The Story of You

The Story of You is a simple way of trying to explain the importance of your inner self and how to keep it as happy as possible. The focus is on who you are on the inside, and becoming comfortable in your own skin.

Zeroing in on the bright side of life, The Story of You tells young readers that not only do they live in a marvelous world with brilliant things like dogs and cats and trees, but they're also wonderful and beautiful in their own right with a "sky self," invisible but always there to look out for them. It's a crucial lesson for them, to realize that they are safe, whatever the situation might be. It's a gentle book with a solid, endearing mental health message.

The book features drawings from 3rd grade students of Lafayette Elementary School in Long Beach, California.
The author read a text-only copy to the students at a Career Day. The students complained that it needed pictures. He assigned them the task, and they turned in the drawings to their teacher. Their beautiful drawings reflect their understanding of the Story.

Gerald Schaefer grew up in Cut Bank, Montana a small town near the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and Glacier National Park. In 1954 he went to a Catholic boarding school in De Pere, Wisconsin for three of his four high school years. Upon graduating, he attended a Norbertine monastery, also in De Pere, where he studied for the priesthood. He left after four years, taught in various schools in the midwest and California until retiring from Los Angeles Unified School District in 2000. He had been teaching Special Education at Edison Middle School. He has two children and four grandchildren from his first marriage as well as two stepchildren and four grandchildren from his second marriage. His second wife died in 2018 from AZ.  His life took a dramatic turn when he read The Power of Now, recommended by a classmate at a Cut Bank High School reunion in 2008. Since then he has experienced new, added dimensions to 'his' life (not sure if it's 'his' anymore), which exceed anything he might have previously imagined. To put it simply, life now 'works,' whereas previously it didn't (and was problematic at best, catastrophic at worst).