A mother's love. A daughter's battle. A family's journey. What would you do if your child stopped eating? Dancing with a Demon is the true story of a mother searching for answers through the labyrinth of her daughter's struggle with an often fatal and perpetually mysterious disease. When author Valerie Foster's teen-aged daughter, Jenna, plunges into the dark world of anorexia nervosa, Valerie has to fight against a demon that threatens her daughter's life and her own mental health. Her riveting narrative, along with Jenna's revealing journal entries, explores the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship and how this disease affects one's entire family. For psychologists, educators, teens and parents everywhere, Dancing with a Demon provides hope, understanding, and enlightenment.
How does a 62-year-old woman who's never been married find happiness with a two-time widower seeking his third wife on . . . Craigslist!? Does she throw caution to the wind and relinquish her freedom, or should she take a crash course in compromises? Author B. Lynn Goodwin tells all and more in Never Too Late. How she was attracted to Richard's clear expectations, his honesty, and his incredible openness. She'd never met anyone like him. Would she recognize love if it knocked on her heart? And could an educated woman be happy moving into a blue-collar world? Whether you've been single forever, are trapped in an unhappy marriage, or you're simply curious, you'll find secrets to a happy marriage in Never Too Late.
In her seventies, Peggy Bushy’s mother, Francesca, started telling unbelievable stories. She claimed that people were invading her home and trying to kill her. She also became anxious and reclusive. For several discouraging years, Bushy searched in vain for a reason for her mother’s behavior. Finally, Francesca was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. Although it’s the third-most-common cause of dementia, Bushy was unable to find much information on the disease, and the medical community was frustratingly unhelpful. Lewy, Mom, and Me is the book that Bushy wished had been available when her mother was first diagnosed. It details her personal journey of discovery, with all its challenges and revelations, and is written in a compassionate, empathetic style that will comfort any reader dealing with a parent’s decline. Bushy explains how she learned to accept the changes in her mother and to support Francesca emotionally as she grappled with her frightening illness. She also describes what was involved in caring for her mother first at home, then in long-term care, and finally in hospice. Part memoir and part survival guide, this compelling testimony offers support and information for family caregivers of aging parents.
Tales from the Riverside tells true and unique stories about one man’s struggle with alligators, snakes, killer bees, and hordes of nasty critters on a daily basis in his swamp. Experience the danger without the need for professional medical services. Life in a swamp is not for everyone.
Many people believe that poverty, single parent households, and the lack of education cause the troubles that exist in the life of a child. "It ain't necessarily so". Serious problems can arise out of wealthy, educated, two parent households. It can be called "middle class misery or mystery".
There's a kind of hurt and turmoil that comes from a toxic parent.
In "Power Beyond the Grave", author Samuel shares his story of growing up with his mother's addiction to alcohol, her greed, selfishness and abuse.
The power of death is never final. Breaking free of a toxic parent is difficult- but not impossible!
This is a "must read" story for anyone who needs to feel understood and wants to heal from their own personal wounds.
An honest, unfiltered memoir about a girl with an unconventional family.
“The story everyone wants to hear isn’t the story I want to tell.” Lara Lillibridge grew up with two moms—an experience that shaped and scarred her at the same time. Told from the perspective of “Girl,” Lillibridge’s memoir is the no-holds-barred account of childhood in an atypical household. Personally less concerned with her mother’s sexuality and more with how she fits into a world both disturbed and obsessed with it, Girl finds that, in other people’s eyes, “The most interesting thing about me is not about me at all; it is about my parents.”
It won’t be long before readers realize that “unconventional” barely scratches the surface. In the early years, Girl’s feminist mother reluctantly allows her to play with her favorite Barbies while her stepmother refuses to comfort her when she wakes up from nightmares. She goes skinny dipping on family vacations in upstate New York and kisses all the boys at church. Girl and her brother travel four thousand miles—unaccompanied—to visit their father in rural Alaska, where they sleep in a locked cabin without running water, telephone, or electricity. Raised to be a free spirit by norm-defying parents, Girl has to define her own boundaries as she tries to fit into heteronormative suburban life, all while navigating her mother’s expectations, her stepmother’s mental illness, and her father’s serial divorces.
