Book picks similar to
The Insecure Girl's Handbook by Liv Purvis
non-fiction
self-help
feminism
self-improvement
Period. It's About Bloody Time
Emma Barnett - 2019
Period. is an agenda-setting manifesto to remove the stigma and myths continuing to surround the female body. Bold and unapologetic, Emma Barnett is on a crusade to ignite conversation among women--and men--everywhere.
Am I Ugly?
Michelle Elman - 2018
With all this pressure to strive for ‘perfection’ aesthetically, it is easy to forget how damaging this can be psychologically. Michelle Elman is a leading part of the body positivity movement that has been gathering momentum to liberate people from these unrealistic standards, recognise that all bodies are equally valuable and broaden the billboard definitions of beauty. Am I Ugly? is this inspiring woman’s compelling and deeply personal memoir that describes her childhood experiences of life-threatening health problems, long stays in hospital and fifteen complex surgeries that left her scarred, both mentally and physically. The narrative follows Michelle’s journey from illness to health, and from childhood to adulthood as she deals with her body-confidence issues to embrace both her scars and her body – and help others to do the same. This remarkable book grapples with the wider implications of Michelle’s experiences and the complex interplay between beauty and illness.
Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You're Taking, The Sleep You're Missing, The Sex You're Not Having, and What's Really Making You Crazy
Julie Holland - 2015
Bitches are moody. To succeed in life, we are told, we must have it all under control. We have to tamp down our inherent shifts in favor of a more static way of being. But our bodies are wiser than we imagine. Moods are not an annoyance to be stuffed away. They are a finely-tuned feedback system that, if heeded, can tell us how best to manage our lives. Our changing moods let us know when our bodies are primed to tackle different challenges and when we should be alert to developing problems. They help us select the right tool for each of our many jobs. If we deny our emotionality, we deny the breadth of our talents. With the right care of our inherently dynamic bodies, we can master our moods to avail ourselves of this great natural strength. Yet millions of American women are medicating away their emotions because our culture says that moodiness is a problem to be fixed. One in four of us takes a psychiatric drug. If you add sleeping pills to the mix, the statistics become considerably higher. Over-prescribed medications can have devastating consequences for women in many areas of our lives: sex, relationships, sleep, eating, focus, balance, and aging. And even if we don’t pop a pill, women everywhere are numbing their emotions with food, alcohol, and a host of addictive behaviors that deny the wisdom of our bodies and keep us from addressing the real issues that we face. Dr. Julie Holland knows there is a better way. She’s been sharing her frank and funny wisdom with her patients for years, and in Moody Bitches Dr. Holland offers readers a guide to our bodies and our moodiness that includes insider information about the pros and cons of the drugs we’re being offered, the direct link between food and mood, an honest discussion about sex, practical exercise and sleep strategies, as well as some surprising and highly effective natural therapies that can help us press the reset button on our own bodies and minds. In the tradition of Our Bodies, Our Selves, this groundbreaking guide for women of all ages will forge a much needed new path in women’s health—and offer women invaluable information on how to live better, and be more balanced, at every stage of life.
#Girlboss
Sophia Amoruso - 2014
Sophia Amoruso spent her teens hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and scrounging in dumpsters for leftover bagels. By age twenty-two she had dropped out of school, and was broke, directionless, and checking IDs in the lobby of an art school— a job she’d taken for the health insurance. It was in that lobby that Sophia decided to start selling vintage clothes on eBay. Flash forward ten years to today, and she’s the founder and executive chairman of Nasty Gal, a $250-million-plus fashion retailer with more than four hundred employees. Sophia was never a typical CEO, or a typical anything, and she’s written #GIRLBOSS for other girls like her: outsiders (and insiders) seeking a unique path to success, even when that path is windy as all hell and lined with naysayers. #GIRLBOSS proves that being successful isn’t about where you went to college or how popular you were in high school. It’s about trusting your instincts and following your gut; knowing which rules to follow and which to break; when to button up and when to let your freak flag fly.' to 'In the New York Times bestseller that the Washington Post called "Lean In for misfits," Sophia Amoruso shares how she went from dumpster diving to founding one of the fastest-growing retailers in the world Sophia Amoruso spent her teens hitchhiking, committing petty theft, and scrounging in dumpsters for leftover bagels. By age twenty-two she had dropped out of school, and was broke, directionless, and checking IDs in the lobby of an art school—a job she’d taken for the health insurance. It was in that lobby that Sophia decided to start selling vintage clothes on eBay. Flash forward ten years to today, and she’s the founder and executive chairman of Nasty Gal, a $250-million-plus fashion retailer with more than four hundred employees. Sophia was never a typical CEO, or a typical anything, and she’s written #GIRLBOSS for other girls like her: outsiders (and insiders) seeking a unique path to success, even when that path is windy as all hell and lined with naysayers. #GIRLBOSS proves that being successful isn’t about where you went to college or how popular you were in high school. It’s about trusting your instincts and following your gut; knowing which rules to follow and which to break; when to button up and when to let your freak flag fly.'
