Book picks similar to
The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole by Lori Holden
adoption
parenting
non-fiction
nonfiction
Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections
Sheena Macrae - 2006
Parenting adopted children requires understanding the extra layer and this book helps in that understanding. Appropriate for the newly created family or the more experienced, Adoption Parenting looks at stumbling blocks to good parenting and standard parenting practices that arent appropriate for adopted children. It looks at the core issues all members of the adoption triad face, and at how it affects standard parenting challenges like sleeping through the night, discipline, and attachment. Adoption Parenting covers specific challenges families have faced: dealing with grief and loss, FASD, Trauma and PTSD, Sensory Integration, Speech and Language delays, and ways to effectively parent a post-institutionalized child or a child who has experienced trauma in their journey to you.
Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self
David M. Brodzinsky - 1992
A major work, filled with astute analysis and moving truths.
The Fringe Hours: Making Time for You
Jessica N. Turner - 2015
And if you go days, weeks, or even months in this cycle, you begin to feel like you have lost a bit of yourself.While life is busy with a litany of must-dos--work, child-rearing, keeping house, grocery shopping, laundry and on and on--women do not have to push their own needs aside. Yet this is often what happens. There's just no time, right? Wrong.In this practical and liberating book, Jessica Turner empowers women to take back pockets of time "they already have "in their day in order to practice self-care and do the things they love.Turner uses her own experiences and those of women across the country to teach readers how to balance their many responsibilities while still taking time to invest in themselves. She also addresses barriers to this lifestyle, such as comparison and guilt, and demonstrates how eliminating these feelings and making changes to one's schedule will make the reader a better wife, mother, and friend.Perfect for any woman who is doing everything for everyone--except herself--"The Fringe Hours" is ideal for both individuals and small group use.
Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Children in Foster Care
Jennifer Toth - 1997
From Simon & Schuster, Orphans of the Living by Jennifer Toth takes a look at the stories of America's children in foster care.Toth's work is an important study of the foster care system in America and examines the plight of thousands of children whose parents cannot or will not care for them, revealing the neglect, abuse, and loss of love that affects their lives
Keep the Doors Open: Lessons Learned from a Year of Foster Parenting
Kristin Berry - 2020
But instead of closing her heart, God opened it wide. This is Kristin’s honest, unvarnished story of some of her experiences as a foster parent of twenty-three children over the course of nine years. What she learned is that living in a foster home is like living with a revolving door. You never know who will arrive or who you will have to say goodbye to. Leaving the door open means there will be heartache and pain, but also adventure and unexpected joy. Kristin and her husband, Mike, have been through it all in their unique parenting journey. If you have ever wondered what it’s really like to be a foster parent, this book will help you gain a true understanding of the everyday trials and triumphs these moms and dads face. It will also inspire you to consider opening your door…and to leave it wide open.
The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity
Nadine Burke Harris - 2018
Nadine Burke Harris was already known as a crusading physician delivering targeted care to vulnerable children. But it was Diego — a boy who had stopped growing after a sexual assault — who galvanized her journey to uncover the connections between toxic stress and lifelong illnesses.The news of Burke Harris’s research is just how deeply our bodies can be imprinted by ACEs—adverse childhood experiences like abuse, neglect, parental addiction, mental illness, and divorce. Childhood adversity changes our biological systems, and lasts a lifetime. For anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, or who cares about the millions of children who do, the scientific insight and innovative, acclaimed health interventions in The Deepest Well represent hope for preventing lifelong illness for those we love and for generations to come.
