Recovery Memoirs

Cradled in the Arms of Compassion is at once a narrative of psychological transformation and a spiritual autobiography that details the survivor’s journey. Rogers shows how he found recovery through a combination of reflective retreats, therapy, creative expression, and an extraordinary application of imaginative meditation that spiritual seekers and practitioners will find utterly fascinating.

Pure Land is the story of the most brutal murder in the history of the Grand Canyon and how McGivney's quest to investigate the victim's life and death wound up guiding the author through her own life-threatening crisis. On this journey stretching from the southern tip of Japan to the bottom of Grand Canyon, and into the ugliest aspects of human behavior, Pure Land offers proof of the healing power of nature and of the resiliency of the human spirit.

As chronicled in his hit memoir Straight Pepper Diet, one fateful summer night, Joseph Naus, a young LA lawyer, went out to have just a couple of drinks. He awoke the next morning handcuffed to a hospital bed and charged with attempted murder. And then it got worse. The Palsgraf Revelation begins where Straight Pepper Diet left off. Joseph survived the initial blast of the nuclear bomb he dropped on his own life, but if he wants to become more than a shocking cautionary tale, he must now learn to live with the devastating fallout.

At the start of this remarkable story of recovery, healing, and redemption, Ginger Gaffney answers a call to help retrain the troubled horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico, a facility run entirely by the prisoners. The horses are scavenging through the dumpsters, kicking and running down the residents when they bring the trash out after meals. One horse is severely injured. The horses and residents arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many: the horses are defensive and terrified, while the residents, some battling addictions, are emotionally and physically shattered.

At the age of 15, Kelle Groom found that alcohol allowed her to connect with people and explore intimacy in ways she'd never been able to experience before. She began drinking before class, often blacked out at bars, and fell into destructive relationships. At 19, already an out-of-control alcoholic, she was pregnant. Accepting the heartbreaking fact that she was incapable of taking care of her son herself, she gave him up for adoption to her aunt and uncle. When he was nine months old, the boy was diagnosed with leukemia....

Living on the street, Dr. George ran a prostitution and drug dealing business to feed his addiction to sex and drugs. His life spiraled out of control, leading him to the confines of a prison cell. When released on probation he risked it all on a drug blow out. This was the catalyst that started an intentional climb towards a life of freedom. In this book, Dr. George guides the listener through his personal story and how he used the power of intention to change his life.

In 2012, Rhyannon Styles began her gender transition and attended her first 12-step meeting - beginning two journeys that changed the course of her life. Using her personal narrative as a springboard for exploring addiction, recovery and LGBTQ+ mental health, Rhyannon writes with searing honesty about the complexity of her experiences. The audiobook spans a range of addictions including alcohol, food, sex and relationships, the internet and narcotics, and highlights the ways in which addiction and the transition process can overlap.

Growing up an only child of a cop and secretary in Las Vegas, life started out pretty uneventful, however, the events of her upbringing brought fear and uncertainty into Deborah's life and caused her to make choices that were fraught with risk and danger. Coming into her own at a time when organized crime dominated Las Vegas, she began to experience growing pains, and her life became dangerous. Deborah fled her persecutors and moved to Los Angeles to start again where the allure of the ocean and her lifelong love of horses brought her joy and comfort.

In 2018, 34 people were shot at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Jaime Guttenberg, a 14-year-old, was the second to last victim. That she and so many of her fellow students were struck down in cold blood galvanized many to action, including Jaime's father, Fred, who has become an activist dedicated to passing common-sense gun-safety legislation. This book is not about gun safety or Parkland. Instead, it tells the story of Fred Guttenberg's journey since Jaime's death and how he has been able to get through the worst of times thanks to the kindness and compassion of others.

When her six-year-old daughter found her collapsed on the kitchen floor, Rachel had no idea how much her life was about to change. A brain scan revealed a dark shadowy mass, a huge abnormal growth of tissue that, whilst benign, was still growing and would surely kill her. It was too big to operate on. It needed to be "managed", and Rachel had, at best, two years to live. Refusing to accept the bleak prognosis, Rachel was determined to stay alive.

Carol E. Miller was 16 when the private plane piloted by her father crashed, pinning her in the wreckage, critically injuring her parents, and killing her 12-year-old sister. Compounding this traumatic event, her father told her he wished she had died instead of her sister. For the next 20 years, she labored under feelings of guilt and a lack of self-worth. When another in a long line of personal crises landed her in therapy with an EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) practitioner, she began at last to investigate the crippling effects of the plane crash.

When Deb Brandon discovered that cavernous angiomas - tangles of malformed blood vessels in her brain - were behind the terrifying symptoms she'd been experiencing, she underwent one brain surgery. And then another. And then another. And that was just the beginning. The book also includes an introduction by Connie Lee, founder and president of the Angioma Alliance. Unlike other memoirs that focus on injury crisis and acute recovery, But My Brain Had Other Ideas follows Brandon’s story all the way through to long-term recovery, revealing without sugarcoating or sentimentality Brandon’s struggles - and ultimate triumph.

Abandoned by his mother at birth, Kevin was enveloped in a labyrinth of adoption, addiction, and child sexual abuse. By age 20, a shell of the boy he once was, Kevin succumbed completely to a suicidal lifestyle of drug dealing and prostitution. At 45, after many years of recovery, Kevin began a painful journey to uncover his origins, and the hopeful search for his mother. Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother chronicles the unfolding of these two stories.

In this moving, tender memoir of losing a beloved spouse, the longtime editor of Texas Monthly, newly widowed, returns alone to a city whose enchantment he's only ever shared with his wife, in search of solace, memories, and the courage to find a way forward. At the age of sixty-six, after...

What if society looked at addiction without judgement? Unstitched shares the powerful story of one librarian’s quest to understand the impact of addiction fed by stigma and inevitable secrecy. The opioid epidemic has hit people in communities large and small and across all socio-economic...

What if your ugliest scar could be your greatest asset? What if your story of struggle could be repurposed into a strategic tool for healing, influence, and impact in this modern world of distraction, disengagement, and division? New York Times bestselling author, retired Green Beret, and...

The New York Times bestselling author of The In-Between presents a vulnerable, moving memoir about the unraveling of her marriage, and her evolving journey to find beauty in life's endings and beginnings. As a hospice nurse, Hadley Vlahos helps people navigate grief and major life transitions...

The last time David Magee saw his son alive, William told him to write their family’s story in the hopes of helping others. Days later, David found William dead from an accidental drug overdose. Now, in a memoir suggestive of Augusten Burroughs meets Glennon Doyle, award-winning columnist and author David Magee answers his son's wish with a compelling, heartbreaking, and impossible to pause book that speaks to every individual and family.

In a deeply personal and moving book, the beloved NPR radio host speaks out about the long drawn-out death (from Parkinson’s) of her husband of fifty-four years, and of her struggle to reconstruct her life without him. With John gone, Diane was indeed “on her own,” coping with the...

The weird, wacky and wonderful betting exploits of an unconventional gambler who takes the biggest risk of his life to give up his day job and try to make a living on chance. The Gambler reveals the highs and lows, the joy and despair, and the sheer lunacy of someone willing to risk it all on the most outlandish outcomes, from betting on the winner of Eurovision and Strictly to whether a pair of pandas might mate.