In an effort to understand it she invents a cartoon dog who follows her around, and two tiny game show hosts who live inside her head. Luckily, Rachael also has her real-life boyfriend and real-life cat to help her navigate her confused way through life.

    A celebration of love in all its forms, featuring conversations with: Philippa Perry on falling in love slowly * Candice Carty-Williams on friendship * Alain de Botton on the psychology of being alone * Dolly Alderton on vulnerability * Emily Nagoski on the science of sex * Diana Evans on parenthood * Lisa Taddeo on the loneliness of loss * Esther Perel on unrealistic expectations * Stephen Grosz on accepting change * Roxane Gay on redefining romance * and many more

    This book celebrates introverts and their many wonderful, often-underrated qualities.The story is narrated by a lovable turtle who finds socializing tiring, prefers alone time, and recharges through solitude. Each spread features 2-color illustrations of Turtle navigating life alongside a cast of pudgy animal friends. Self-identified introverts, art and comics enthusiasts will love the spare yet resonant text, adorable narrator, and delightful illustrations. This uplifting novelty book is a cute collectible or a sweet anytime gift for a friend.• BESTSELLING BOOK SERIES: Author Ton Mak delivers all the same ingredients as her bestselling book A Sloth's Guide to Mindfulness with a new (adorable) animal protagonist you'll instantly love.• INTROVERTS DESERVE TO BE CELEBRATED: Introverts are having a moment (separately, each one on their own). People are preferring to stay in rather than go out and this book makes it ok to need some alone time.Perfect for:• Introverts, and Extroverts who are secretly Introverts.• People who like turtles.• Fans of quirky comics in the style of Gemma Correll, Jomny Sun, and Yumi Sakugawa.

    This graphic novel offers an engaging and accessible insight into the lives and minds of autistic women, using real-life case studies.The charming illustrations lead readers on a visual journey of how women on the spectrum experience everyday life, from metaphors and masking in social situations, to friendships and relationships and the role of special interests.Fun, sensitive and informative, this is a fantastic resource for anyone who wishes to understand how gender affects autism, and how to create safer supportive and more accessible environments for women on the spectrum.

    I hope you buy it—and not just because each purchase gets me one step closer to buying the leather pants of my dreams.I hope you buy Fat Girl Walking because I want to start a conversation. Or continue a conversation, one I inadvertently started a while ago when I took my clothes off on a stage in front of 700 people. A lot of people thought I was awesome for doing that. A lot of others thought a size 18 woman had absolutely no business showing off her body. Unfortunately for them, I've made it my personal mission on my blog, in social media, on television, and now in this amazing book you're holding, to destroy the ridiculous myth that every woman who is overweight hates her body and herself. I, Brittany Gibbons, and the Curvy Girls I speak to every day on the internet, beg to differ. We love our bodies. We love fashion. We are in loving relationships, having lots of sex. We aren't just a fetish, we're normal women. Sure, sometimes we doubt ourselves, we're not robots, but not anymore than EVERY OTHER WOMAN ON THE PLANET. See, Fat Girls aren't freaks of nature. We're just like you. Maybe we are you.Fat Girl Walking is a collection of stories from my life, my thoughts about the issues that I have faced as a woman, wife, mom, daughter, daughter-in-law, and internet personality in regards to my weight. I have tried to be as honest as I possibly could—apologies in advance to my husband and parents, but hopefully any discomfort you feel is quickly replaced by laughter. The insecure texts to my husband and summer camp hijinks are hilarious if I do say so myself. And I also ask some tough questions, things like "What if my husband weighs less than I do?" and "Is my body hate ruining my daughter's life?" Read Fat Girl Walking and let's start having these conversations. No pressure, but we may just save all of womankind.Love,Brittany

    Born without arms or legs, Nick Vujicic overcame his disability to live not just independently but a rich, fulfilling life, becoming a model for anyone seeking true happiness. Now an internationally successful motivational speaker, his central message is that the most important goal for anyone is to find their life’s purpose despite whatever difficulties or seemingly impossible odds stand in their way. Nick tells the story of his physical disabilities and the emotional battle he endured trying to deal with them as a child, a teen, and a young adult. “For the longest, loneliest time, I wondered if there was anyone on earth like me, and whether there was any purpose to my life other than pain and humiliation.” He shares how his faith in God has been his central source of strength and explains that once he found his own sense of purpose—inspiring others to make their lives and the world better—he found the confidence to build a rewarding and productive life without limits. Nick offers practical advice for realizing a life of fulfillment and happiness by building trust in others, developing supportive relationships, and gaining strength for the journey. He encourages the reader by showing how he learned to accept what he could not control and focus instead on what he could. “I do believe my life has no limits! I want you to feel the same way about your life, no matter what your challenges may be. As we begin our journey together, please take a moment to think about any limitations you’ve placed on your life or that you’ve allowed others to place on it. Now think about what it would be like to be free of those limitations. What would your life be if anything were possible?”—Nick Vujicic, from Life Without Limits

    From school to work to relationships, this book offers an unparalleled insight into asexuality. 'When I was in school, everyone got to a certain age where they became interested in talking about only one thing: boys, girls and sex. Me though? I was only interested in comics.' Growing up, Rebecca assumes sex is just a scary new thing they will 'grow into' as they get older, but when they leave school, start working and do grow up, they start to wonder why they don't want to have sex with other people. In this brave, hilarious and empowering graphic memoir, we follow Rebecca as they navigate a culture obsessed with sex—from being bullied at school and trying to fit in with friends, to forcing themself into relationships and experiencing anxiety and OCD—before coming to understand and embrace their asexual identity.

