BYE, BYE, MR, MALICIOUS! Part 2

BYE, BYE, MR, MALICIOUS!

      BYE, BYE, MR, MALICIOUS!

                          Part 2 of My Interview with Author Kanta Bosniak

Please check out Part one of my talks with Kanta :Here

Maggie: Kanta, would you tell us more about your most recent book? I’m thinking in particular about the different aspects of the Mister Malicious phenomenon, because it’s more than a book about leaving a bad boyfriend or husband. I think it offers healing and empowerment to women across a wide range of ages, experiences, and life circumstances. The difficult relationship may be years in the past, and still the reader can gain new insight and renewal from reading it.

Kanta: Thanks, Maggie. That was exactly my intention. Bye, Bye, Mr. Malicious! is partially described by its subtitle, How to Get Your Happy Back and be Done with Narcissists and Sociopaths. It’s a nuanced book. Like perfume, which has top notes, heart notes, and base notes, it’s created to be effective on more than one level. First, it offers women who have had a difficult relationship a path to restoration of their peace, power, and happiness. So it helps them deal effectively with Mr. Malicious, the Person, as well as Mr. Malicious, the Archetype. That same sort of malicious type of person that may show up in your life as a hateful and demeaning relative, employer, neighbor, or frenemy.

When a person’s first encounter with this type of person happens early in life, she is likely to find it showing up in various forms until she heals Mr. Malicious, the Inner Bully. Even when there wasn’t abuse at home, we all have an inner judge and critic telling us bad stories about ourselves. And the various unpleasant encounters we have had throughout life in educational settings, work, dating, and marriage tend to build up that internal tyrant and overall buzzkill. Additionally, women have to deal with Mr. Malicious, Culturally Enforced Misogyny from childhood on. So, part of my purpose in the book was to help support women in healing themselves at the heart level.   

At the moment, the evidence of this has come to the forefront and women and men of goodwill, honor, and integrity are working together to resist and overcome it. Each woman who says “no” to being controlled and “yes” to full-tilt life removes two bricks from the wall of toxic patriarchy. And each woman whose happiness overflows into social activism (in whatever form she is called to do it) removes many more bricks and encourages those in her life to do the same. Individual women leaving bad relationships and healing the residual scars learn to balance their empathy with courage and backbone. When we do this as a movement, we become a tsunami for positive change. Back to the perfume analogy, this cultural healing is like the base notes. It’s the part that’s the most lasting and has the most subliminal impact.  

Maggie: You’re a very prolific writer. Mind/body/spirit books, coloring books, guided imagery downloads for adults and kids, poetry, and even professional training manuals for hypnotherapists. Is there a connecting link to your work?

Kanta: I guess stylistically, the connection is sort of warmth in the written and spoken content as well as in the illustration and cover art. I write my mind/body books in a conversational style, like friends talking over coffee. I illustrated my earlier books with whimsical line drawings and at the request of some readers, created coloring books to complement Abundance Triggers and Welcome to the World! I complimented my love poems series with The Love is Everywhere! Coloring Book. Bye, Bye Mr. Malicious! is my first book with full color interior art, so that’s been a lot of fun to do.

I’d say, thematically, the connection between all my work is that love is always there, surrounding you, within you, and available to you in a myriad of ways when you are willing to receive it. This theme shows up in the guided imagery downloads as well. Good information and resourceful ideas are very helpful when we are relaxed and our imaginations are engaged. The training manuals are there to help hypnotists, hypnotherapists, and counselors tell resourceful stories. Again, it’s all about replacing bad stories with beneficial ones.  

Maggie: Would you share a bit about your writing journey? How did you find your voice? When did you start writing?  

Kanta: I found it in pivotal moments that set me on trajectory. Reading The Little Engine That Could awakened in me that idea of telling myself encouraging messages like “I think I can… I can” and I found this profoundly helpful as a little kid. My high school music teacher who mentored me in finding the power of my literal voice. Meditation in Quaker meeting, where the inner voice overcame my shyness and moved me to speak. Getting to hear and see Dr. King, which activated a desire to use my voice and written words as a helping tool. Teaching meditation beginning as college student helped me practice putting my fears aside and letting the words come out, because I wanted to do the best I could and I knew I couldn’t do it from a place of self-consciousness. This was when writing on little scraps of paper began to turn into articles and later the articles turned into books. Looking back, I see how my natural inclinations to writing, art, and development of teachable self-management skills were supported by the people and circumstances in my life and I’m very grateful for that.     

