Book picks similar to
Healing Neen: One Woman's Path to Salvation from Trauma and Addiction by Tonier Cain
non-fiction
memoir
stories-of-abuse
ideas
Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved
Kate Bowler - 2018
She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.As she navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, Kate pulls the reader deeply into her life, which is populated with a colorful, often hilarious collection of friends, pastors, parents, and doctors, and shares her laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. She wonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden of positivity. Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, she realizes she must change her habit of skipping to the end and planning the next move. A historian of the "American prosperity gospel"--the creed of the mega-churches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badly enough--Bowler finds that, in the wake of her diagnosis, she craves these same "outrageous certainties." She wants to know why it's so hard to surrender control over that which you have no control. She contends with the terrifying fact that, even for her husband and child, she is not the lynchpin of existence, and that even without her, life will go on.On the page, Kate Bowler is warm, witty, and ruthless, and, like Paul Kalanithi, one of the talented, courageous few who can articulate the grief she feels as she contemplates her own mortality.
Intimate Deception: Healing the Wounds of Sexual Betrayal
Sheri Keffer - 2018
Beyond broken vows, a woman who discovers that the man she loves has been viewing pornography or having an affair must deal with devastating blows to her self-image and self-worth. She must grapple with the fact that the man she thought she knew has lied and deceived her. She may even bear the brunt of shame and judgment when the people around her find out.Drawing from her experience both as a marriage and family therapist and a woman who personally experienced the devastation of sexual betrayal, Dr. Sheri Keffer walks women impacted by betrayal through the pain and toward recovery. She explains how the trauma of betrayal affects our minds, bodies, spirits, and sexuality. She offers practical tools for dealing with emotional triggers and helps women understand the realities of sexual addiction. And she shows women how to practice self-care, develop healthy boundaries, protect themselves from abuse or manipulation, and find freedom from the burden of shame and guilt.
How My Breasts Saved the World: Misadventures of a Nursing Mother
Lisa Wood Shapiro - 2004
Any woman can benefit from Shapiro's hard-won education."--"BUST magazine "Shapiro's memoir . . . offers a welcome real-life complement to weightier breastfeeding advice."--"Brain, Child magazine In this hilarious breastfeeding tell-all--the first of its kind-- Lisa Wood Shapiro recounts her misadventures of new motherhood from the delivery of her daughter and her rookie days as a food source to the bittersweet end of weaning. This may be the information age, but so much of nursing still exists in the smart gal's rumor culture. Only after Shapiro shares her own nursing saga, complete with lactation consultants, chocolate binges, and a new use for green cabbage, do her friends and relatives confess to their own travails. Breastfeeding may be natural, but it is not always instinctual, and one doesn't have to go it alone. There are professionals who can make it work without pain, and it does get easier. Whether or not your breasts have been involved in any world-saving activities, you won't be able to put this book down until you've read the last line.
White Magic
Elissa Washuta - 2021
Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning.In this collection of intertwined essays, she writes about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life—Twin Peaks, the Oregon Trail II video game, a Claymation Satan, a YouTube video of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham—to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule.
The Night of the Gun
David Carr - 2008
Carr's investigation of his own history reveals that his odyssey through addiction, recovery, cancer, and life as a single parent was far more harrowing -- and, in the end, more miraculous -- than he allowed himself to remember. Over the course of the book, he digs his way through a past that continues to evolve as he reports it.That long-ago night he was so out of his mind that his best friend had to pull a gun on him to make him go away? A visit to the friend twenty years later reveals that Carr was pointing the gun.His lucrative side business as a cocaine dealer? Not all that lucrative, as it turned out, and filled with peril.His belief that after his twins were born, he quickly sobered up to become a parent? Nice story, if he could prove it.The notion that he was an easy choice as a custodial parent once he finally was sober? His lawyer pulls out the old file and gently explains it was a little more complicated than that.In one sense, the story of "The Night of the Gun" is a common one -- a white-boy misdemeanant lands in a ditch and is restored to sanity through the love of his family, a God of his understanding, and a support group that will go unnamed. But when the whole truth is told, it does not end there. After fourteen years -- or was it thirteen? -- Carr tried an experiment in social drinking. Double jeopardy turned out to be a game he did not play well. As a reporter and columnist at the nation's best newspaper, he prospered, but gained no more adeptness at mood-altering substances. He set out to become a nice suburban alcoholic and succeeded all too well, including two more arrests, one that included a night in jail wearing a tuxedo.Ferocious and eloquent, courageous and bitingly funny, "The Night of the Gun" unravels the ways memory helps us not only create our lives, but survive them.
