not imagine breathing, standing, or surviving the next hour. But I did. And the only honest explanation is the One who promised to be my strength when mine ran out.
So here is what I would tell you. You don’t need answers to keep going. You only need the next step. The next breath. The next morning.
Let people in. Let them do what needs doing, hold what needs holding, wipe tears, wash dishes, or quietly sit with you. You don’t have to perform composure for anyone.
Don’t let anyone hand you a timeline, including you. Grief is not a race. You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to rest. And when the laughter comes back, and it will, you are allowed that too. Joy is not betrayal.
If faith is part of your story, hear this gently: God is not disappointed in you. He is not measuring your belief by how well you are coping. He is closer than you realize, and often quieter than you expect.
My faith did not spare me any of it. It carried me through all of it.
I am still walking. You are seen. You are held. And you are allowed to take as long as you need.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Twenty years later, tragedy struck again when her twenty-one-year-old daughter, Aria, died by suicide.
In Shattered but Unbreakable: How Love and Faith Survived, Nadine shares the raw and deeply personal story of living through profound loss—not once, but twice. With remarkable honesty, she invites readers into hospital rooms, funeral homes, sleepless nights, difficult questions, and sacred moments where grief and grace coexist. As a nurse leader, mother, widow, and grieving parent, she offers a unique perspective on trauma, healing, faith, and the enduring power of love.
More than a memoir, Shattered but Unbreakable is a testimony of hope for anyone facing loss, heartbreak, or life’s unexpected detours. It is a reminder that while grief may change us forever, it does not have to define us. Even in life’s darkest chapters, faith can sustain us, love remains, and broken hearts can learn to beat again.
Talk Human to Me
Steven Asifo’s Talk Human to Me takes on a familiar workplace frustration: you’ve spotted a real problem, explained it carefully, and watched everyone carry on with their day. Asifo, a cybersecurity leader and stand-up comic, treats that gap between a good recommendation and actual follow-through as a central part of security work. His argument is that influence grows when you understand someone’s pressures and make the next step clear. The book brings together personal experience, communication advice, and short exercises, all delivered in a voice that sounds like a colleague talking through what he’s learned. It’s direct, energetic, and easy to settle into.
The strongest part of the book is how consistently it connects communication to the practical conditions of someone else’s working day. Deadlines, limited resources, uncertainty, and competing priorities all shape whether a security request gets anywhere. Asifo encourages readers to listen for those conditions, build messages around them, and invite people to help shape the solution. He also gives readers concrete ways to check their work: trim a message to its essential meaning, see whether someone can explain it back, and make the requested decision obvious. These exercises give the book a useful rhythm. You can read a chapter, open an email or presentation you’re working on, and try something immediately. That makes the advice feel manageable, especially for readers who’ve been told to improve their communication without much guidance about how.
Asifo’s comedy background gives the book a unique personality. He pays close attention to timing, audience, and the difference between getting a reaction and earning someone’s engagement. His discussion of humor is especially thoughtful about trust, including the importance of reading the moment and choosing jokes that bring people into the conversation. He’s also willing to examine his own missteps, which gives the advice credibility and keeps the tone approachable. The book does lean heavily on recurring phrases and familiar lessons, so its pace can feel repetitive once you’ve grasped the central idea. Its evidence comes mainly from Asifo’s experience, and some broad claims about fear, training, and behavior would benefit from more support. Still, the workplace detail makes his observations easy to recognize and gives readers plenty to think through against their own experience.
I recommend Talk Human to Me to cybersecurity professionals whose success depends on cooperation across teams: analysts, security program managers, people working in governance, risk, and compliance, and technical specialists who regularly present to business leaders. It should also appeal to managers helping those professionals develop, particularly when technically sound work keeps stalling at the point of adoption. Readers who enjoy an informal voice, personal stories, and exercises tied to real tasks will probably get the most from it. There’s useful material here for quieter readers, too, since Asifo treats communication as a skill you can practice through everyday choices. The book’s lasting value is the attention it asks you to give the person receiving your message. It leaves you with practical ways to make that person’s next decision easier.
Pages: 108 | ASIN: B0HM5NHP3H
How Not to F*ck Up Your Kids
Amira Bundy’s How Not to Fuck Up Your Kids is a parenting guide built around the everyday work of listening, managing emotions, and repairing relationships. Bundy draws on her experience as a therapist to organize that work into twelve “cheat codes,” followed by a bonus chapter on hope. Her central idea is straightforward: children need adults who take their feelings seriously, explain expectations clearly, and accept responsibility for their own behavior. The subtitle gives the book another layer, inviting parents to consider how their childhood experiences influence the way they respond to their kids. There’s plenty of swearing, humor, and encouragement, all delivered in a voice that feels distinctly personal.