Lillibridge bravely tells her own story and offers a unique perspective. At times humorous and pithy while cringe-worthy and heartbreaking at others, Girlish is a human story that challenges readers to reevaluate their own lives and motivations.
Discover the beauty, strength and timeless allure of the South's crown jewel.
Foreword by New York Times Best Selling Author Mary Alice Monroe.
This is a different kind of Charleston book. It is a collection of stunning images, essays and stories written by business leaders, writers, artists, musicians and those who have their family trees deeply rooted in soil tended by generations of Charlestonians.
Travel through these page and experience Charleston as you've never seen it. The history, the events and the sheer beauty that continues to shape all who come into contact with her.
Explore the city's historical homes and cobblestone streets, listen for the rhythm of the tides, and paddle past the crash grass fora view of the city's waterfront.
Her historical past gives way to today, still growing and still awe-inspiring.
Charleston Salt and Iron is what this city is about - turn the pages and enjoy the journey.
Wounds fester and spread in the darkness of silence. The First Signs of April, explores the destructive patterns of unresolved grief and the importance of connection for true healing to occur. The narrative weaves through time to explore grief reactions to two very different losses: suicide and cancer.
ONE OF THE GREAT MYSTERIES - THE ENIGMA OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD - HAS BEEN SOLVED!
TWO 'LEE HARVEY OSWALDS' WERE AT THE TEXAS SCHOOL BOOK DEPOSITORY ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963 - ONE WAS AN ASSASSIN ON THE SIXTH FLOOR, THE OTHER WAS A PATSY DOWNSTAIRS ON THE FRONT STEPS!
INCLUDES PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED - EXPLOSIVE - MATERIAL!
The photographs on the cover show the right side of Lee Oswald's face (from a 1959 passport photo of 'Lee Harvey Oswald') and the left side of the face of 'Harvey Oswald' (from his Dallas booking photo in 1963), revealing that these were two different men!
The key to JFK's assassination is not the guilt of Lee Oswald, a CIA contract agent - he was guilty of conspiracy, treason and murder - but the innocence of 'Harvey Oswald,' an employee of the Texas School Book Depository and an agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the CIA and the FBI, who was murdered by Jack Ruby. Harvey's innocence demonstrates that there indeed was a conspiracy to murder John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
There are 110 photographs/maps/floor plans, showing where everything took place on November 22 in Dallas, including a blowup of Harvey in the TSBD doorway, as well as a blowup of the face of the man in the "backyard photo," clearly showing the picture was a forgery. There also are several photographs of two "Marguerite Oswalds" and two "Lee Harvey Oswalds," revealing the doubles.
1986…Hollywood, at the peak of the cocaine-fueled, hair-band era that swept through the ‘80s like a screeching guitar solo on a double-necked custom Gibson. Taking a gig as the first Check-In Girl at Guitar Center on the Sunset Strip, journalist Taylor Van Arsdale was given a front row seat to the parade of dreamers, druggies and misfits that came flocking to the iconic LA store. But in this world of — yes — sex drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll, lies the story of a young girl discovering herself, making mistakes, falling in and out of love, and becoming a woman. Part fiction / part memoir—Cocaine To Bain snorts and grinds its way through sexual dalliances and love triangles, through celebrity encounters and mental breakdowns and does so during the unexpected corporate handover of Guitar Center.
Antoinette Martin believed herself to be a healthy and sturdy woman—that is, until she received a Stage 1 breast cancer diagnosis. Cancer is scary enough for the brave, but for a wimp like Martin, it was downright terrifying. Martin had to swallow waves of nausea at the thought of her body being poisoned, and frequently fainted during blood draws and infusions. To add to her terror, cancer suddenly seemed to be all around her. In the months following her diagnosis, a colleague succumbed to cancer, and five of her friends were also diagnosed.