Fast Girl: A Life Spent Running from Madness
Suzy Favor Hamilton - 2015
This is a heartbreakingly honest yet hopeful memoir reminiscent of Manic, Electroboy, and An Unquiet Mind.During the 1990s, three-time Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton was the darling of American track and field. An outstanding runner, a major sports apparel spokesperson, and a happily married wife, she was the model for an active, healthy, and wholesome life. But her perfect facade masked a dark truth: manic depression and bipolar disorder that drove her obsession to perform and win. For years after leaving the track, Suzy wrestled with her condition, as well as the loss of a close friend, conflicted feelings about motherhood and her marriage, and lingering shame about her athletic career. After a misdiagnosis and a recommendation for medication that only exacerbated her mania and made her hypersexual, Suzy embarked on a new path, and assumed a new identity. Fueled by a newfound confidence, a feeling of strength and independence and a desire she couldn’t tamp down, she became a high-priced escort in Las Vegas, working as “Kelly.”But Suzy could not keep her double life a secret forever. When it was eventually exposed, it sent her into a reckless suicidal period where the only option seemed out. Finally, with the help of her devoted husband, Suzy finally got the proper medical help she needed. In this startling frank memoir, she recounts the journey to outrun her demons, revealing how a woman used to physically controlling her body learned to come to terms with her unstable mind. It is the story of a how a supreme competitor scored her most important victory of all—reclaiming her life from the ravages of an untreated mental illness. Today, thanks to diagnosis, therapy, Kelly has stepped into the shadows, but Suzy is building a better life, one day at a time. Sharing her story, Suzy is determined to raise awareness, provide understanding, and offer inspiration to others coping with their own challenges.
The Terrible: A Storyteller's Memoir
Yrsa Daley-Ward - 2018
It's about her childhood in the north-west of England with her beautiful, careworn mother Marcia, Linford (the man formerly known as Dad, 'half-fun, half-frightening') and her little brother Roo, who sees things written in the stars. It's about growing up and discovering the power and fear of her own sexuality, of pitch grey days of pills and powder and encounters. It's about damage and pain, but also joy. Told with raw intensity, shocking honesty and the poetry of the darkest of fairy tales, The Terrible is a memoir of going under, losing yourself, and finding your voice.
Lit
Mary Karr - 2009
Michiko Kakutani calls it “a book that lassos you, hogties your emotions and won’t let you go” in her New York Times review. And Susan Cheever states, simply, that Lit is “the best book about being a woman in America I have read in years."In addition to the New York Times, Lit was named a Best Book of 2009 by the New Yorker (Reviewer Favorite), Entertainment Weekly (Top 10), Time (Top 10), the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, Slate, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Seattle Times.
Truth Seeking
Hans Mattsson - 2018
The story of High-Ranking Mormon leader Hans Mattsson seeking sincere answers from his church but instead finding contempt, fear, doubt...and eventually peace
SUMMARY The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson
OneHour Reads - 2018
His ultimate proposition is that people need to start caring less about everything. Instead, the key to living a good life is in individuals knowing what matters to them and not wasting energy stressing over every little thing. He then proceeds to educate us on how to move forward by going backwards. Manson strongly believes that the endless pursuit of a flawless life, fueled by today's picture-perfect social media standards, is responsible for many of the psychological illnesses that have become rampant. The book culminates in a conclusion that we need to look beyond ourselves, drop the entitled airs, and embrace the ugliness and uncertainties before we can live better lives. This book contains a comprehensive, well detailed summary and key takeaways of the original book by Mark Manson. It summarizes the book in detail, to help people effectively understand, articulate and imbibe the original work by Mark. This book is not meant to replace the original book but to serve as a companion to it Contained is anExecutive Summary of the original book
Key Points
of each chapter and Brief chapter-by-chapter summaries To get this book, Scroll Up Now and Click on the "Buy now with 1-Click" Button to Download your Copy Right Away! Enjoy this edition instantly on your Kindle device! Now available in paperback and digital editions. Audio book coming soon!! Disclaimer: This is a summary, review of the book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" and not the original book.
