"Confessions of a Bi-Polar Mardi Gras Queen" is the Marie's second memoir, dropping true stories of her life that read like fiction and give the reader much empathy with Marie's bipolar condition. She also hopes to inspire others with her will as a mother and woman of the world, and "Confessions of a Bi-Polar Mardi Gras Queen" is a fine execution of that goal." Marie Etienne, author of STORKBITES: A Memoir, returns with a collection of outrageous true stories that are fast-paced, heartfelt, and brutally honest.CONFESSIONS OF A BI-POLAR MARDI GRAS QUEEN is filled with thematically connected stories that swing between hilarity and devastation. One of nine children growing up in a well-to-do family in Southern Louisiana, Marie Etienne spent decades risking everything in her search for happiness, sanity, and love. As an adult, her increasingly erratic behavior mirrored the drama of her upbringing and took its toll on her two sons. At 43, recently diagnosed as bi-polar and on the brink of suicide, her last-ditch hope was to come to terms with her deep-rooted feelings of fear, shame, and resentment by facing head-on who she really was, who she wanted to be, and what she was willing to do to make her life worth living. Etienne explores the themes of love versus lust, the legacy of abuse and mental illness, the impact of murder and suicide among her siblings, and the redemptive powers of faith, forgiveness, and courage. Marie Etienne has written a book that reveals the unstoppable drive of a woman determined to forge her own path through the world. Praise for Confessions of a Bi-Polar Mardi Gras Queen: "Marie Etienne has not lived an ordinary life, as the title of her second memoir suggests. Born into a wealthy family, she endured the untimely deaths of her alcoholic parents, the murder and suicide of two brothers, her own severe depression and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Nevertheless, Etienne has come back from the abyss and is anxious to help others through her inspirational stories of survival." -- Karen Jones of Publishers Weekly Show Daily, May 2008 "Not everyone can pull of a Trifecta of overcoming promiscuity, alcohol abuse, and towering rage as consequences of an abusive Louisiana childhood. In her second book, Marie Etienne shares her trials and victories with humor, compassion, and insight. Etienne's candor always leaves me breathless with both envy and amazement, and her writing skills make for an enjoyable and revelatory read." -- Peggy Vincent, Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife "Marie Etienne has written a brutally frank and captivating memoir that will have readers rooting for her at each step along the way in her quest to attain balance and confidence in her life and overcome years of dysfunction and insecurity." -- Wendy Nelson Tokunaga, Love In Translation

    If you have already been out in the big world and you enjoy the considerate observations that often come from travel, this book is for you. If you just can't get away, but hearing about someone else's adventures can take you there, this book is for you." -Lindsay LaShell2 years on the road. 1 backpack. 15 countries. Banned from one. Stories about Nepal, Colombia, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, Kenya, Qatar, UAE, Panama and more. This book is about the days, people, stories, ethics and philosophy that bridged the trip. What is modern travel? Why are you not on the road?

    It was a dream that would lead him into a nightmare of sexual and physical abuse from which he has still not recovered. Stewart was abused every day for four years by his junior football coach. He suffered in silence and embarked on a successful career that saw him play for Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and Sunderland, scoring in an FA Cup final and winning caps for England. Behind it all, he was a broken man – many times he wished he could end his life. He turned to drink and drugs as a way of coping with his devastating secret. In 2016, Stewart was sitting at his office desk one morning when he read a Daily Mirror story about a footballer who had been abused. His world was about to change… Paul Stewart: Damaged is one of the most powerful and emotionally charged football life stories you will read.

    Len Goodman tells all about his new-found fame, his experiences on Strictly Come Dancing, and also on the no.1 US show Dancing with the Stars and his encounters with the likes of Heather Mills-McCartney and John Sergeant. But the real story is in his East End roots. And Len's early life couldn't be more East End. The son of a Bethnal Green costermonger he spent his formative years running the fruit and veg barrow and being bathed at night in the same water Nan used to cook the beetroot. There are echoes of Billy Elliot too. Though Len was a welder in the London Docks, he dreamt of being a professional footballer, and came close to making the grade had he not broken his foot on Hackney Marshes. The doctor recommended ballroom dancing as a light aid to his recovery. And Len, it turned out, was a natural. At first his family and work mates mocked, but soon he had made the final of a national competition and the welders descended en masse to the Albert Hall to cheer him on. With his dance partner, and then wife Cheryl, Len won the British Championships in his late twenties and ballroom dancing became his life. Funny and heart-warming, Len Goodman's autobiography has all the honest East End charm of Tommy Steele, Mike Read or Roberta Taylor.

