This revealing and unfiltered look at teens living in the wake of tragedy is a poignant representation of grief, anger, determination, healing, and hope.The intimate collection includes poetry, eyewitness accounts, letters, speeches, journal entries, drawings, and photographs from the events of February 14 and its aftermath. Full of heartbreaking loss, a rally cry for change, and hope for a safe future, these artistic pieces will inspire readers to reflect on their own lives and the importance of valuing and protecting the ones you love.

    She startles awake, saying his name. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her.When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides—after fourteen years of silence—to reach out to Mark. He agrees to talk on the record and meet in person. "It's the least I can do," he says.Jeannie details her friendship with Mark before and after the assault, asking the brave and urgent question: Is it possible for a good person to commit a terrible act? Jeannie interviews Mark, exploring how rape has impacted his life as well as her own. She examines the language surrounding sexual assault and pushes against its confines, contributing to and deepening the #MeToo discussion.Exacting and courageous, Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl is part memoir, part true crime record, and part testament to the strength of female friendships—a recounting and reckoning that will inspire us to ask harder questions and interrogate our biases. Jeannie Vanasco examines and dismantles long-held myths of victimhood, discovering grace and power in this genre-bending investigation into the trauma of sexual violence.

    J. Reynolds tobacco family, one of America's richest and most intensely private clans. R.J. was the original founder of the company that became part of RJR Nabisco, which in 1988 was involved in the largest business takeover in history. Spanning three generations, the Reynolds's story moves from the triumphs of founder and corporate genius R. J. to the dissipation, scandal, and tragedy that plagued his children and grandchildren. There is a redemptive close, with grandson Patrick Reynolds founding Smokefree America and becoming a leading anti-smoking advocate. The Gilded Leaf presents, for the first time, a complete account of the family who captured, spent and redeemed the American dream.

    They can be euphoric one moment, despairing and depressed the next. There are an estimated 10 million sufferers of BPD living in America today—each displaying remarkably similar symptoms: ● a shaky sense of identity ● sudden violent outbursts ● oversensitivity to real or imagined rejection ● brief, turbulent love affairs ● frequent periods of intense depression ● eating disorders, drug abuse, and other self-destructive tendencies ● an irrational fear of abandonment and an inability to be alone For years BPD was difficult to describe, diagnose, and treat. But now, for the first time, Dr. Jerold J. Kreisman and health writer Hal Straus offer much-needed professional advice, helping victims and their families to understand and cope with this troubling,shockingly widespread affliction.

    Topics include understanding dissociation and PTSD, using inner reflection, emotion regulation, coping with dissociative problems related to triggers and traumatic memories, resolving sleep problems related to dissociation, coping with relational difficulties, and help with many other difficulties with daily life. The manual can be used in individual therapy or structured groups.

    The shocking true story of Barbara Opel, a woman who convinced a group of teenagers, including her 13-year-old daughter, to savagely kill her boss.

    Disappointed that her mind does not always deal well with the pressures of modern life, Emma decided to go on mind-toning journey.Is it possible to tone your mind just as you can tone your body so it becomes more resilient and better prepared to deal with what life throws at you?By looking at some of the new and tried and tested techniques, from meditation to mental preparation involved in extreme sports and military training, Emma has devised a programme that will help everyone achieve mental stability.

    What would happen to her five unintentionally abandoned children? The heartbreak of the devastating loss of my mother was just the beginning of a series of tragic events that shaped my childhood. Lost in the chaos of abuse, I was the unseen collateral damage of domestic violence. I was forced to take on the role of the invisible child for self-preservation. I figured you can’t hurt what you can’t see. Despite all the sadness in this book, my story has a happy ending. Overcoming obstacles that were meant to destroy me taught me many powerful lessons about strength, resilience, and faith. I want to show you that no matter how dark your world seems, there is a light shining right outside the door. You just need to have faith and keep moving forward step by step until you find your peace. Trust me, no matter where your story lies, you can find happiness.

    In this updated edition of her bestseller she re-examines the movement and its inclusion of Adult Children from various dysfunctional family backgrounds who share the same characteristics. After decades of working with ACoAs she shares the recovery hints that she has found to work. Read Adult Children of Alcoholics to see where the journey began and for ideas on where to go from here.

    In fact, much of what makes our brains "happy" leads to errors, biases, and distortions, which make getting out of our own way extremely difficult. Author David DiSalvo presents evidence from evolutionary and social psychology, cognitive science, neurology, and even marketing and economics. And he interviews many of the top thinkers in psychology and neuroscience today. From this research-based platform, DiSalvo draws out insights that we can use to identify our brains’ foibles and turn our awareness into edifying action. Ultimately, he argues, the research does not serve up ready-made answers, but provides us with actionable clues for overcoming the plight of our advanced brains and, consequently, living more fulfilled lives.