The book is most engaging when Bundy shows what these ideas look like in an actual interaction. In one memorable story, a child named Holly, whose behavior includes intense outbursts and aggression, begins practicing calming skills through an evening ritual of sharing tea with Bundy. The details give the advice weight: connection develops through patience, curiosity, and repeated opportunities to try again. Another story follows a teenager attempting to teach Bundy chess. When he admits he’s exhausted by the effort, she accepts his boundary with laughter and reassurance. These scenes make the book’s emphasis on mutual respect easy to understand. Its practical suggestions are equally concrete, including getting down to a child’s eye level, allowing time to answer a question, and returning to a difficult conversation after everyone has had a chance to settle.
Bundy’s voice supplies much of the book’s energy. She’s candid about her own difficult childhood, her frustrations, and the moments when she needs help regulating herself. Those disclosures make her emphasis on accountability feel earned, particularly in the chapter on apologies, where she connects saying sorry with taking specific steps to change a behavior. The writing is expansive, and the chapters frequently return to the same ideas about communication, patience, and emotional safety. Some personal tangents stretch points that are already clear, so the pace can feel uneven. Still, the short chapter summaries make it easy to revisit a particular concern, and the research references offer avenues for further reading. The closing therapist checklists add practical value, covering everything from professional fit and respectful treatment to scheduling, payment, and questions caregivers can bring to a consultation.
I recommend this book to parents and caregivers who feel caught in repeated arguments and want to build more trust with the children in their lives. It may be especially meaningful for adults who grew up with harsh discipline, emotional dismissal, or caregivers who struggled to apologize. Bundy gives those readers room to acknowledge what hurt while asking them to take responsibility for what happens next. Parents of school-age children and teenagers will recognize many of the situations she describes, from shifting interests to secrecy, boundary testing, and increasing independence. Readers who enjoy frequent profanity and a direct, sometimes challenging conversational style will connect most readily with her approach. What stayed with me was her attention to the small exchanges that shape a relationship: listening to an excited story, honoring a limit, admitting a mistake, and showing up again with a little more care.
Pages: 339 | ISBN: 979-8-218-63888-7
The Invisible Soul: Rise Up
George W. Beasley’s The Invisible Soul: Rise Up, in its second edition, is a Christian memoir about childhood abuse, concealed emotional suffering, and the relationships through which he comes to understand healing. Beasley traces his life from a violent home and placements in children’s homes to marriage, fatherhood, and ministry. The title names the private world of fear, guilt, and condemnation that persists beneath an outwardly capable, cheerful identity. He captures that division in a sentence that gives the book much of its emotional clarity: “A smile was a mask, a laugh was a cry and a hug was a separation from all truth.” His account examines how a person can build a loving family and serve others while continuing to carry experiences he’s scarcely able to describe.
The second edition’s inclusion of court and social-service records adds a valuable documentary dimension. These reports show a child seeking acceptance, struggling with his circumstances, and gradually responding to adults who invest time in him. Read alongside Beasley’s memories, they give readers two perspectives on the same boy: the observations recorded by professionals and the fear he remembers living through. His descriptions of confinement, hunger, and violence are explicit, and their cumulative effect establishes the severity of the childhood he survived. Equally significant is his recognition of the counselors, house parents, and friends who offered stability. The book’s attention to these people gives its account of recovery substance, showing how practical care and sustained involvement become part of a life long before their significance is fully understood.
The narrative becomes especially engaging when water skiing connects Beasley’s family life with his work for In His Wakes. What begins as a source of pleasure and temporary relief develops into a ministry that brings him into contact with children whose expressions and stories recall his own. These encounters make the book’s recurring images of mirrors and reflections concrete: he recognizes his hidden pain through other people. The movement between exhilaration on the water, difficult conversations, and exhaustion after ministry events gives this section emotional complexity. His wife, Lisa, provides continuity throughout, offering affection and a place where he can speak and grieve. Beasley’s growing willingness to tell his story, together with the support of his family and ministry colleagues, makes healing a process readers can follow through specific relationships and events.
Beasley writes with the directness of spoken testimony, frequently addressing readers and interpreting his experiences through passages from The Message. That approach creates intimacy and makes his evangelical purpose clear. Repeated lists of painful emotions and frequent assurances of victory sometimes slow the narrative; the strongest passages allow a scene or conversation to carry the meaning. His firm convictions about divine sovereignty and healing also shape the book’s appeal, particularly for readers who share his Christian framework. Its concluding emphasis on humility, trust, and forgiveness gathers the personal history into an invitation to live differently. “You can never forget, but you can forgive,” he writes, expressing a distinction central to his understanding of recovery. The Invisible Soul offers a candid account of the lasting effects of abuse and a deeply personal interpretation of how faith, love, and service can reshape a survivor’s relationship with his past.