    She was fighting for the legal right to marry as a woman. The author tells of her childhood in Norfolk, the operations that liberated her sexually and her persecution by the tabloid press.

    Sarah Krasnostein's The Trauma Cleaner is a love letter to an extraordinary ordinary life. In Sandra Pankhurst she discovered a woman capable of taking a lifetime of hostility and transphobic abuse and using it to care for some of society's most in-need people.Sandra Pankhurst founded her trauma cleaning business to help people whose emotional scars are written on their houses. From the forgotten flat of a drug addict to the infested home of a hoarder, Sandra enters properties and lives at the same time. But few of the people she looks after know anything of the complexity of Sandra's own life. Raised in an uncaring home, Sandra's miraculous gift for warmth and humour in the face of unspeakable personal tragedy mark her out as a one-off.

    

    A baby boy, a few hours old, is left by his mother, wrapped in nothing but two sheets of newspaper and hidden amongst the undergrowth by a canal bank. An hour later, a late-shift postman is walking wearily home when he hears a faint cry. He finds the newspaper parcel and discovers the newborn, white-cold and whimpering, inside.After being rushed to hospital and against all odds, the baby survives. He’s baptised by the hospital chaplain as Richard.Everything feels as though it’s looking up; Richard is put into local authority care and regains his health. However, after nearly five blissful years in a rural care home filled with loving friends, it soon unfolds that his turbulent start in life is only the beginning…Based on a devastating true story, this inspirational memoir follows Richard’s traumatic birth, abusive childhood, and search for the truth.

    From the day they met, they’d been talking about “travelling more”, but in ten years they hadn’t advanced very far toward that dream and it had become more of a nagging dissatisfaction than an inspiring goal. Every time they returned from one of their brief yearly vacations, Joyce would spend weeks depressed, thinking there had to be a way to do more than this. They gradually came to the somewhat obvious realization that “travelling more” wasn’t just going to happen, they would need to decide what exactly they wanted, make a plan and commit to a lot of work. In early 2012, they made a decision to go all in on their travel dream, sell everything, and hit the road for an open-ended period of time.On March 31, 2013, they locked up their house one last time and left on a tour that would take them to 23 countries and 23 U.S. states over the next 14 months. This book is the chronicle of the first six months, spent in Central America and Africa, as they learned to slow down, look around and embrace wherever the heck they were. Alternately funny, frustrating and inspiring, their journey proves that anyone can travel more and that you don’t have to be rich, young or all that brave to get out and see the world.

    But after falling backwards into the specialty, Dr. Fulkerson found neurosurgery to be a field filled with joy, sadness, a little humor, and courageous and inspiring patients.In an honest and compelling retelling of his long and winding road to train and then practice as a pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Fulkerson guides others through his journey from medical school to service on a small military base, through residency training, and finally, to a practice in a highly specialized children's hospital. The journey reveals the dramatic swings of emotions experienced by both patients and doctors in an increasingly hostile medical environment. Dr. Fulkerson also shares stories of dedicated professors who train medical students and resident surgeons to care for the tiniest neurosurgical patients.Nothing Good Happens at ... The Baby Hospital offers a compelling glimpse into the joys, tragedies, and hopeful moments that surround the highly specialized and sometimes silly world of pediatric neurosurgery.

