mind & b o dy: beverly smallwo o d
‘This wasn’t supposed
Bev Smallwood feels your
pain. She has survived the loss
of loved ones, including her
father; more than one failed
marriage and diagnosis with a
potentially fatal disease. She
was a teenaged mother who
struggled to make it through
college while married to an
alcoholic. She once had her life
threatened with a gun. She took
care of her mother while she
was dying of Alzheimers dis-
ease. And, like thousands of
other South Mississippians, she
survived the fury of Hurricane
Katrina.
As a psychologist for 25
years and founder of the Hope
Center in Hattiesburg,
Smallwood deals with people
suffering through trauma and
loss every day. Her experience
helping her clients get their
lives back on track led her to
write her latest book, “This
Wasn’t Supposed to Happen to
Me: 10 Make or Break Choices
When Life Steals Your Dreams
and Rocks Your World.”
7 8 • south mississippi scene
to happen to me’
Dr. Beverly Smallwood
STORY BY ROBYN JACKSON
PHOTOS COURTESY FARMER PHOTOGRAPHY
AND DR. BEVERLY SMALLWOOD
($22.99, Thomas Nelson
Publishers).
“I’ve been through a lot of
personal trauma myself,”
Smallwood says. “We’re going
about our everyday lives, and
one day, the world crashes in
on us.”
Smallwood uses a faith-based
approach to dealing with life’s
traumas, whether it’s the loss of
a child, the end of a marriage or
job, or a crushing medical diag-
nosis. “Hope” and “faith” are
words that appear on page after
page of her book.
“When things happen, you
do have choices,” she says. “I
identified what I feel are 10
critical choices that make or
break the rest of your life.”
Those 10 critical choices
include: Denial or reality; vic-
timhood or responsibility; why
or how; doubt or faith; bitter-
ness or forgiveness; guilt or
self-forgiveness; isolation or
connection; depression or grief;
avoidance or courage; and pow-
erlessness or purpose.
Her editor at Thomas Nelson
Publishers, Debbie Wickwire,
said it’s those 10 choices that
make Smallwood’s book stand
out from the myriad of self-help
books on the market.
“They are choices that will be
made whether through a con-
scious decision or not,”
Wickwire says. “The beauty of
this book is that it quickly iden-
tifies those choices and empow-
ers the reader to make the right
choice. I’ve not seen a book
with this 10 choice plan espe-
cially written in a way that so
clearly defines the choices.”
Smallwood, who was born
and raised in Columbia, weath-
ered her first storm in life when
she was nine years old and her
father, a minister, died of can-
cer. As if that wasn’t enough,
she and her mother had to
move from the church-provided
parsonage because he was no
longer pastor there, so she lost
her father and her home almost
simultaneously. That’s enough
to rock anyone’s world.
 “I had questions, big ques-
tions,” she writes in the intro-
duction to her book. “I was
reeling from a crisis of faith.
Why did this happen? I kept
wondering. It didn’t seem fair. I
thought God was supposed to
protect us from pain like this.”
What she has learned
through her own experience
and in counseling thousands of
others during her career is that
you can’t choose the things that
happen to you, but you do have
the power to choose what hap-
pens in you.
“Every significant crisis in
your life is a turning point,”
she writes. “You can choose to
allow bitterness to corrupt your
spirit and rob you of your
future. You can stay wounded
because you refuse to acknowl-
edge you have a problem. You
can carry the burden of hurt all
by yourself and not take advan-
tage of the support of others.
You can remain trapped in toss-
ing endless questions at fate or
at God. You can hold onto the
‘Why me?’ victim mentality or
the chronic blame game. Or –
you can choose the attitudes
and behaviors that enable you
to recover emotional health,
rediscover meaning in your life,
and reformulate a plan for your
future. By choosing to face the
facts, concentrate on what you
can control, forgive others and
yourself, connect with support-
ive others, do the necessary
grief work, have the courage to
face your fears, and use what
has happened to you to make a
difference to others – you can
reclaim a life worth living.”
Smallwood became a psy-
chologist after a six-year career
as an elementary school
teacher, but she wasn’t satisfied
with that job. One morning
while she was praying, she felt
God calling her to become a
counselor. She got her master’s
degree in school counseling but
could not find a job, so she
applied to the doctoral program
at the University of Southern
Mississippi and earned a degree
in psychology in 1981. She
spent five years working in the
community mental health field,
then went into private practice
in 1984, opening the Hope
Center.
“My practice has always been
a combination of clinical work
and speaking,” says
Smallwood, who travels exten-
sively each year leading semi-
nars and giving motivational
speeches. “As a teacher, I liked
to do workshops. It was kind of
a natural for me because I’m a
teacher at heart.”
She started giving talks and
workshops locally, and has
since spoken in the
Netherlands, Africa and
Singapore. She says about 25
percent of her time is now
spent on speaking engage-
ments.
“I love it all, but the office
work takes a lot out of you,”
she says. “When I do a clinical
day, I do a long clinical day
because it frees up a big block
of time for the speaking
engagements. It’s very high-
energy and a change of pace. It
energizes you, rather than takes
so much out of you.”
She has taught her 10 choices
to inmates at the Rankin
County prison facility and
teaches a Sunday School class
for women in recovery on the
10 choices.
As an expert in surviving
trauma and workplace issues,
she has been featured on
MSNBC, Fox News and CNN-
fn, as well as in magazines
including Self, Cosmopolitan,
Ladies Home Journal and
Entrepreneur.
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