Though tempted, Martin knew she could not hide in bed for ten months. She had a devoted husband, daughters, and a tribe of friends and relations. Along with work responsibilities, there were graduations, anniversaries, and roller derby bouts to attend, not to mention a house to sell and a summer of beach-bumming to enjoy. In order to harness support without scaring herself or anyone else, she journaled her experiences and began to e-mail the people who loved her—the people she called My Everyone. She kept them informed and reminded all to 'hug everyone you know' at every opportunity. Reading the responses became her calming strategy. Ultimately, with the help of her community, Martin found the courage within herself to face cancer with perseverance and humor.
This joyful travel memoir by a couple well-beyond youth proves that age is no barrier to delicious fun, unexpected adventure, gentle wanderings and the dazzling beauty of our lovely planet Earth.
Entertaining, informative, filled with wit and wonder, this day-by-day sightseeing memoir is an easy and enjoyable read.
When Al and Sunny Lockwood registered for a 12-day Mediterranean cruise, they envisioned wandering narrow stone streets in Venice, standing on the Acropolis watching morning sun paint its marble columns gold, listening to the Muslim call to prayer chanted from Turkish minarets.
Their travel experience surpassed by far their expectations.
In 2008 Stef Smulders, his partner Nico and their dog Saar emigrated to Italy to start a new life and set up their B&B Villa I Due Padroni. They sold their home, left their friends and family behind and took a leap into the unknown. Now Stef shares his experiences in a collection of 60 witty short stories.
The book treats the trials and tribulations of an emigration: what it was like to buy and renovate a house, to import a car, to gain residency, and much more. The reader is introduced to a full range of Italian characters, from the trustworthy to the rogue, from the gentle to the shameless, flesh and blood Italians. Some are stereotype, others unexpectedly original. Yet they never fail to amuse and entertain.
Tears in My Gumbo, The Caregiver's Recipe for Resilience is a heartfelt manuscript that speaks personally and passionately to the 44 million caregivers caught up in the silver tsunami sweeping this country and for all of the people who care about the caregiver. The book inspires and supports caregivers as well as the family unit involved in the loved one s care. Through a series of caregiver stories, the book illustrates the ingredients needed for caregivers to maintain resilience and create a soul nurturing gumbo of care. Artfully written by caregiver coach and consultant, Nadine Roberts Cornish, CSA, the book shares her personal experience as a caregiver for her mother, which transformed her life as she becomes a care consultant, care manager, and caregiver coach.
A native of New Orleans, Nadine shares her rich family heritage simmered in the traditions of gumbo preparation, steeped in love and community, seasoned with wisdom, humor and healing, much like a heaping bowl of Louisiana Seafood Gumbo. This book inspires and supports caregivers as well as the family unit involved in the loved ones'care. Through a series of inspirational stories, the book illustrates the ingredients needed for caregivers to maintain resilience and create a soul nurturing gumbo of care. Each story teaches a different lesson, demonstrates varying degrees of know how and courage
In this gut-wrenching story of anxiety, loss and steadfast love, the author shares her personal struggle to regain her relationship with her children severed by the Disconnection Policy of the church of Scientology.
As she discovered, she is not alone in her sad circumstance. Many other families have fallen victim to the manipulative powers of Scientology and its practices.
In the few brief encounters she had with her kids several years ago, they expressed a mutual deep love for their mom but the organization's relentless hold on its members has clouded their vision of freedom of choice and understanding.
Lori Hodgson's mission for this book is not only a happy reunion with her offspring, but to keep others from going through the same heartbreak.
"When one loses a child through death, I know there is immense grieving and sorrow, but there is a time of fond memories too of the good times and eventually a time of closure. I too have those wonderful memories, but my heart will not release this heavy sorrow because I still have HOPE. The only thing that will bring me closure is to be able to hug my children once again and tell them, IN PERSON, how much I love them. That is my everlasting HOPE."
After living and working for three winters in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley, Rick and his wife Mary long to go deeper into Yellowstone. Finally they trust Yellowstone's pull, leave the security of their Oregon life, and relocate to Gardiner, just outside the park's north gate. Their year of immersion begins.
Deep into Yellowstone takes you along as Rick and Mary cross-country ski, hike, bicycle, canoe, and backpack through four seasons of Yellowstone's grandeur.