    Foster children live in nearly every community, waiting in silent anonymity for someone to welcome them into their life.Sometimes all it takes is exposure to prompt change.Faith to Foster is a candid and vulnerable look into the life of ordinary foster parents TJ and Jenn Menn. It is a comprehensive journey chronicling their decision making process, how the children arrived, the birth parents' struggle to rehabilitate, help from friends and family, emotional goodbyes, and how faith in Jesus empowered them through it all. This is a story they wished they'd read before starting their foster parenting adventure.TJ and Jenn share of their experiences and feelings in a way that encourages readers to serve their neighbors. Faith to Foster reminds Christians how God can use them to make a difference in their community. He can strengthen our congregations to change lives and redeem innocent children from harmful situations.Indeed, Faith to Foster inspires believers to rely on the mighty power of our God as they seek to change their neighborhoods one child at a time.

    Two months later, Max's body would be found in the lake. There’d been no note or obvious indication that Max wanted to harm himself; he’d signed up for a year-long subscription to a dating service; he’d spent the day he disappeared doing photography work for school. And this uncertainty became part of his father’s grief. I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye explores with grace, depth, and refinement the tragically transformative reality of losing a child. But it also tells the deeply human and deeply empathetic story of a father’s relationship with his son, of its complications, and of Max and Ivan’s struggle—as is the case for so many parents and their children—to connect.I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye is a stunning, poignant exploration of the father and son relationship, of how our tendency to overlook men’s mental health can have devastating consequences, and how ultimately letting those who grieve do so openly and freely can lead to greater healing.

    Duignan describes how, two years ago, he staged a dramatic escape from the elite paramilitary group at the core of the Church, the Sea Organization, and how he narrowly evaded pursuit by the Office of Special Affairs. He looks back on the 22 years he served in the Church's secret army and describes the hours of sleep deprivation, brain-washing and intense religious counseling he endured, as he was molded into a soldier of Scientology. He talks about the money-making-machine at the heart of the Church, the Scientology goal to Clear the Planet and Get Ethics In, and the punishments meted out to anyone who transgresses. We follow his journey through the Church and the painful investigation that leads to his eventual realization that there is something very wrong at Scientology's core.--From publisher description.

    Cheeky, funny and never fawning, Heat was a new source of celeb info when it started in 2000. And Marks' been there since the beginning, from his first interview with Posh to the rise and fall of Jade and Big Brother, through to Britney's tragic descent from sexpot to being sectioned.From Kate Moss and Paris Hilton to Amy Winehouse and Cheryl Cole - in green rooms and VIP lounges, celebrities have confided in Mark and have been highly indiscreet in his presence.Now, for this first time, Mark is opening up his diaries. And no one is safe.

    The book offers insight into 21st century modern healthcare and the state of society. You will laugh, cry, and question your beliefs about the healthcare system and patients. Read this before you go to the doctor next and share this information with your family. Throughout the United States stories like these are unfolding each day as you witness the stress of physician training and the ups and downs of the physician's and patient's lives. Dr. Brandon Green is a pseudonym, or pen name, for author who wishes to remain anonymous. He is an Attending Surgeon at an inner-city Level 1 Trauma Center. The author's goals for writing this book include the following: 1.Create awareness and discussion about today’s healthcare and society. 2.Raise money with 30% of profits from the sale of this book being donated to healthcare non-profit organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and any current global medical pandemic funds. 3.Therapy for the author to recount the intern year, which was more stressful and educational than ever imagined. Unexpected emotions occurred and life lessons were taught beyond the surgical training. The short stories are real occurrences that happened to the author and his other two co-interns in one residency year. The author broke ties with the publisher who wanted to adjust the stories to meet societal norms, and now the work is being self published with profits as above going to charity instead of a large publishing company. The names and locations have been changed to provide privacy protection and follow HIPPA guidelines. The author hopes to continue dialogue and discussion on stories from behind the scenes at hospitals, clinics, and in the operating rooms. It's beneficial to communicate with colleagues and other healthcare professionals and staff running into similar circumstances on a day to day basis. Please visit DIARYOFAHO.COM and email your stories to be published on the website and social media.This is a work of sociology, psychology, medicine, surgery, dealing with the public, putting others ins front of yourself, and self-reflective learning. Any story will be accepted and uploaded into the blog and social media. Stories will be screened for HIPPA compliance prior to publishing online. Thank you for taking the time to read and understand what’s happening in modern healthcare training.