House Rules
Rachel Sontag - 2008
The view from outside couldn’t have been more perfect. But within the walls of the family home, Rachel’s life was controlled and indeed terrorized by her father’s serious depression. In prose that is both precise and rich, Rachel’s childhood experience unfolds in a chronological recounting that shows how her father became more and more disturbed as Rachel grew up.A visceral and wrenching exploration of the impact of a damaged psyche on those nearest to him, House Rules will keep you reading even when you most wish you could look away.In the middle of the night, Dad sent Mom to wake me. In my pajamas, I sat across from them in the living room. I was sure Grandma had died and I remember deciding to stay strong when Dad told me. “What did you say to her?” he asked. His elbows rested in his lap.“What do you mean?”“You spent a good half hour alone in that hospital room. What did you talk about?”“I don’t know, Dad”“What do you mean, you don’t know? You know. You know exactly what you talked to her about.”“You talked about me, Rachel.”“No. I didn’t.”“To my own mother?”. . . . I wondered how he’d been with Mom, how she’d missed the signs. He couldn’t have just turned crazy all of a sudden. I wondered if his own father had infected him with anger. But mostly, I wanted to know what he saw in me that caused him to break up inside. Was it in my being born or in my growing up?--from House Rules
Fake: Forgery, Lies, & Ebay
Kenneth A. Walton - 2006
Optimistic bidders went online to the world's largest flea market in droves, ready to spend cash on everything from garden gnomes to Mercedes convertibles. Among them were art collectors willing to spend big money on unseen paintings, hoping to buy valuable pieces of art at below-market prices. EBay also attracted the occasional con artist unable to resist the temptation of abusing a system that prided itself on being "based on trust." Kenneth Walton -- once a lawyer bound by the ethics of his profession to uphold the law -- was seduced by just such a con artist and, eventually, became one himself. Ripped from the headlines of the "New York Times," the first newspaper to break the story, "Fake" describes Walton's innocent beginnings as an online art-trading hobbyist and details the downward spiral of greed that ultimately led to his federal felony conviction. What started out as a satisfying exercise in reselling thrift store paintings for a profit in order to pay back student loans and mounting credit card debt soon became a fierce addiction to the subtle deception of luring unsuspecting bidders into overpaying for paintings of questionable origins.In a landscape peopled with colorful eccentrics hoping to score museum-quality paintings at bargain prices, Walton entered into a partnership with Ken Fetterman, an unslick (yet somehow very effective) con man. Over the course of eighteen months they managed to take in hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling forged paintings and bidding on their own auctions to drive up the prices. When their deception was discovered and made international headlines, Walton found himself stalked by reporters and federal agents while Fetterman went on the lam, sparking a nationwide FBI manhunt. His elaborate game of cat and mouse lasted nearly three years, until the feds caught up with him after a routine traffic violation and brought him to justice.In this sensational story of the seductive power of greed, Kenneth Walton breaks his silence for the first time and, in his own words, details the international scandal that forever changed the way eBay does business.
High Achiever: The Incredible True Story of One Addict's Double Life
Tiffany Jenkins - 2017
Now, she's clean and sober, a married mother of three. As she found her way in her new life, she started sharing on social media as an outlet for her depression and anxiety. She struck a chord, several of her videos went viral (one with 46million views), and in the past year her following exploded from a few hundred thousand to more than 3 million.The memoir opens in the Florida women's prison where Tiffany was incarcerated for 180 days. The memoir flashes back in time to the events that led to Tiffany's imprisonment (during the time of her active addiction, Tiffany was dating and living with a cop), and moves forward to her eventual sobriety.
The Road Less Graveled (Kindle Single)
Wendy Laird - 2013
<br><br>Part Tuscan idyll and part cautionary tale, Wendy Laird’s latest Kindle Single tells the flip-side story of expat existence, what it takes to make it happen, and how a life on a well-mapped trajectory can veer off course in the process. Laird’s beautiful prose and acerbic wit keep the book, if not her own agenda, on the right track.
Cat Daddy: What the World's Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me About Life, Love, and Coming Clean
Jackson Galaxy - 2012
"Cat Daddy," isn't what you might expect for a cat expert. Yet Galaxy's ability to connect with even the most troubled felines -- not to mention the stressed-out humans living in their wake -- is awe-inspiring.In this book, Galaxy tells the poignant story of his thirteen-year relationship with a petite gray-and-white short-haired cat named Benny, and gives singular advice for living with, caring for, and loving the feline in your home.