Pages: 118 | ASIN : B094YWMN54
Math and Psychological Factors
Mathematical Strategies to Winning No-Limit Texas Hold’em shows players how a changing deck alters familiar odds and how to turn those calculations into decisions at the table. What first led you to question the ideal probability model?
I have watched several videos and read many books which analyzes poker probability, and felt that the stated probabilities seemed much higher than what would be expected, from a mathematical viewpoint. Upon reverse engineering several of these probabilities, I have concluded that the ideal model always assumes that the round is played with ten players and that every ‘out’ is still expected to be in the deck. This is a best-case scenario and rarely occurs in real life. As more pocket hands are dealt, the probability that a desired ‘out’ may be dealt to another player or serve as a burn card increases, removing the probability of it appearing on ‘the board’. But, if you assume that these ‘outs’ are still in the deck, there is an increased probability that they will appear on ‘the board’ due to the smaller number of cards remaining in the deck. On the other hand, for only a few players, the probability that an ‘out’ still remains in the deck is higher, but the probability of it appearing on ‘the board’ is reduced due to a larger number of cards remaining in the deck. This is the effect of transient analysis on the remaining deck. These modified probabilities help the player assess the strength of their own hand as well as that of an opponent’s, thereby allowing them to make better decisions at the table.
How did you decide which depleted-deck calculations belonged in the quick-reference tables and which readers needed to work through in detail?
The book is written as both a math thesis as well as a playing guide. All of the equations are discussed to assist the reader in understanding the reasoning behind the calculations, and to make rough approximations at the table as needed. But they are generally way too complicated to compute during a game. Therefore, they have all been automatically computed and presented in table form for easy reference. These tables are not intended for the player to memorize immense data, but to get a general idea of the probabilities that an ‘out’ will appear on the flop, turn, or river based upon the number of dealt hands. As most players prefer to play the players rather than the cards, the quick reference tables are easily referenced to help the player make the best decision.
When your advanced model suggests a different play from conventional outs calculations, how should players weigh opponent behavior and position?
Poker is not played by mathematical probabilities alone, but through a variety of math and psychological factors. If a player is acting as if they hold a superior hand, they either truly do or are bluffing their way to win the pot. In this scenario, you can examine the board in an attempt to predict which ‘outs’ may be in an opponent’s pocket hand and make your call, fold, or raise decision based upon probabilities that those ‘outs’ are still expected to be within the deck or dealt to the player. Position dictates when it is your turn to act. The value of your pocket hand and your position is the first important decision a player must make. Marginal hands are best played in late position and conservatively, while the best hands are generally played aggressively. This tactic, however, may be altered throughout the game to catch the other players off-guard.
Which assumptions in your advanced model are most sensitive to missing information, and how might players adapt as opponents’ ranges become clearer?
Players generally make big calls and bets when they believe that they hold the superior hand (or wish to portray that image in a bluff). Obviously, the betting ranges are not stated specifically, as that is dependent upon each player’s risk tolerance. Although the tables of pre-calculated probabilities can aid each player in determining the probabilities of his hand winning as well as that of his opponent(s), he must make a risk/reward decision during each betting round.
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Designed as a practical guide for the Texas Hold’em player, as well as a research thesis for math enthusiasts, this book gives sound mathematical advice on how to play your best game.
The beginner to advanced Texas Hold’em players will learn how to judge the strength of their hand against the potential strength of an opponent’s hand from a mathematical perspective. Then, using pre-calculated probability tables, reference expected results to give insight into how to best play their hand during each round.
Math enthusiasts will be introduced to a new and advanced model that computes poker probabilities more accurately. This new model considers the probabilities that an out (a card needed to make or improve their hand) remains within the deck, was dealt to another player, or serves as a burn (discarded) card.
This informative book introduces the reader to the basics of Texas Hold’em poker, hand derivations, the effects of a depleted deck, how to pick your best pocket hands, and how to play your hand during each round using sound probability analysis.
Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Fiction
The Literary Titan Book Award honors books that exhibit exceptional storytelling and creativity. This award celebrates novelists who craft compelling narratives, create memorable characters, and weave stories that captivate readers. The recipients are writers who excel in their ability to blend imagination with literary skill, creating worlds that enchant and narratives that linger long after the final page is turned.
Award Recipients
Vanished Twin by Lawrence Hoffman
POINT FIRST by Nannette Potter
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Literary Titan Gold Book Award: Nonfiction
The Literary Titan Book Award recognizes outstanding nonfiction books that demonstrate exceptional quality in writing, research, and presentation. This award is dedicated to authors who excel in creating informative, enlightening, and engaging works that offer valuable insights. Recipients of this award are commended for their ability to transform complex topics into accessible and compelling narratives that captivate readers and enhance our understanding.
Award Recipients
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
