The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence


Gavin de Becker - 1996
    The new nanny gives a mother an uneasy feeling. A stranger in a deserted parking lot offers unsolicited help. The threat of violence surrounds us every day. But we can protect ourselves, by learning to trust—and act on—our gut instincts.In this empowering book, Gavin de Becker, the man Oprah Winfrey calls the nation's leading expert on violent behavior, shows you how to spot even subtle signs of danger—before it's too late. Shattering the myth that most violent acts are unpredictable, de Becker, whose clients include top Hollywood stars and government agencies, offers specific ways to protect yourself and those you love, including how to act when approached by a stranger, when you should fear someone close to you, what to do if you are being stalked, how to uncover the source of anonymous threats or phone calls, the biggest mistake you can make with a threatening person, and more. Learn to spot the danger signals others miss. It might just save your life.

A Trick of the Light


Lois Metzger - 2013
    But that was before. Now things are rough at home, and they're getting confusing at school. He's losing his sense of direction, and he feels like he's a mess. Then there's a voice in his head. A friend, who's trying to help him get control again. More than that—the voice can guide him to become faster and stronger than he was before, to rid his life of everything that's holding him back. To figure out who he is again. If only Mike will listen.

Give Me a God I Can Relate to


Blythe Baird - 2015
    In 2014, she represented Chicago as the youngest competitor at the National Poetry Slam. Her work has been published or featured by The Huffington Post, Write Bloody, EverydayFeminism, Button Poetry, Chicago Literati, Banango Street, and Wicked Banshee, among others.

Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic


Esther Perel - 2006
    She invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home.In her 20 years of clinical experience, Perel has treated hundreds of couples whose home lives are empty of passion. They describe relationships that are open and loving, yet sexually dull. What is going on?In this explosively original book, Perel explains that our cultural penchant for equality, togetherness, and absolute candor is antithetical to erotic desire for both men and women. Sexual excitement doesn't always play by the rules of good citizenship. It is politically incorrect. It thrives on power plays, unfair advantages, and the space between self and other. More exciting, playful, even poetic sex is possible, but first we must kick egalitarian ideals and emotional housekeeping out of our bedrooms.While Mating in Captivity shows why the domestic realm can feel like a cage, Perel's take on bedroom dynamics promises to liberate, enchant, and provoke. Flinging the doors open on erotic life and domesticity, she invites us to put the "X" back in sex.©2006 Esther Perel (P)2006 HarperCollins Publishers

The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships


Harriet Lerner - 1985
    Harriet Lerner, in her renowned classic that has transformed the lives of millions of readers. While anger deserves our attention and respect, women still learn to silence our anger, to deny it entirely, or to vent it in a way that leaves us feeling helpless and powerless. In this engaging and eminently wise book, Dr. Lerner teaches women to identify the true sources of our anger and to use anger as a powerful vehicle for creating lasting change.

Naughty Girl: A true story of child abuse and an eating disorder


Holly Alastra - 2014
    With honesty and insight, Holly Alastra recounts growing up in a violent and abusive home and her later struggles with deadly eating disorders. Though Holly spent many years of her life hating and hurting herself, the story is ultimately inspirational, showing the ability of the human spirit to triumph over hardship and misfortune. The book opens with Holly in the throes of a passionate, yet dangerous love affair with food. Food is her greatest friend and her worst enemy—a fatal attraction. Holly tries to run from the affair, but she can't escape herself, the one person she wants to get away from most.

Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health


Toni Weschler - 1995
    Weschler thoroughly explains the empowering Fertility Awareness Method, which in only a couple minutes a day allows a woman to:-Enjoy highly effective, scientifically proven birth control without chemicals or devices-Maximize her chances of conception or expedite fertility treatment by identifying impediments to conception-Increase the likelihood of choosing the gender of her baby-Gain control of her sexual and gynecological health

Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype


Clarissa Pinkola Estés - 1992
    Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller shows how women's vitality can be restored through what she calls "psychic archeological digs" into the ruins of the female unconsious. Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes helps women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype.Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence


Rachel Simmons - 2009
    Unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless, the Good Girl is a paradigm so narrowly defined that it's unachievable. When girls inevitably fail to live up- experiencing conflicts with peers, making mistakes in the classroom or on the playing field-they are paralyzed by self-criticism, stunting the growth of vital skills and habits. Simmons traces the poisonous impact of Good Girl pressure on development and provides a strategy to reverse the tide. At once expository and prescriptive, The Curse of the Good Girl is a call to arms from a new front in female empowerment. Looking to the stories shared by the women and girls who attend her workshops, Simmons shows that Good Girl pressure from parents, teachers, coaches, media, and peers erects a psychological glass ceiling that begins to enforce its confines in girlhood and extends across the female lifespan. The curse of the Good Girl erodes girls' ability to know, express, and manage a complete range of feelings. It expects girls to be selfless, limiting the expression of their needs. It requires modesty, depriving the permission to articulate their strengths and goals. It diminishes assertive body language, quieting voices and weakening handshakes. It touches all areas of girls' lives and follows many into adulthood, limiting their personal and professional potential. Since the popularization of the Ophelia phenomenon, we have lamented the loss of self-esteem in adolescent girls, recognizing that while the doors of opportunity are open to twenty-first-century American girls, many lack the confidence to walk through them. In The Curse of the Good Girl, Simmons provides a catalog of tangible lessons in bolstering the self and silencing the curse of the Good Girl. At the core of Simmons's radical argument is her belief that the most critical freedom we can win for our daughters is the liberty not only to listen to their inner voice but also to act on it. Watch a Video

