I'll Give You Something to Cry About: A memoir of a daughter's struggle to survive a mother with paranoia, schizophrenia, and manic depression


Elizabeth Acker - 2016
    Elizabeth is forced to become estranged from her father and struggles alone to create hope and meaning for her life while serving her mother like a slave. This book is a true account of a daughter's struggle to survive a mother with paranoia, schizophrenia, and manic depression.

Stories I Tell On Dates


Paul Shirley - 2017
    Sometimes we tell these stories to make people laugh. Sometimes we tell them to make people think. Sometimes we tell them so we can increase the chances we'll see the other person naked.Paul Shirley's stories are about an adulthood spent all over the world: living in Spain, playing in the NBA, and having his heart (and spleen) broken. But they're also stories about growing up in small-town Kansas: triumphant spelling bees, catastrophic middle school dances, and a Sex Ed. class taught by his mother.They're funny stories. They're vulnerable stories. Most of all, they're universal stories, just as the stories we tell on dates should be.

High Achiever: The Incredible True Story of One Addict's Double Life


Tiffany Jenkins - 2017
    Now, she's clean and sober, a married mother of three. As she found her way in her new life, she started sharing on social media as an outlet for her depression and anxiety. She struck a chord, several of her videos went viral (one with 46million views), and in the past year her following exploded from a few hundred thousand to more than 3 million.The memoir opens in the Florida women's prison where Tiffany was incarcerated for 180 days. The memoir flashes back in time to the events that led to Tiffany's imprisonment (during the time of her active addiction, Tiffany was dating and living with a cop), and moves forward to her eventual sobriety.

So Here’s the Thing…: Notes on Growing Up, Getting Older, and Trusting Your Gut


Alyssa Mastromonaco - 2019
    Alyssa Mastromonaco is back with a bold, no-nonsense, and no-holds-barred twenty-first-century girl's guide to life, tackling the highs and lows of bodies, politics, relationships, moms, education, life on the internet, and pop culture. Whether discussing Barbra Streisand or The Bachelor, working in the West Wing or working on finding a wing woman, Alyssa leaves no stone unturned...and no awkward situation unexamined.Like her bestseller Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?, SO HERE'S THE THING... brings a sharp eye and outsize sense of humor to the myriad issues facing women the world over, both in and out of the workplace. Along with Alyssa's personal experiences and hard-won life lessons, interviews with women like Monica Lewinsky, Susan Rice, and Chelsea Handler round out this modern woman's guide to, well, just about everything you can think of.

Bad Yogi: The Funniest Self-Help Memoir You'll Ever Read


Alice Williams - 2018
    My tribe are aqua crew-cut goddesses who smell like samosas. My tribe are neurotic corporate banshees with white knuckles on Goldman Sachs water bottles. My tribe are seven different lineages that all lead to the same destination.’When Alice Williams gets ‘phased out’ of her dream job, all the demons she usually silences with food start to get too loud to ignore. Unemployed and depressed, she makes the ultimate middle-class, white-girl life change: she signs up to become a yoga teacher.Bad Yogi is the ‘healing’ memoir for people who hate healing memoirs, a delightful peek at the life-changing truth that lies behind all the gurus and jargon.

Table in the Darkness: A Healing Journey Through an Eating Disorder


Lee Wolfe Blum - 2013
    . . . When I heard the words my mind decoded it like this: You. Are. Fat. Fat was not good. No, fat was bad. I would not be fat. I stood in front of the full-length mirror in my dorm room and inspected the extra parts. These extra parts needed fixing my stomach, my thighs, and those cheeks that were round and puffy, like two big apples on the side of my face. I would fix this. Fixing was my forte. These were the thoughts that plagued Lee Blum during her teens and into her twenties.They drove her to an eating disorder and exercise addiction. Eventually, she found herself hospitalized with clinical depression. But that's not the end of the story: drawing strength from psychological, physiological and spiritual sources, she found her voice again. If you or someone you love has been at this dark table, you will find her story enlightening and encouraging.

Crossing the Bamboo Bridge: Memoirs of a Bad Luck Girl


Mai Donohue - 2016
    Her battle is not against soldiers but against her neighbors and a thousand years of tradition. Born during Ho Chi Minh’s revolution against the French, she was just a baby when his followers in the village, out of spite, came to her home one night and murdered the men in the family, driving her mother mad with fear and rage. She was fourteen when her mother forced her to marry and have a child with a brutal man who beat and tortured her, finally leaving her for dead beside the road. Recovered, she ran away with her infant son, only to discover there was no place for them. To save her baby’s life, she returned home in disgrace, only to face the Viet Cong. In desperation she escaped again, leaving her child in safety, she thought. On Saigon’s deadly streets, with no identity papers, she became an outlaw, hiding from her ex-husband, grieving for her lost child. Homeless, penniless and pursued, only her dream of freedom kept her alive. Then one day she would meet a saintly woman, who gave her hope, and an Irish-American naval officer, who gave her love. Crossing the Bamboo Bridge is a tale of mothers and daughters, and of their children. It is a tale of war, and grief, and a young girl’s dreams. It is a stunning epiphany of hope where there is none, of courage in the face of despair, of love, respect and freedom.

Visualfestation


Peter Adams - 2011
    Unlike other books on the law of attraction, the Author has successfully used the VisualFestation System to manifest miracles in his own life, and he shares them with you in VisualFestation. When you are finished with this book, you will have all the tools you need to create miracles in your life through practicing the VisualFestation System.

Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!


Chelsea Handler - 2019
    in the fall of 2016, Chelsea Handler daydreams about what life will be like with a woman in the White House. And then Donald Trump happens. In a torpor of despair, she decides that she's had enough of the privileged bubble she's lived in--a bubble within a bubble--and that it's time to make some changes, both in her personal life and in the world at large.At home, she embarks on a year of self-sufficiency--learning how to work the remote, how to pick up dog shit, where to find the toaster. She meets her match in an earnest, brainy psychiatrist and enters into therapy, prepared to do the heavy lifting required to look within and make sense of a childhood marked by love and loss and to figure out why people are afraid of her. She becomes politically active--finding her voice as an advocate for change, having difficult conversations, and energizing her base. In the process, she develops a healthy fixation on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and, through unflinching self-reflection and psychological excavation, unearths some glittering truths that light up the road ahead.

Being Miss America: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain (Discovering America)


Kate Shindle - 2014
    

An Impossible Life: The Inspiring True Story of a Woman's Struggle from Within


Rachael Siddoway - 2019
    Wife of a CEO, mother of three, living in a beautiful suburb, Sonja’s life appears ideal. How did she get here?In a gripping and breathtaking narrative that makes the reader feel as though they are listening in on a private conversation, Sonja tells the compelling real account of her struggle with marriage, motherhood, and mental illness.An Impossible Life is an unforgettable true story of perseverance when all hope seems lost. Intriguing and heartfelt, Sonja’s personal account of her mental health journey shines a beacon of hope to all who feel overwhelmed by the specter of mental illness.

Addicted to Perfect: A Journey Out of the Grips of Adderall


Vitale Buford - 2020
    We think that if we can achieve perfection, we will achieve happiness. We believe that if we can avoid pain, we can also avoid abandonment and loneliness and unworthiness. Perfection is the thief of joy. It’s a lie that keeps us in a stranglehold of chaos and people-pleasing and addiction and lack. Perfection says we are never good enough. It holds us back from being our truest, most authentic selves. Author Vitale Buford spent nearly three decades of her life in the web of perfection. The roots of her perfection were born in her childhood - she had a dysfunctional home-life fraught with alcoholism, workaholism and shame. This combination created an environment of neglect, where the only way Vitale got attention was to be perfect. She was praised for being an “easy child,” “pretty,” and “self-motivated,” so that’s what she tried to be. Her need for perfection and outside success was coupled with her body image obsession. It was also a distraction from the pain of abandonment and loneliness she experienced in her childhood. It was the perfect storm – she tied her self-worth to her external success and her appearance, and hence, her addiction to perfection was born. The need for perfection followed her to college, and when she started gaining weight, she became obsessed with dieting to make her body smaller and more acceptable. She worked hard in college and got good grades, but her body shame was all consuming. Her junior year of college, she was introduced to Adderall as a “study drug.” She used it for a few months – and ended up losing 20 pounds; she also got her best grades ever with her most rigorous course load. She was sure she had discovered the “perfect drug.” She was able to obtain her own prescription the following year. It hooked her immediately. She was addicted not only to Adderall but also to the perfection and the weight loss and her newfound ability to accomplish projects and tasks with ease. This was the beginning of a 10-year love affair with Adderall. In Addicted to Perfect, Vitale shares the highs and lows of having been a slave to Adderall, the destructive relationships that ensued, and the way that she finally broke free. She details the many twists and turns involved in the years leading up to her getting sober and the eating disorder that followed her into sobriety. It took parenthood and radical honesty for her to begin the road to true healing. Perfectionism is no longer something that enslaves her, and Vitale’s story is one of hope that no matter where you are in your life, you can release the grip of perfection. You can heal your pain and your abandonment and your loneliness and your fear and your guilt and your shame. You can experience true freedom, and most importantly, replace perfection with self-love.

Riding with the Blue Moth


Bill Hancock - 2005
    Bicycling was simply the method by which he chose to distract himself from his grief. But for Hancock, the 2,747-mile journey from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast became more than just a distraction. It became a pilgrimage, even if Hancock didn't realize it upon dipping his rear tire in the Pacific Ocean near Huntington Beach, California in the wee hours of a July morning. On his two-wheel trip, Hancock battled searing heat and humidity, curious dogs, unforgiving motorists and the occasional speed bump--usually a dead armadillo. Hancock's thoughts returned to common themes: memories of his son Will, the prospect of life without Will for him and his wife, and the blue moth of grief and depression.

Joan's Descent Into Alzheimer's


Jill Stoking - 2014
    Her late husband had hidden the truth, Joan has Alzheimer's disease. As Joan's mind continues to unravel, family relationships are put to the test. When Joan is abused by those entrusted with her care, the question arises; is anyone prepared to reveal the truth of what really goes on behind closed doors?

Michelle's Story: One Woman's Escape from a Lifetime of Abuse


Shelley Chase - 2012
    Her first husband, and then her second husband end up abusing her also. Later on, both her surviving children were abused, one by her ex husband, another by a trusted boyfriend. Michelle finally manages to free herself from this cycle of abuse. This is her true story of her escape. It is Michelle's hope that her story will encourage others who are trapped in abuse to seek freedom.