Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child


Ross W. Greene - 2016
    But parents also want to have influence. They want their kid to be independent, but not if he or she is going to make bad choices. They don’t want to be harsh and rigid, but nor do they want a noncompliant, disrespectful kid. They want to avoid being too pushy and overbearing, but not if an unmotivated, apathetic kid is what they have to show for it. They want to have a good relationship with their kids, but not if that means being a pushover. They don’t want to scream, but they do want to be heard. Good parenting is about striking the balance between a child’s characteristics and a parent’s desire to have influence. Now Dr. Ross Greene offers a detailed and practical guide for raising kids in a way that enhances relationships, improves communication, and helps kids learn how to resolve disagreements without conflict. Through his well-known model of solving problems collaboratively, parents can forgo time-out and sticker charts, stop badgering, berating, threatening, and punishing, allow their kids to feel heard and validated, and have influence. From homework to hygiene, curfews, to screen time, Raising Human Beings arms parents with the tools they need to raise kids in ways that are non-punitive and non-adversarial and that brings out the best in both parent and child.

My Heart Can't Even Believe It: A Story of Science, Love, and Down Syndrome


Amy Silverman - 2016
    And that is the case with My Heart Can't Even Believe It, by journalist, blogger, and NPR contributor Amy Silverman. Amy bravely looks at her life, before and after her daughter Sophie was born, and reflects on her transformation from "a spoiled, self-centered brat," who used words like retard and switched lines at the Safeway to avoid a bagger with special needs, into the mother of a kid with Down syndrome and all that her new identity entails. She describes her evolution as gradual, one built by processing her fears and facing questions both big and small about Sophie, Down syndrome, and her place in the world. Funny, touching, and honest, this wonderful book looks at a daughter and her power to change minds and fill hearts with love so deep.

The Feeling Good Handbook


David D. Burns - 1989
    David Burns introduced a groundbreaking, drug-free treatment for depression. Now in this long-awaited sequel, he reveals powerful new techniques and provides step-by-step exercises that help you cope with the full range of everyday problems. * Free from fears, phobias, and panic attacks * Overcome self-defeating attitudes * Discover the five secrets of intimate communication * Put an end to marital conflict * Conquer procrastination and unleash your potential for success With an up-to-date section on everything you need to know about commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs and anxiety disorders such as agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder, this remarkable guide can show you how to feel good about yourself and the people you care about. You will discover that life can be an exhilarating experience.

A General Theory of Love


Thomas Lewis - 2000
    Three eminent psychiatrists tackle the difficult task of reconciling what artists and thinkers have known for thousands of years about the human heart with what has only recently been learned about the primitive functions of the human brain.A General Theory of Love demonstrates that our nervous systems are not self-contained: from earliest childhood, our brains actually link with those of the people close to us, in a silent rhythm that alters the very structure of our brains, establishes life-long emotional patterns, and makes us, in large part, who we are. Explaining how relationships function, how parents shape their child’s developing self, how psychotherapy really works, and how our society dangerously flouts essential emotional laws, this is a work of rare passion and eloquence that will forever change the way you think about human intimacy.

Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old


John Leland - 2018
    But the elders he met took him in an entirely different direction. Despite disparate backgrounds and circumstances, they each lived with a surprising lightness and contentment. The reality Leland encountered upended contemporary notions of aging, revealing the late stages of life as unexpectedly rich and the elderly as incomparably wise.Happiness Is a Choice You Make is an enduring collection of lessons that emphasizes, above all, the extraordinary influence we wield over the quality of our lives. With humility, heart, and wit, Leland has crafted a sophisticated and necessary reflection on how to "live better"--informed by those who have mastered the art.