Maggie: Thank you, Kanta.

Kanta: My pleasure. Thank you, Maggie.

Bye, Bye, Mr. Malicious! Book Description: Whether it ended yesterday, or twenty years ago, and you’re still feeling the sting, this book will help you get your happy back after a relationship with a narcissist. With a more comprehensive red flags list than you’ll see anywhere else, it will help you recognize malicious men, so you can avoid them. A non-clinical mind/body/spirit approach, with colorful images and humor.

Link to the Book on Amazon: Bye, Bye, Mr. Malicious!

About the Author: Kanta Bosniak is an author, artist, and interfaith minister with over 45 years’ experience as an educator in Spiritual Growth and Guided Meditation. She is the author/illustrator of numerous books and coloring books, and the author/narrator of several guided imagery downloads. Collectors of her art include a Nobel Prize Winner, a popular television actress, several authors, a U.S. National champion athlete and people of all walks of life. She is a frequent speaker on radio, at churches, universities, holistic education centers, and conferences throughout the US. She is an award-winning member of the National Guild of Hypnotists and listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World. Kanta lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwestern Virginia.

Kanta can be found online at the following links:

Web: http://KantaBosniak.com

Gifts and Home Décor on Redbubble: 
https://www.redbubble.com/people/KantaBosniak/shop?asc=u

Art on Etsy:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/MinisterofArt

Books and Guided Imagery Downloads on Amazon: 
https://amazon.com/author/kantabosniak

Bye, Bye, Mr. Malicious! Review and Author Interview

Bye, Bye, Mr. Malicious! How to Get Your Happy Back and be Done with Narcissists and Sociopaths, written and illustrated by Kanta Bosniak  Book Description: Whether it ended yesterday, or twenty years ago, and you’re still feeling the sting, this book will help you get your happy back after a relationship with a narcissist. With a more comprehensive red flags list than you’ll see anywhere else, it will help you recognize malicious men, so you can avoid them. A non-clinical mind/body/spirit approach, with colorful images and humor.    

My review: This book is brilliant, empathetic and relatable!  Once you read it you are "woke" and can identify, heal and say Bye Bye to your own Mr. Malicious. I seriously could not believe or be prepared for the emotional ride this book took me on! Never before have I so, felt like I was reading my own story until starting this book.  And I am 100% sure that everyone has had their own Malicious Mr or Ms in their own lives. These people slink into our lives most times like a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Weaving a web that we erroneously believe in and submit to.  Of course by the time we realize we are caught! We struggle to detach ourselves and if we do escape we bear battle scars on our hearts and sometimes our skin. However painful the situation was and the crosses it leaves us to carry we still have to and need to heal.  Kanta helps facilitate this process and reminds us of ever so important truths! We are brave, we are strong, we can heal and we deserve to heal.  