There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom's Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids (from Friluftsliv to Hygge)
Linda Åkeson McGurk - 2017
In Sweden children play outside all year round, regardless of the weather, and letting young babies nap outside in freezing temperatures is not only common—it is a practice recommended by physicians. In the US, on the other hand, she found that the playgrounds, which she had expected to find teeming with children, were mostly deserted. In preschool, children were getting drilled to learn academic skills, while their Scandinavian counterparts were climbing trees, catching frogs, and learning how to compost. Worse, she realized that giving her daughters the same freedom to play outside that she had enjoyed as a child in Sweden could quickly lead to a visit by Child Protective Services. The brewing culture clash finally came to a head when McGurk was fined for letting her children play in a local creek, setting off an online firestorm when she expressed her anger and confusion on her blog. The rules and parenting philosophies of her native country and her adopted homeland were worlds apart. Struggling to fit in and to decide what was best for her children, McGurk turned to her own childhood for answers. Could the Scandinavian philosophy of “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes” be the key to better lives for her American children? And how would her children’s relationships with nature change by introducing them to Scandinavian concepts like friluftsliv (“open-air living”) and hygge (the coziness and the simple pleasures of home)? McGurk embarked on a six-month-long journey to Sweden to find out. There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather is a fascinating personal narrative that highlights the importance of spending time outdoors, and illustrates how the Scandinavian culture could hold the key to raising healthier, resilient, and confident children in America.
A Career Girl's Guide to Becoming a Stepmom: Expert Advice from Other Stepmoms on How to Juggle Your Job, Your Marriage, and Your New Stepkids
Jacquelyn B. Fletcher - 2007
You've fallen in love with the man of your dreams—and met his three kids! Now what? Jacquelyn B. Fletcher shows how any professional woman turned wife and instant stepmother can build on the skills she employs at work—organization, team-building, goal-setting, and planning—to succeed at home in her new role as stepmom. Drawing on the latest research, her own experiences, and those of other real-life stepmothers, Fletcher offers advice, hope, encouragement, and much-needed answers to common conundrums, including:Why don't I have control over my own schedule?What kind of relationship do I want with my stepkids?What if I want to have a baby of my own?How do we create a budget that feels fair if I make more money than my husband does?A Career Girl's Guide to Becoming a Stepmom is essential reading for the professional woman who has it all—and then suddenly has more than she expected.
Surprised by Motherhood
Lisa-Jo Baker - 2014
And then she had kids. Having lost her own mother to cancer as a teenager, Lisa-Jo felt lost on her journey to womanhood and wholly unprepared to raise children. Surprised by Motherhood is Lisa-Jo's story of becoming and being a mom, and in the process, discovering that all the "what to expect" and "how to" books in the world can never truly prepare you for the sheer exhilaration, joy, and terrifying love that accompanies motherhood.Set partly in South Africa and partly in the US (with a slight detour to Ukraine along the way), Surprised by Motherhood is a poignant memoir of one woman's dawning realization that being a mom isn't about being perfect—it's about being present.
Strong As a Mother: How to Stay Healthy, Happy, and (Most Importantly) Sane from Pregnancy to Parenthood: The Only Guide to Taking Care of YOU!
Kate Rope - 2018
Everyone knows the secret to having “the Happiest Baby on the Block.” This is your guide to being the Sanest Mommy on the Block. It will prepare you with humor and grace for what lies ahead, give you the tools you need to take care of yourself, permission to struggle at times, and professional advice on how to move through it when you do. This book will become a dog-eared resource on your nightstand, offering you the same care and support that you are working so hard to provide to your child. It will help you prioritize your emotional health, set boundaries and ask for help, make choices about feeding and childcare that feel good to you, get good sleep, create a strong relationship with your partner, make self care an everyday priority, trust your instincts, and actually enjoy the hardest job you will ever love. This book is here to take care of you.
God and Jetfire: Confessions of a Birth Mother
Amy Seek - 2015
Facing an unplanned pregnancy at twenty-two, Amy Seek and her ex-boyfriend begin an exhaustive search for a family to raise their child. They sift through hundreds of "Dear Birth Mother" letters, craft an extensive questionnaire, and interview numerous potential couples. Despite the immutability of the surrender, it does little to diminish Seek's newfound feelings of motherhood. Once an ambitious architecture student, she struggles to reconcile her sadness with the hope that she's done the best for her son, a struggle complicated by her continued, active presence in his life.For decades, closed adoptions were commonplace. Now, new laws are guaranteeing adoptees' access to birth records, and open adoption is on the rise. God and Jetfire is the rare memoir that explores the intricate dynamics and exceptional commitment of an open-adoption relationship from the perspective of a birth mother searching for her place within it. Written with literary poise and distinction, God and Jetfire is a story of a life divided between grief and gratitude, regret and joy. It is an elegy for a lost motherhood, a celebration of a family gained, and an apology to a beloved son.