The Chinaberry Tree


Lauren Alexander - 2011
    The family is powerful for the same reasons it is vulnerable. There are deadlines for nurturing and restoring relationships, and, with its intricate makeup, it takes the entire family to save itself. THE CHINABERRY TREE is a rare memoir of a family at war with itself. It lays bare the erosion of the author's family of origin in the absence of divorce and any criminal or heinous behavior. Perception is the pivotal force in the family. This innovative memoir offers a slideshow viewing of the interwoven dynamics that fueled the author's original family life: harmony, humor, separation, sorrow, discord, despair, surrender and death. The youngest of four children, the author presents each and every family member, including herself, from the unusual viewpoint of an insider with no agenda, an insider spreading out pieces of a puzzle with no intention of finding the missing ones. Making no pretense of telling the whole story, she revisits her life within the family. The author began writing THE CHINABERRY TREE long before her family's fate had run its course. In the end, the author discovers that the undying family bond she counted on was a deep-rooted myth she cultivated amidst all the evidence to the contrary. In ruins, the family finally loses its power over her and the grief the author thought she would carry to her grave is put to rest.

Ocean Star: A Memoir


Christina Dimari - 2006
    "Ocean Star" is the story of how God found her in the midst of an abusive childhood, became the loving parent she never had, and revealed himself in tangible ways through her amazing life journey. Filled with insightful symbolism, "Ocean Star" will help Christians and non-Christians find hope, humor, and healing in a powerful true story of a broken life made new.

Gypsy Moon


Pamela Rose Anders - 2011
    From that moment forward, his life would change forever. During the agonizingly slow transformation from male to female, he would lose a 22 year career in journalism, his marriage, his home, his savings, and most of his friends. Faced with the specter of homelessness, he embarked on a three year adventure as an over the road truck driver.Gypsy Moon chronicles Pamela Rose Anders’ travels across the highways of America, as well as the single most difficult journey of all; transitioning from a male to female truck driver. Packed with a medley of humorous adventures, moments of fear, loneliness and despair, terrifying encounters, bigotry, and unexpected friendships; Gypsy Moon presents an insightful view of the incredible courage and strength required to complete this journey.You will laugh. You will cry. You will feel her anguish. You will revel in her triumph. Most of all, you will understand.

The Power in You: How to Accept Your Past, Live in the Present and Shape a Positive Future


Henry Fraser - 2020
    Combining his wisdom and insight, Henry shows you that the key to keeping a positive attitude—in the face of difficult and unexpected challenges—is to accept that seemingly negative experiences, such as failures, disappointments, mistakes and misfortunes, are actually the ultimate markers of human success. Sharing the lessons he learned after a freak accident left him paralysed from the neck down, Henry shows us that setbacks are inevitable in life but defeat is optional. He will encourage you to always search for a new perspective if what you see, at first, seems only dark, limiting or frightening. He believes there is always a reason to be grateful. The Power of Acceptance inspires you to accept yourself and to release negative feelings towards things, situations or people that you have no control over and cannot change. Henry reveals the simple words you can say to yourself and the practical changes you can make to become someone who adapts to unpredictable events and obstacles, and who accepts whatever hand they are dealt in this crazy game called life.

Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner's Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship


Stan Tatkin - 2012
    Every person is wired for love differently, with different habits, needs, and reactions to conflict. The good news is that most people's minds work in predictable ways and respond well to security, attachment, and rituals, making it possible to actually neurologically prime the brain for greater love and fewer conflicts.Wired for Love is a complete insider’s guide to understanding your partner’s brain and enjoying a romantic relationship built on love and trust. Synthesizing research findings on how and why love lasts drawn from neuroscience, attachment theory, and emotion regulation, this book presents ten guiding principles that can improve any relationship.Strengthen your relationship by:Creating and maintaining a safe “couple bubble” Using morning and evening rituals to stay connected Learning to fight so that nobody loses Becoming the expert on what makes your partner feel loved By learning to use simple gestures and words, readers can learn to put out emotional fires and help their partners feel more safe and secure. The no-fault view of conflict in this book encourages readers to move past a "warring brain" mentality and toward a more cooperative "loving brain" understanding of the relationship. This book is essential reading for couples and others interested in understanding the complex dynamics at work behind love and trust in intimate relationships.While there’s no doubt that love is an inexact science, if you can discover how you and your partner are wired differently, you can overcome your differences to create a lasting intimate connection.

