Parenting Memoir

When Jennifer McGaha's grandmother was in her late eighties, Jennifer asked her what her favorite age so far had been. "Fifty-five," her grandmother answered. So, in her own fifty-fifth year, Jennifer began to take note. She jotted down her impressions of simple, everyday things that struck her as beautiful or humorous or intriguing and kept a list of all the accomplishments, large and small, that actually mattered to her. These observations became Jennifer's Joy Document, a radical act of reclaiming joy and an exercise in paying attention.

Everyone has the right to choose, but no one gets to choose the consequences. Sometimes we are unfairly forced to live with the consequences of another person’s actions when facing abuse and domestic violence. Further complications come when the abuser is someone we love. Fortunately, hope and choices are always present for those who look for them.

Elegant palaces, dazzling power plays, shimmering jewels, and the grandest of all-or-nothing gambles—nothing can top real-life love among the royalty. Louis XIV defied God and law, permitting his married mistress Madame de Montespan to usurp the role of Queen of France, then secretly wed her successor. And the union of Prince William and the former Kate Middleton continues to enthrall the world. Full of marvelous tales, unforgettable scandals, and bedazzled nobles who refused to rule their hearts, this delightfully insightful book is what the sweetest royal dreams are made of.

Adoption is often framed by happy narratives, but the reality is that many adoptees struggle with unaddressed trauma and issues of identity and belonging. Adoptees often spend the majority of their youth without the language to explore the grief related to adoption or the permission to legitimize their conflicting emotions. Adoptee and counselor Cameron Lee Small names the realities of the adoptee's journey, narrating his own and other adoptees' stories in all their complexity.

In Home Ice, with equal parts humour and anguish, Angie Abdou charts a full season of life as an Atom-level hockey mom, from summer hockey camp to the end-of-season tournament. Her revealing stories and careful research on issues such as cost, gender bias, concussion, and family pressures offer a compellingly honest and complex insider’s view of parenting today’s young athlete in a competitive and high-pressure culture.

"If you can dream it, you can do it!" - das ist bei Oliver Brünner keine Floskel. Dabei sah im Leben des heute erfolgreichen Speakers eigentlich alles ganz anders aus. Noch während seiner Geburt zieht sich die Nabelschnur seiner Mutter wie eine Schlinge um seinen Hals, weswegen er fortan mit einer spastischen Tetraparese lebt. Doch Oliver trotzt den vermeintlichen Widrigkeiten und kann heute auf einen Lebensweg zurückblicken, den dem schon früh als "Sorgenkind" titulierten Jungen wohl niemand zugetraut hätte. Seine Geheimwaffe: das Träumen.

A fresh and practical guide to successfully managing children's behaviour - from babies to young adults. Cathy Glass has been a foster carer for over 20 years, during this time fostering more than 50 children, as well as bringing up three of own. Many of these children have had severe behavioural difficulties and have come to Cathy as a last resort, when their parents or carers were no longer able to cope. Drawing on a combination of years of training and extensive personal experience, in this comprehensive guide, Cathy passes on her tried and tested methods.

His name was Kevin but his keepers called him Zoo Boy. He didn't talk. He hid under tables and surrounded himself with a cage of chairs. He hadn't been out of the building in the four years since he'd come in. He was afraid of water and wouldn't take a shower. He was afraid to be naked, to change his clothes. He was nearly 16. Desperate to see change in the boy, the staff of Kevin's adolescent treatment center hired Hayden. As Hayden read to him and encouraged him to read, crawling down into his cage of chairs with him, Kevin talked.

At 53, Kevin Nealon thought he had it all: a massive international celebrity with legions of loyal fans; a fabulous modeling career; hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank; and the most recognizable face on the planet. Nealon had accomplished the impossible: a 30-year career in show business with only limited trips to rehab. But just like every other celebrity, he felt that was not enough. The perpetually insatiable Nealon wanted more, and for him "more" meant a little addition that drooled, burped, and pooped (no, not a Pomeranian).

With four young daughters and a miserably failed marriage, Debra Gwartney moves halfway across the country, to Eugene, Oregon, for a new job and what she hopes will be a new life for herself and her daughters. The two oldest, Amanda, 14, and Stephanie, 13, have a symbiotic relationship so intense they barely know where one begins and the other leaves off. They

It’s never too late to start again—and these women prove it. This powerful collection of true stories celebrates women over 50 who chose reinvention. Whether starting businesses, embracing creativity, or taking courageous leaps into new lives, they rewrote the rules of what’s possible later in life. Or indeed midlife. You’ll meet women who changed direction not in spite of age, but because of it. They turned experience into strength. Loss into action. Longing into impact. Each story in It’s Not Too Late is a reminder: You are not invisible. You are not too late. And you are far from finished.

A practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling, The Story You Need to Tell is the product of Sandra Marinella’s pioneering work with veterans and cancer patients, her years of teaching writing, and her research into its profound healing properties. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella’s methods for understanding, telling, and editing personal stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal. She also shares her own experience of using journaling and expressive writing to navigate challenges including breast cancer and postpartum depression.

Sarah’s story is one for any parent; it is not just about the highs and lows of having a child with additional needs, but also simply as a mum of three. She talks candidly about coming to terms with the decision to move Oscar to a SEN (Special Educational Needs) school, another big milestone in Oscar’s young life. Whilst Sarah may have found herself on a different path to the one she’d imagined for herself, it has not been a bad one. There is sadness, certainly; and there have been struggles along the way; but there has been so much laughter and happiness, too.

Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather's nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher.

Winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Narration by the Author! This program is read by the author. Operating Instructions meets Glennon Doyle in this new book by famed NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly that is destined to become a classic—about the year before her son goes to college—and the joys...

From the early lessons she learned growing up in South London, to the moment she gave up the 9 to 5 to do what she loved, Patricia Bright’s story will revolutionise how you think about work, life, and what it means to succeed.

Traditionally, the renowned All Blacks and those charged with guiding them have kept their rules of engagement close to their chests. However now, New Zealand Rugby has agreed to open their doors to rugby writer Peter Bills to consider the reasons behind their dominance of the world game in the build-up towards the Lions Series in 2017 and Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan. Through this audiobook, Peter Bills draws on case studies and interviews of officials, coaches and players as well as people involved in all elements of rugby right across New Zealand.

At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney she hardly knew. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but something inside her had changed irredeemably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we'd like to believe.

When Carolyn Weber moved to Oxford University to study, she didn't expect to find God there. But she did. As she grappled with her newest and most important relationship, she also found that there was another invitation: to think bigger about love. In this book we follow Weber through courtship and into marriage and parenthood. Now a literature professor, Weber reflects on her relationship with a sometimes-absent father and how that has shaped her.

In the tradition of Cynthia Heimel and Chelsea Handler, and with the boisterous iconoclasm of Amy Sedaris, Julie Klausner's candid and funny debut I Don't Care about Your Band sheds light on the humiliations we endure to find love - and the lessons that can be culled from the wreckage. I Don't Care about Your Band posits that lately the worst guys to date are the ones who seem sensitive. It's the jerks in nice guy clothing, not the players in Ed Hardy, who break the hearts of modern girls.