Along the way, Rick explains important controversies: the outrage over the removal of grizzlies from the endangered species list; the dispute over hunting park wolves along Yellowstone's border; the debate about whether wolves help or harm the ecosystem and the economy; the fight to stop the slaughter of park bison; the overuse of the park; and their community's battle to prevent gold mining right on the park's border.
If you want to visit, learn about, or protect our nation's first national park, this book is for you. Deep into Yellowstone will give you a stronger love for the park's grandeur, a deeper knowledge of the controversies threatening the park, and a clearer picture of how to protect Yellowstone.
The ladybug initiates change when it is needed the most. In spite of its size, it appears to be fearless. Its presence, often associated with luck and the enabling of love and protection against harm, is also a pest intuitively focused on its task...
LADYBUG is a passionate and psychologically vigorous debate between head and heart, reality and the ideal. Cara a cara with social stigmas, cultural undercurrents, crafty rhetoric and a sober understanding of the human condition, it remains however charmingly resilient and steadfast to the sensitive truths it lives by. Unable to make one feel indifferent to what the small but mighty definition of friendship is all about.
Non-Profit Legends is a comprehensive overview book on serving communities and motivating leadership for non-profits.
Author Hank Moore has worked with and advised hundreds of non-profit organizations, including charities, educational institutions, public sector entities, associations, and corporate citizenship programs. In Non-Profit Legends Hank uses his experience and teaches readers to embrace the past, with direct relationship to the future. Inside you will find extensive information about history, cultural enlightenment and community leadership knowledge, all rolled in one, plus a dynamic panorama of humanitarian contributions to society.
Hank Moore is the highest level of business overview expert and is in that rarified circle of visionaries such as Peter Drucker, Stephen Covey and W. Edwards Deming. The Business Tree™ is his trademarked approach to growing, strengthening and evolving business, while mastering change. He advises companies about growth strategies, visioning, planning, leadership, futurism and Big Picture issues. He has written a series of business books. This is the third book in his Legends series, paralleling pop culture, history and innovative strategies. He has won lifetime achievement awards for leadership. Hank Moore’s Legends books embrace history, cultural phenomena and strategies for success.
Through the stories of their ancestors Bush and Kemp take us on a compelling journey through African American history into the hearts of individual lives. In tracing their ancestral roots, these family historians discover their connections to some of the South’s most powerful men, both famous and forgotten. The community at the heart of this historical study is Edgefield, South Carolina, yet the stories in this book form a microcosm of events experienced by black communities throughout the South. An enslaved maternal line is traced to 1799; hopes are raised, then dashed, when a family of freedmen acquire land after the Civil War, only to later lose it; the “Dark Corner” of Edgefield is exposed. Shining a bright, sometimes uncomfortable light, deep truths are unearthed through DNA results and new family is found. Follow the authors through years of meticulous genealogical research, historical settings, and DNA testing as they reclaim their family stories and inspire others to embark on their own journeys of discovery. By leaving no stone unturned, these family historians show how they overcame the brick walls of slavery.
What can a middle-aged woman learn from a tryst with the college kid next door? What's passion like with a mesmerizing fifty-something surfer who sleeps in the back of his van? How does a regular gal wind up sipping tea with the ringleader of a sex club?
Miss Matched at Midlife: Dating Episodes of a Middle-Aged Woman provides the perspective that only a book by a woman who has been on over 150 first dates can.
At age forty-eight, Rebecca Brockway's seventeen-year marriage ended in divorce. Instead of giving up on love, she set out looking for Mr. Right. Over the course of nine years, Rebecca went on more than 150 first dates--and she also gave several romances a whirl.
Featuring a foreword by therapist, author, and relationship expert Dr. Keith Witt, Miss Matched at Midlife is full of droll insights and scenarios that are too wild to be anything but true. In these page-turning essays, Rebecca invites us to share her journey, one filled with both triumphal successes and humbling missteps.