In Gratitude


Jenny Diski - 2016
    Embarrassment, at first, to the exclusion of all other feelings. But embarrassment curled at the edges with a weariness …I got a joke in. “So – we'd better get cooking the meth,” I said to the Poet.In July 2014, Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given “two or three years” to live. She didn't know how to react. All responses felt scripted, as if she were acting out her part. To find the response that felt wholly her own, she had to face the cliches and try to write about it. And there was another story to write, one she had not yet told: that of being taken in at age fifteen by the author Doris Lessing, and the subsequent fifty years of their complex relationship.In the pages of the London Review of Books, to which Diski contributed for the last quarter century, she unraveled her history with Lessing: the fairy-tale rescue as a teenager, the difficulties of being absorbed into an unfamiliar family, the modeling of a literary life. Swooping from one memory to the next-alighting on the hysterical battlefield of her parental home, her expulsion from school, the drug-taking twenty-something in and out of psychiatric hospitals -- and telling all through the lens of living with terminal cancer, through what she knows will be her final months, Diski paints a portrait of two extraordinary writers -- Lessing and herself.From a wholly original thinker comes a book like no other: a cerebral, witty, dazzlingly candid masterpiece about an uneasy relationship; about memory and writing, ingratitude and anger; about living with illness and facing death.

Damaged Goods a Memoir


Shelley Louise - 2018
    At fifteen Shelley was submerged into the seedy world of the red-light district of Honolulu. As the warm-up act for the strippers, she became a topless dancer only to discover she was not emotionally prepared for the lewd attention. Pills and heroin helped her to cope with a lifestyle that was beyond her years. Heartbreaking at times, this memoir follows Shelley as she makes her way into the rooms of recovery and the pitfalls and successes that await. Powerful, moving, and inspirational.

Where's My Happy Ending?: Happily ever after and how the heck to get there


Anna Whitehouse - 2020
    Either way, it’s hard to know if they’re really meant to be by your side until you both wear dentures. In Where's My Happy Ending? Anna Whitehouse and Matt Farquharson, authors of the Sunday Times bestseller Parenting the Sh*t Out of Life, set out to discover what it takes to make it to forever, by asking our greatest questions about love.They ask a former sex-worker and her ex-gigolo husband, celibate monks and free-loving hippies. They ask people who never wanted kids and people who have loads of them. They ask porn-makers and feminist academics, neurologists, psychologists and romance novelists. They ask a whelk fisherman and a lollipop lady. They speak to couples, throuples and singles; gay, straight and anywhere in-between.And in asking these questions, they are forced to confront their own relationship after a decade of marriage. Through tears, laughter, and one improperly discarded toenail clipping, Where’s My Happy Ending? gets answers for anyone who’s ever wondered ‘what’s next?’ Join Anna and Matt on a searingly honest, belly-laugh inducing journey through love and relationships, social media and small children, expert advice and everyday exasperation, as they navigate the muddy waters of modern romance.Discover whether love and relationships could be simpler – or more complex – than we think in this study on what it really means to find and keep love today.

Dirtbag Anthropology


Kate Willett - 2021
    That is, until she found herself dumped, suddenly single, and mystifyingly...mostly attracted to dudes. Like any good comic, she was inspired to investigate, and thus ensued her hilarious, sometimes high-stakes personal research into the world of men, culminating in a beautiful, difficult romance. Featuring insightful interviews with comics and experts like W. Kamau Bell, Margaret Cho, Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, and Kate’s dad and close friends, this exploration of modern masculinity delves into how to be a good guy and how to be in love with one...and when that isn’t quite enough.

Please Stop Laughing at Me... One Woman's Inspirational Story


Jodee Blanco - 2003
    It is an unflinching look at what it means to be an outcast, how even the most loving parents can get it wrong, why schools fail, and how bullying is both misunderstood and mishandled.