John Bradshaw changes lives. He's known as "North America's leading personal growth expert". His best-selling books including "Homecoming", "Creating Love", and "Family Secrets" have sold over five million copies. And for the first time in four years John Bradshaw will be making a two-day appearance in Edmonton.

"I have always been on a journey," Bradshaw admitted while speaking from his home in Houston, Texas. "The work I have done has been a means of self-healing. It's easier to be honest when you go public with things. It helps me a great deal with my own shame when people come up to me and tell me my work has changed their life."

In the late 1980's John Bradshaw pioneered the "inner child" concept. Going back into one's past to deal with childhood scars wasn't an original idea, but when Bradshaw brought his own personal story and style to teaching the concept it became a phenomenon. Millions of people bought his books, watched his PBS series, and went to his lectures and workshops.

"The whole point of inner child work is to help people with delayed grief from hurts of their childhood. The point of the work is to help people grieve and finish it. The reason why we go back in the past is so we will stop reenacting it. The goal is to be able to live in the present moment."

"Some people make their suffering extraordinary. Suffering is ordinary. Suffering is a part of life. The sooner we accept that life is difficult, the better off we will be."

Bradshaw was born into a "dysfunctional family " (a phrase he brought into the mainstream consciousness). Abandoned by an alcoholic father, Bradshaw became a academic over-achiever and a rebellious teenager. In his early twenties Bradshaw came to Toronto to study to become a priest. He went on to obtain three degrees from the University of Toronto.

He defines success as "doing what you want with your life". For Bradshaw, the path to success had a few twists and turns. He unhappily went from one 9-5 job after another. He settled upon a teaching position at a high school, but he was fired because his marriage was frowned upon by the Catholic church. Bradshaw then went about creating his own vocation where he would teach and the world would be his classroom. While he was jogging down a highway in Minnesota he heard a voice that said "Do my work and your financial fears will be taken away from you."

"I made the decision long ago for my own sanity that I would not put myself upon a pedestal. I would not create the grandiosity of specialty. I try to be as personally honest as I can and I talk to everyone the same way as I do to people in my personal life. People seem to respond to that."

The information Bradshaw delivers is a message of faith. He breaks down elaborate principles of human behavior and gives them to his audience in a way they can understand them, and a way they can use them.

Explained Bradshaw, "Everyone wants security. Everyone wants to have a relationship where they feel someone special loves them and they love someone special. Everyone wants to go to sleep at night never feeling like there isn't someone you significantly matter to. I think it's the deepest level of human need-the need to love someone."

"People also have a passion for goodness. Even though there is a tremendous amount of evil in the world, we still have a longing for goodness."

Currently, John Bradshaw is at the beginning stages of a new book. The topic will be about virtue and goodness.

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