    From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. While Emily is working hard at school and getting A’s, her brother Justin is goofing off. He’s more concerned about getting to the next level in his video game than about finishing his homework.Now, Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on more than twenty years of clinical experience to explain why boys and young men are failing in school and disengaged at home. He shows how social, cultural, and biological factors have created an environment that is literally toxic to boys. He also presents practical solutions, sharing strategies which educators have found effective in re-engaging these boys at school, as well as handy tips for parents about everything from homework, to video games, to medication.

     The powerlessness, pain, and torment she endured ate her up. But, the ultimate gut-punch came when she finally mustered the courage to break her silence, and her words were met with excuses for her abusers and the admonition that she must forgive. “Mother, I Don’t Forgive You” is a true story of terrifying abuse and the triumph of healing. Written with raw emotion and inspirational clarity, this page-turner offers help and hope for anyone who has suffered from abuse or loves someone who has suffered from abuse. This is Book 1 of a two-book series. The other book in the series is "Mother, It's Hard to Forgive You: Ridding Myself of the Family Scapegoat Mantle." ***Originally published by Blue Dolphin Publishing, Inc., Nevada City, CA in 2005 as "Heal and Forgive."

    

    Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing with glee across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless and all-consuming. And, most important, it’s fun. As we become adults, taking time to play feels like a guilty pleasure—a distraction from “real” work and life. But as Dr. Stuart Brown illustrates, play is anything but trivial. It is a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. In fact, our ability to play throughout life is the single most important factor in determining our success and happiness. Dr. Brown has spent his career studying animal behavior and conducting more than six thousand “play histories” of humans from all walks of life—from serial murderers to Nobel Prize winners. Backed by the latest research, Play explains why play is essential to our social skills, adaptability, intelligence, creativity, ability to problem solve, and more. Play is hardwired into our brains—it is the mechanism by which we become resilient, smart, and adaptable people. Beyond play’s role in our personal fulfillment, its benefits have profound implications for child development and the way we parent, education and social policy, business innovation, productivity, and even the future of our society. From new research suggesting the direct role of three-dimensional-object play in shaping our brains to animal studies showing the startling effects of the lack of play, Brown provides a sweeping look at the latest breakthroughs in our understanding of the importance of this behavior. A fascinating blend of cutting-edge neuroscience, biology, psychology, social science, and inspiring human stories of the transformative power of play, this book proves why play just might be the most important work we can ever do.

    “Preludes” is based in significant part on the experiences of its author, a child sexual abuse survivor. * * * When a nine-year-old boy in a "respectable," middle class family is raped, then repeatedly molested by his father, how does the boy experience the abuse and how does he manage to survive? “Preludes” examines these questions. The boy wakes in the middle of the night to find his father sitting on the edge of his bed, gently shaking him from his sleep. Though confused by his father's unexpected presence, for a few brief moments he suspects nothing unusual. His father then accuses him of having misbehaved without saying how, and tells him he'll have to be punished. The boy initially protests, but then, sensing the futility of resistance, grudgingly prepares himself for what his father tells him will be a spanking, all the while thinking, "Gee, this is ridiculous—I haven't done anything wrong." His father then proceeds to rape him, and, the rape completed, threatens to murder him if he tells anyone, including his mother. Thus begins the boy's struggle for survival in the face of his father's nightly onslaughts—a struggle that stretches the boy's physical, psychological, and emotional resources to their limits and beyond. Adding to his struggle's immensity is the story’s milieu: a "Pleasantville" middle class neighborhood in a mid-sized American city in the early 1960s—an environment that gives no indication, on its surface, that dysfunction of such proportions could occur within its hermetic confines. The boy's family enjoys a high status—the father is a professor at a prestigious university, and the family belongs to a Presbyterian church that counts among its members some of the city's most prominent citizens. It is an environment in which acknowledgement of even the merest possibility of child sexual abuse within a family as respectable as that of the boy's is as taboo as the abuse itself. Sensing these constrictions, the boy feels his isolation in his suffering increase exponentially. The prime importance placed by the community on maintaining a semblance of normalcy, no matter the cost to the truth, extends to the day-to-day life of the boy's home. The family's nightly meals together, at a table set with engraved silverware and an "everyday" china of the most tasteful design, and the "Smile Club" photos the boy's mother hangs in the downstairs hallway—family photos, taken regularly, for which the fundamental requisite is that everyone in them be wearing a pleasant smile—help form the bulwark of the mother's determined effort to put the best possible face on things. To survive, the boy attempts to hide the truth as much as possible, even from himself, with his mind employing, as its chief means to this end, a total forgetting of the abuse when it's not actually happening—a strategy his mind has utilized on previous occasions of his father's abuse. But survival, though laudable, comes at an enormous price—a price exacted, among other ways, in the warped perception the boy forms of what it means to "be a man." A price, the story suggests, the boy will have to pay going forward, into adulthood, until he reaches a point of substantial healing.