Little Black Book: A Toolkit for Working Women
Otegha Uwagba - 2017
Packed with fresh ideas and no-nonsense practical advice, this travel-sized career handbook is guaranteed to become your go-to resource when it comes to building the career you want.Writer Otegha Uwagba (one of Forbes European 30 Under 30) takes you through everything you need to build a successful self-made career: from how to negotiate a payrise to building a killer personal brand, via a crash course in networking like a pro, and tips for overcoming creative block. Plus Little Black Book is full of indispensable advice on how to thrive as a freelancer, and an entire chapter dedicated to helping you master the tricky art of public speaking.With contributions from trailblazing creative women including acclaimed author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Refinery29 co-founder Piera Gelardi, The Gentlewoman's Editor in Chief Penny Martin, and many more, Little Black Book is a curation of career insights.
Happy Brain: Where Happiness Comes From, and Why
Dean Burnett - 2018
It’s what drives us to get a job, fall in love, watch stand-up comedy, go to therapy, have questionable obsessions, and come home at the end of the day. But where does happiness come from, and why do we need it so much? Is lasting, permanent happiness possible—or should it be? And what does any of this have to do with the brain?In this delightful sequel to Idiot Brain, neuroscientist Dean Burnett explores these questions. He combines the latest research and theories about how the brain works with interviews and contributions from relevant individuals, such as relationship experts, psychology professors, comedy writers, celebrities, millionaire gurus, and pretty much anyone else involved in bringing about happiness in others. Distinguished by Burnett’s signature wit and curiosity, Happy Brain elucidates our understanding of what happiness actually is, where it comes from, and what exactly is going on in our brains when we’re in a cheery state. Humorous and enlightening, Happy Brain explores a fascinating aspect of modern neuroscience and, in the process, reveals something about what it means to be human.
The Guilty Feminist: From Our Noble Goals to Our Worst Hypocrisies
Deborah Frances-White - 2018
My goals were noble but my concerns were trivial. I desperately wanted to close the pay gap, but I also wanted to look good sitting down naked.From inclusion to the secret autonomy in rom-coms, from effective activism to what poker can tell us about power structures, Deborah explores what it means to be a twenty-first-century feminist, and encourages us to make the world better for everyone.The book also includes exclusive interviews with performers, activists and thinkers - Jessamyn Stanley, Zoe Coombs Marr, Susan Wokoma, Bisha K. Ali, Reubs Walsh, Becca Bunce, Amika George, Mo Mansfied and Leyla Hussein - plus a piece from Hannah Gadsby.
First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety
Sarah Wilson - 2017
I bump along, in fits and starts, on a perpetual path to finding better ways for me and my mate, Anxiety, to get around. It's everything I do.Sarah Wilson—bestselling author and entrepreneur, intrepid solver of problems and investigator of how to live a better life—has helped over 1.2 million people across the world to quit sugar. She has also been an anxiety sufferer her whole life.In her new book, she directs her intense focus and fierce investigatory skills onto this lifetime companion of hers, looking at the triggers and treatments, the fashions and fads. She reads widely and interviews fellow sufferers, mental health experts, philosophers, and even the Dalai Lama, processing all she learns through the prism her own experiences.Sarah pulls at the thread of accepted definitions of anxiety, and unravels the notion that it is a difficult, dangerous disease that must be medicated into submission. Ultimately, she re-frames anxiety as a spiritual quest rather than a burdensome affliction, a state of yearning that will lead us closer to what really matters.Practical and poetic, wise and funny, this is a small book with a big heart. It will encourage the myriad sufferers of the world's most common mental illness to feel not just better about their condition, but delighted by the possibilities it offers for a richer, fuller life.
Sacred Woman: A Guide to Healing the Feminine Body, Mind, and Spirit
Queen Afua - 2000
Her classic bestseller, Heal Thyself, forever changed the way African Americans practice holistic health. Now, with Sacred Woman, she takes us on a transforming journey of physical and ancestral healing that will restore the magnificence of our spirits through sacred initiation.Queen Afua begins by helping us to discover our unique “womb-an-ness”–and to honor the womb as the center of our consciousness and creativity, giving us a twenty-one-day program for womb purification and spirit rejuvenation. Then Queen Afua summons us to enter the Nine Gateways of Initiation, where she blesses us with the exact tools we need to bring our beings into true harmony with the earth and the cosmos. Through extraordinary meditations, affirmations, and rituals rooted in ncient Egyptian temple teachings, Queen Afua teaches us how to love and rejoice in our bodies by spiritualizing the words we speak; the foods we eat; the spaces we live and work in; the beauty we create in our lives; the healing energy we transmit to self and others; the relationships we nurture; the service we offer; and the transcendent woman spirit we manifest.With love, wisdom, and passion, Queen Afua guides us to accept our mission and our mantle as Sacred Women–to heal ourselves, the generations of women in our families, our communities, and our world.