Treasure hunter Cephis Hall had found his share of interesting rocks and relics, but the grand prize had long eluded him. Since he was knee high to a grasshopper, he had always dreamed of finding a rare, world-class dinosaurian specimen and make his mark on the scientific world. Hall searched for a box of buried Confederate gold coins at Pine Knot Crossing where the old military trail crosses the Little River in McCurtain County, Oklahoma. Although he didn't find Confederate gold, he did find naturally occurring gold in a nearby limestone deposit, which fed into a myriad of legends already circulating around southeastern Oklahoma, including Big Foot. Hall, as a tour guide, knew the back roads and back lands of McCurtain County. When people came looking for natural phenomena of an earthly genre they turned to Cephis Hall for guidance and direction. Hall was an anachronism as a nature guide. A classic, old-timey naturalist, he entertained school children and adults with the stories, legend, and magic of the natural world. He and his partner Sid Love were vestiges of a vanishing class of American explorers, dinosaurs like the ones they sought buried in the earth. While a young boy growing up at the base of the Ouachitas, Cephis had inculcated a dream. Even as he navigated through adulthood and eclipsed the fourth decade mark, the childhood dream never left him. But Hall's American Dream was unauthorized and did not fit neatly into the status quo. Such a dream would never be accepted by the hierarchical elites. Cephis and Sid had uncovered rare and valuable natural bounties and man-made booty without hindrance. But in 1983 things started to change and troubles began. The two men would find themselves at the crossroads of science, politics, and religion. A dream, and a will to pursue it, can result in war. Their discovery would not just change them, it would also change McCurtain County.
As featured in the New York Times “Modern Love” column * a Redbook Magazine must-read * Harper's Bazaar * Yahoo! Style, InStyle, Rumpus, Hello Giggles, Bustle, and Southern Living magazine Fall book pick
Fugitives from a man as alluring as he is violent, Andrea Jarrell and her mother develop a powerful, unusual bond. Once grown, Jarrell thinks she’s put that chapter of her life behind her?until a woman she knows is murdered, and she suddenly sees that it’s her mother’s choices she’s been trying to escape all along. Without preaching or prescribing, I’m the One Who Got Away is a life-affirming story of having the courage tobecome both safe enough and vulnerable enough to love and be loved.
When your grandparents go shopping with funny money, and your dad flaunts his degree from the school of hard knocks, you grow up learning that "life ain't no got-dem picnic." These lessons are handed down to Cathy Curran by Eastern European immigrants who learned how to survive caring little for aesthetics--"if it works, who gives a got-dem what da hell it looks like." Lucky for Curran, her mother is a gentle soul with a dry wit. Lillian Low's homespun values--people come in all flavors just like ice cream--bring joy into the Low house. When restless Joe Low ditches one suburb for another because he wants a do-over, Lillian tells him, "How the hell many do you need? Don't you know that wherever you go, you've got to take yourself with you?" Along for the ride is the colorful Low clan, who turn up to celebrate the arrival of Joe and Lillian's army of kids. They eat, drink, sing, Joe gets plastered, and all too often scotch-fired arguments lead to some good old-fashioned fistfights, which are immediately forgiven with an unspoken rule--shut up and forget it, then it all gets swept under the rug. But when Curran finally pulls up the carpet, pandemonium emerges from hell with a vengeance. Through the vision of a sensitive young girl with a wickedly funny voice, "Secondhand Scotch" uncorks some harsh realities, but never ceases to warm and entertain.
While the official government story has always been that no Allied POWs were held in German concentration camps, 168 Allied airmen were beaten, experimented on, and otherwise mistreated in Buchenwald, where the famous rocket scientist Wernher von Braun obtained slave labor for his V-2 factory, the Mittelwerk.
After the war, the US Army brought von Braun and his associates to America, as part of the ultra-secret Project Paperclip. The US government concealed von Braun’s wartime activities, and promoted an alternate history that sheltered him from prosecution for war crimes. This involved suppressing information about Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, and the Mittelwerk. In the process, the records of the Buchenwald airmen were classified, and they would be inaccessible for decades. While the government was endorsing a fabricated history for von Braun, it treated the accounts of the Buchenwald airmen as delusions or attempts to obtain undeserved benefits from the VA.
The author didn’t intend to write a book about a massive government cover-up. He simply wanted to honor his father, Frederic C. Martini, an American airman who was shot down over occupied France in World War II and then imprisoned in Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Over seven years of research, an even darker picture emerged: that an unconstrained military intelligence operation disrupted the lives of American ex-POWs.