    We strive for the absolute best in every aspect of our lives, ignoring what we do well naturally. Why do we measure our time in terms of efficiency instead of meaning? Why can't we just take a break?In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside and start living instead of doing. The key lies in embracing what makes us human: our creativity, our social connections (Instagram doesn't count), our ability for reflective thought, and our capacity for joy. Celeste's strategies will allow you to regain control over your life and break your addiction to false efficiency, including:-Increase your time perception and determine how your hours are being spent. -Stop comparing yourself to others.-Invest in quality idle time. Take a hot bath and listen to music.-Spend face-to-face time with friends and familyIt's time to recover our leisure time and reverse the trend that's making us all sadder, sicker, and less productive.

    But when it was finally the perfect time, conceiving turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages, and her eventual successful pregnancy plagued by health issues, up to a dramatic, near-death experience during labor and delivery.This moving, hilarious, and surprisingly informative memoir not only follows Lucy’s personal transition into motherhood but also illustrates the history and science of reproductive health from all angles, including curious facts and inspiring (and notorious) figures in medicine and midwifery. Whether you’ve got kids, want them, or want nothing to do with them, there’s something in this graphic memoir to open your mind and heart.

    As a small child, she would chew her hair all day and lie awake at night wondering if heaven had a ceiling; a few years later, when she should have been doing her homework, she was pacing her bedroom, agonizing about the unfairness of life as a woman, and the shortness of her legs. By the time she was an adult, obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors had come to dominate her life. She knew that something was wrong with her, but it would take many years before she understood what that something was. This memoir follows Limburg’s quest to understand her OCD and to manage her symptoms, taking the reader on a journey through consulting rooms, libraries, and websites as she learns about rumination, scrupulosity, avoidance, thought-action fusion, fixed-action patterns, anal fixations, schemas, basal ganglia, tics, and synapses. Meanwhile, she does her best to come to terms with an illness which turns out to be common and even—sometimes—treatable. This vividly honest memoir is a sometimes shocking, often humorous revelation of what it is like to live with so debilitating a condition. It is also an exploration of the inner world of a poet and an intense evocation of the persistence and courage of the human spirit in the face of mental illness.

    When Helen Russell is forced to move to rural Jutland, can she discover the secrets of their happiness? Or will the long, dark winters and pickled herring take their toll?A Year of Living Danishly looks at where the Danes get it right, where they get it wrong, and how we might just benefit from living a little more Danishly ourselves.

    A public figure since winning his first National Chess Championship at the age of nine, Waitzkin was catapulted into a media whirlwind as a teenager when his father's book "Searching for Bobby Fischer" was made into a major motion picture. After dominating the scholastic chess world for ten years, Waitzkin expanded his horizons, taking on the martial art Tai Chi Chuan and ultimately earning the title of World Champion. How was he able to reach the pinnacle of two disciplines that on the surface seem so different? "I've come to realize that what I am best at is not Tai Chi, and it is not chess," he says. "What I am best at is the art of learning."In his riveting new book, "The Art of Learning," Waitzkin tells his remarkable story of personal achievement and shares the principles of learning and performance that have propelled him to the top -- twice.With a narrative that combines heart-stopping martial arts wars and tense chess face-offs with life lessons that speak to all of us, "The Art of Learning" takes readers through Waitzkin's unique journey to excellence. He explains in clear detail how a well-thought-out, principled approach to learning is what separates success from failure. Waitzkin believes that achievement, even at the championship level, is a function of a lifestyle that fuels a creative, resilient growth process. Rather than focusing on climactic wins, Waitzkin reveals the inner workings of his everyday method, from systematically triggering intuitive breakthroughs, to honing techniques into states of remarkable potency, to mastering the art of performance psychology.Through his own example, Waitzkin explains how to embrace defeat and make mistakes work for you. Does your opponent make you angry? Waitzkin describes how to channel emotions into creative fuel. As he explains it, obstacles are not obstacles but challenges to overcome, to spur the growth process by turning weaknesses into strengths. He illustrates the exact routines that he has used in all of his competitions, whether mental or physical, so that you too can achieve your peak performance zone in any competitive or professional circumstance.In stories ranging from his early years taking on chess hustlers as a seven year old in New York City's Washington Square Park, to dealing with the pressures of having a film made about his life, to International Chess Championships in India, Hungary, and Brazil, to gripping battles against powerhouse fighters in Taiwan in the Push Hands World Championships, "The Art of Learning" encapsulates an extraordinary competitor's life lessons in a page-turning narrative.

    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.

    The pieces range from long meditations on topics like loneliness and being an outsider, to short humor pieces, conversations, and memorable one-liners.Jonny's honest writings about his struggles with feeling productive, as well as his difficulties with anxiety and depression will connect deeply with his fans as well as anyone attempting to create in our chaotic world. It also features a recipe for scrambled eggs that might make you cry.

    And it inspired two close friends to get together in Dharamsala for a talk about something very important to them. The friends were His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The subject was joy. Both winners of the Nobel Prize, both great spiritual masters and moral leaders of our time, they are also known for being among the most infectiously happy people on the planet.From the beginning the book was envisioned as a three-layer birthday cake: their own stories and teachings about joy, the most recent findings in the science of deep happiness, and the daily practices that anchor their own emotional and spiritual lives. Both the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu have been tested by great personal and national adversity, and here they share their personal stories of struggle and renewal. Now that they are both in their eighties, they especially want to spread the core message that to have joy yourself, you must bring joy to others.Most of all, during that landmark week in Dharamsala, they demonstrated by their own exuberance, compassion, and humor how joy can be transformed from a fleeting emotion into an enduring way of life.