Break Point: SAS: Who Dares Wins Host's Incredible True Story
Ollie Ollerton - 2019
THIS IS HIS INCREDIBLE TRUE STORYWhere is your break point?Is it here? Facing the gruelling SAS selection process on one leg, with a busted ankle and the finish line nowhere in sight?Or here? Under heavy fire from armed kidnappers while protecting journalists en route to Baghdad.Or is it here? At the bottom of a bottle, with a family in pieces, unable to adapt to a civilian lifestyle, yearning for a warzone?Ex-Special Forces soldier and star of TV's SAS: Who Dares Wins, Ollie Ollerton has faced many break points in his life and now he tells us the vital lessons he has learnt. His incredible story features hardened criminals, high-speed car chases, counter-terrorism and humanitarian heroics - freeing children from a trafficking ring in Thailand.Ollie has faced break points in his personal life too, surviving a freak childhood attack, run-ins with the law as a teenager rebelling against a broken home, his self-destructive battles with alcohol and drug addiction, and his struggles with anxiety and depression. His final redemption as an entrepreneur and mental health charity ambassador has seen him overcome adversity to build a new and better life.'Everyone has the capacity for incredible achievement, because it's only when it's crunch time, when you're down to your last bullet - when you're at break point - that you find out who you really are.'
Unfuck Your Brain: Using Science to Get Over Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Freak-Outs, and Triggers
Faith G. Harper - 2017
Your brain knows it's not good to do these things, but it can't help it sometimes--especially if it's obsessing about trauma it can't overcome. That's where this life-changing book comes in. With humor, patience, science, and lots of good-ole swearing, Dr. Faith explains what's going on in your skull, and talks you through the process of retraining your brain to respond appropriately to the non-emergencies of everyday life, and to deal effectively with old, or newly acquired, traumas (particularly post-traumatic stress disorder).
The Gutsy Girl Handbook: Your Manifesto for Success
Kate White - 2018
Twenty-two years ago Kate White wrote the bestselling career bible Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do, and helped thousands of women push their success to the next level. Now a new generation of women, still eyeing the pay gap and glass ceiling, needs its own set of rules for today's modern workplace. In The Gutsy Girl Handbook, White presents the nine core principles that have guided her career, offering dozens of straightforward, doable strategies for women in any field and at any stage in their professional lives. Drawing on original research, and sharing new success stories and never-before told examples from her time as the editor-in-chief of Cosmo, White inspires women to own their excellence, break the rules (or make their own), ask for the money and opportunities they deserve, and refuse to apologize for who they are and what they want. The Gutsy Girl Handbook is a resource for women who want to build confidence, negotiate a great salary and perks, manage meetings, mansplaining, and interruptions, and create game-changing "notice me" ideas. This all-new, accessible handbook is a great gift for graduates, and a must-read for professional women of all levels.
Material Girl, Mystical World: The Now Age Guide to a High-Vibe Life
Ruby Warrington - 2017
Merging style and soul, beauty and bliss, and karma and cool, Warrington shows us that it is within our power, right now, to create a life that is both meaningful and fabulous—while also contributing to a major shift in global consciousness.
Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life
Sari Solden - 1995
This book includes a chapter on friendship for women with ADHD.
Strong Women Lift Each Other Up
Molly Galbraith - 2021
If you pit yourself against other women because of this, you’re holding yourself back. It’s time for a change.Women are ready to stop the vicious cycle of criticizing, judging, gossiping, and comparing themselves. We want to feel good in our own skin and know we’re enough, just as we are.This book is an evidence-based, actionable guide to creating a better life for yourself and a better world with more opportunity for women and girls.Strong Women Lift Each Other Up is perfect for any woman or girl who has ever:struggled with jealousy or comparing your life or body to other women.wanted to support or believe in women, but felt like they’re catty or tearing you down.felt like you’re competing with other women for opportunities that are scarce,or felt like you were made for more than the life you’re living now.Strong Women Lift Each Other Up will help you radiate confidence from the inside out, chase your dreams without worrying what others think, lift other women up, and live a life filled with a purposeful meaning.You’ll walk in a room feeling like you don’t have to compare yourself to other women. You’ll know exactly who you are and be damn proud of it!