 My Interview with Kanta:   
 Maggie: I’ve reviewed several of your previous books and you know I adore your writing. I was excited to see this one come out, because I thought the subject matter was fantastic. By the time I was halfway through I was just wowed, because the way you presented the stories of the women you interviewed really shed light on the pattern these guys follow. I think it’s important for women to know they’re not alone, understand that it’s not their fault they were fooled by these expert manipulators, and to have a gentle path for healing and empowerment. You’ve done an awesome job, Kanta. I recognized some familiar threads that weave through Bye, Bye, Mr. Malicious! that I’ve enjoyed in your other books. Two that immediately stand out are compassion and humor.      
 Kanta: What could be more important for women who want to get their happy back, right? Misters Malicious take themselves so seriously. There’s a kind of instant surge of returning power that happens when you begin to see the falseness of the mystique they try so hard to build and maintain. It’s funny and it’s sad at the same time, because these are men who want love, but can neither give it nor receive it. It’s exhausting for the woman in such a relationship, because it triggers the desire to fix or heal, and that never happens. Once she gets that, she can detach and move forward.     
Maggie: I like the process you set up. And I like that you give the reader lots of opportunities to rest, ground, and shift gears as she moves through the step-by-step process, and that each step follows in a kind of organic, intuitive, and yet logical flow.  
  Kanta: Thanks, Maggie. Eleven years ago, I began to write about this process of navigating change effectively. It wasn’t so much that I invented it as that I observed and articulated a natural process that happens if you face a challenge with self-love and trust that you’ll get through it. It was what I was already doing, because it worked for me. And it was even what I had been suggesting as a spiritual coach. I just hadn’t, until that time, really mapped it out as a whole soup-to-nuts process. I wrote about it, naming it The Becoming Process and published a short, simple pocket guide. And as far as the “opportunities to shift gears and rest” you mentioned. Yes, that’s the key to any successful change, because you can’t just do the hard stuff all the time. That’s too exhausting.   Fun is not a luxury; it’s a necessity! Sure, to make change you’ve got to face it and move through it, but it works much better when you keep taking the time to shift your state by doing the things that bring you joy. Really, this is some of the most important work we can do in human life: learn to master our instrument, the mind/body by refocusing our thoughts, regrooving our habitual feeling-state, and finding the tools to reliably do this. I call these positive anchors, or state-shifting tools “abundance triggers.” And because it’s so important for people to get proficient in self-awareness, self-soothing, and to build a toolbox for habituating happiness, I wrote a kind of little kids’ edition of my book Abundance Triggers, which teaches children these same skills called Welcome to the World! Bye, Bye Mr. Malicious! brings these techniques together and applies them to help women get their happiness and power back after dealing with a malignant narcissist type man…even if this relationship (or relationships) happened in the distant past. It’s not only about getting out of the bad relationship, but also about getting the bad relationship out of you. The goal of a Mr. Malicious type person is to destroy your confidence, your peace, and your sense of stability. In other words, to trigger your own worst fears about yourself and life. In so doing, he invokes and activates your own Inner Bully, the part that tells you you’re not worthy of love. So getting your happy back involves ending relationships like this, of course. But it also includes building self-love, trust in yourself, and the confidence to set and enforce boundaries, as well as giving yourself permission to do the things you love to do.  It can be tough to do this work, but the rewards are well worth it, and it can be made much more enjoyable to move through the process when you take frequent breaks for fun and relaxation. For women who are still involved with a controlling man and who want to get out of the relationship, or women who experienced early life abuse, I suggest using the book as a complementary resource while they work with a woman counselor, especially one who is trained to support women in healing these issues.   
 Maggie: It’s certainly a timely book, with the upsurge of public awareness of what women have faced in terms of harassment and control, the #metoo and #timesup movements, and the women’s marches. 
  Kanta: Yes, for sure! And I think it’s time to connect the dots between misogynistic men who abuse power in the workplace, in societal structures, in organizations, and in the home. The funny thing is, I began research on this topic eight years ago. I had no idea where we’d be as a culture when the book came out. I only knew it was time to find balance and wholeness for both men and women. Time for women to claim their backbone and men to claim their empathy. This is what it’s going to take to build healthier and more harmonious partnerships between men and women, to build more nurturing families, and to raise boys and girls to cooperate and support each others’ full potential. Clearly, it is time. And it feels like a privilege to be here at this societal turning point when so many women and men of goodwill are working together to make this happen.       
  Maggie: Thanks, Kanta.  
 Kanta: Thank you, Maggie. It was a pleasure.   

Link to Bye, Bye, Mr. Malicious! on : Amazon

  
About the Author: 
 Kanta Bosniak is an author, artist, and interfaith minister with over 45 years’ experience as an educator in Spiritual Growth and Guided Meditation. She is the author/illustrator of numerous books and coloring books, and the author/narrator of several guided imagery downloads. Collectors of her art include a Nobel Prize Winner, a popular television actress, several authors, a U.S. National champion athlete and people of all walks of life. She is a frequent speaker on radio, at churches, universities, holistic education centers, and conferences throughout the US. She is an award-winning member of the National Guild of Hypnotists and listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World. Kanta lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwestern Virginia.   You can find Kanta online at the following links:  Web: http://KantaBosniak.com 
 

Gifts and Home Décor on Redbubble: https://www.redbubble.com/people/KantaBosniak/shop?asc=u  Art on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MinisterofArt  Books and Guided Imagery Downloads on Amazon: https://amazon.com/author/kantabosniak