Until I Say Goodbye: A Book about Living
Susan Spencer-Wendel - 2012
She was forty-four years old, with a devoted husband and three young children, and she had only one year of health remaining.Susan decided to live that year with joy.She quit her job as a journalist and spent time with her family. She built an outdoor meeting space for friends in her backyard. And she took seven trips with the seven most important people in her life. As her health declined, Susan journeyed to the Yukon, Hungary, the Bahamas, and Cyprus. She took her sons to swim with dolphins, and her teenage daughter, Marina, to Kleinfeld's bridal shop in New York City to see her for the first and last time in a wedding dress.She also wrote this book. No longer able to walk or even to lift her arms, she tapped it out letter by letter on her iPhone using only her right thumb, the last finger still working.However, Until I Say Good-Bye is not angry or bitter. It is sad in parts--how could it not be?--but it is filled with Susan's optimism, joie de vivre, and sense of humor. It is a book about life, not death. One that, like Susan, will make everyone smile.From the Burger King parking lot where she cried after her diagnosis to a snowy hot spring near the Arctic Circle, from a hilarious family Christmas disaster to the decrepit monastery in eastern Cyprus where she rediscovered her heritage, Until I Say Good-Bye is not only Susan Spencer-Wendel's unforgettable gift to her loved ones--a heartfelt record of their final experiences together--but an offering to all of us: a reminder that "every day is better when it is lived with joy."
The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man's Quest to Be a Better Husband
David Finch - 2012
Five years after he married Kristen, the love of his life, they learn that he has Asperger syndrome. The diagnosis explains David’s ever-growing list of quirks and compulsions, his lifelong propensity to quack and otherwise melt down in social exchanges, and his clinical-strength inflexibility. But it doesn’t make him any easier to live with.Determined to change, David sets out to understand Asperger syndrome and learn to be a better husband—no easy task for a guy whose inability to express himself rivals his two-year-old daughter's, who thinks his responsibility for laundry extends no further than throwing things in (or at) the hamper, and whose autism-spectrum condition makes seeing his wife's point of view a near impossibility.Nevertheless, David devotes himself to improving his marriage with an endearing yet hilarious zeal that involves excessive note-taking, performance reviews, and most of all, the Journal of Best Practices: a collection of hundreds of maxims and hard-won epiphanies that result from self-reflection both comic and painful. They include "Don’t change the radio station when she's singing along," "Apologies do not count when you shout them," and "Be her friend, first and always." Guided by the Journal of Best Practices, David transforms himself over the course of two years from the world’s most trying husband to the husband who tries the hardest, the husband he’d always meant to be.Filled with humor and surprising wisdom, The Journal of Best Practices is a candid story of ruthless self-improvement, a unique window into living with an autism-spectrum condition, and proof that a true heart can conquer all.
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert Resume Book: Eat Pray Love Ebook Summary, Quotes From Eat Pray Love, Liz Gilbert, Eat Love Pray, Eat Pray Love Book, Elizabeth Gilbert Husband (Resume Books)
Mark Gilbert - 2015
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Murder, Motherhood, and Miraculous Grace: A True Story
Debra Moerke - 2019
Debra became especially close to one little girl: four-year-old Hannah. She loved her and did everything she could to help Hannah learn to trust and teach her to feel safe. But when Hannah went back to her birth mother, Karen, it wasn’t long before one of Debra’s worst fears came true.Overwhelmed with horror and grief, Debra didn’t think she could take anymore, but then she received a phone call from prison. Karen, facing a life sentence, was pregnant, and she had a shocking question to ask . . .Murder, Motherhood, and Miraculous Grace is an incredible true story of faith, family, and a journey toward seemingly impossible forgiveness. A story that tests the limits of the human heart, it’s ultimately a life-affirming testament to how unconditional love and relentless obedience can transform even the darkest nights into mornings of hope.