Act Like a Lady: Questionable Advice, Ridiculous Opinions, and Humiliating Tales from Three Undignified Women


Keltie Knight - 2020
    Keltie, Becca, and Jac are here to clear away the bullshit and give you the confidence to live your best lady life.Unabashedly sincere, clever, and full of questionable advice, Act Like a Lady explores the complexities surrounding topics like body image, breakups, navigating a career, and adult friendships through their own embarrassing experiences. The LadyGang has your back with essays like Maybe She's Born with It, Maybe It's Photoshop and If You're Happy and You Know It, Thank Your Ex. You'll learn there's a million different ways to be a lady--and that includes accidentally farting during sex or having the guts to tell your friend she's being a selfish assh*le. No matter what you're going through, you'll find a space to bond over the sloppy, heartbreaking, joyous, and often ridiculous realities of womanhood. Nothing is TMI here.

Beyond the Pill: A 30-Day Program to Balance Your Hormones, Reclaim Your Body, and Reverse the Dangerous Side Effects of the Birth Control Pill


Jolene Brighten - 2019
    While the birth control pill is widely prescribed as a quick-fix solution to a variety of women’s health conditions, taking it can also result in other more serious and dangerous health consequences. Did you know that women on the pill are more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant? That they are at significantly increased risk for autoimmune disease, heart attack, thyroid and adrenal disorders, and even breast and cervical cancer? That the pill can even cause vaginal dryness, unexplained hair loss, flagging libido, extreme fatigue, and chronic infection. As if women didn’t have enough to worry about, that little pill we’re taking to manage our symptoms is only making things worse.Jolene Brighten, ND, author of the groundbreaking new book DITCH THE PILL, specializes in treating women’s hormone imbalances caused by the pill and shares her proven 30-day program designed to reverse the myriad of symptoms women experience every day—whether you choose to stay on the pill or not. The first book of its kind to target the birth control pill and the scientifically-proven symptoms associated with taking it, DITCH THE PILL is an actionable plan for taking control, and will help readers:• Locate the root cause of their hormonal issues, like estrogen dominance, low testosterone, and low progesterone• Discover a pain-free, manageable period free of cramps, acne, stress, or PMS without the harmful side effects that come with the pill• Detox the liver, support the adrenals and thyroid, heal the gut, reverse metabolic mayhem, boost fertility, and enhance mood• Transition into a nutrition and supplement program, with more than 30 hormone-balancing recipesFeaturing simple diet and lifestyle interventions, DITCH THE PILL is the first step to reversing the risky side effects of the pill, finally finding hormonal health, and getting your badass self back.

Room to Grow: An Appetite for Life


Tracey Gold - 2003
    It is a journey of discovery and a chronicle of the very difficult lessons Tracey learned and must abide by every day of her life.

Ten Days in a Mad-House


Nellie Bly - 1887
    In 1887, 23-year-old reporter Nellie Bly had herself committed to a New York City asylum for 10 days to expose the horrific conditions for 19th-century century mental patients.

Respect


Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot - 1999
    In her moving vision, relayed through powerfully told stories, respect is not the passive deference offered a superior but an active force that creates symmetry even in unequal relationships. The reader becomes an eyewitness to the remarkable empowering nature of respect, both given and received -- be it between doctor and patient, teacher and student, photographer and subject, and midwife and laboring mother. They will feel it in the reverent attention paid by a minister to the last moments of life, and in the Harvard Law School professor's lively curiosity about his student's extracurricular lives. Through the power of her narrative, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot ultimately makes the reader an intimate partner in her observations of respect linking these varied and intense relationships. A book to be savored and shared, Respect has the power to transform lives.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Eating Disorders


Christopher G. Fairburn - 2008
    Written with the practitioner in mind, the book demonstrates how this transdiagnostic approach can be used with the full range of eating disorders seen in clinical practice. Christopher Fairburn and colleagues describe in detail how to tailor CBT-E to the needs of individual patients, and how to adapt it for patients who require hospitalization. Also addressed are frequently encountered co-occurring disorders and how to manage them. Reproducible appendices feature the Eating Disorder Examination interview and questionnaire. CBT-E is recognized as a best practice for the treatment of adult eating disorders by the U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).