Self Biography

Apollo Ellis's journey from the streets of the 1990s San Francisco Bay Area to the heights of Silicon Valley is a tale of extraordinary resilience. Growing up in a world dominated by hip-hop and street culture, he faced daunting circumstances. Narrow escapes from the drug game and gang violence left their marks in the form of PTSD and addiction. Homeless at the age of twenty, Apollo made the pivotal decision to return to school. Choosing education as his lifeline, he began to reconstruct himself.

Callanan takes the listener through his painful roller-coaster journey of generational alcoholism, bullying, and drug addiction as a youth. The book also includes him finding his faith in God. This faith helped him to deal with a baseball bat accident that took the life of a classmate, a family suicide, and more than one business market crash.

Life is presented to all of us a game that we must engage. It is up to you whether the wins and the losses define you or dictate your emotional state of (mental) well-being. This book is my honest account of the moments offering me the inspiration to evolve, and I believe there are nuggets of wisdom to be discovered in book to come. Know the mental grind is real and that there may be a tsunami of mental illness cases to come in the very near future if we do not rapidly disseminate hope.

A spiritual guidebook for the modern woman stepping into the unknown, Wholeness Within follows author and spiritual career coach Emily Smith on her journey from fear and victimhood to rapturous self-acceptance. Throughout, Emily shares her personal experiences of battling grief, burnout, anxiety, career dissatisfaction, addiction, and depression, which ultimately led her to a personal rebuilding and the development of a breakthrough coaching method that can help women everywhere shed negative self-images, create a career they actually love, and reclaim their narratives.

Looking back, before I knew better, I wasn’t someone I admired. I wasn’t someone I was proud of. I was disconnected, off-course, unexpressive, and depressed. Disempowered and stagnant. However, through the grace of God, here I am now on a strong foundation of rock, proud and confident; about to remind you things you already know, reaffirming their power, or open your eyes to powerful, life-changing concepts. And as the wise Otto von Bismark once said, “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”

Once we learn that we are not for everyone, we can end the exhausting need to people-please and begin living our best and most authentic lives. Jackie Henderson highlights her unique life experiences and shares the wisdom of being an introverted soul in an extroverted world. Jackie offers deep insight gained from overcoming her own limiting beliefs. The hope for this book is to inspire and guide you, listener, on your journey to soulful authenticity and to provide crucial knowledge in finding your tribe and living your best life. You Are Not for Everyone is a must-listen!

A chance meeting between Cameron, a successful, divorced businessman and Shaina, an upbeat young waitress sparks love at first sight. As their lives become entwined, their relationship becomes a complex and passionate roller coaster of raw emotions and blissful pleasure. But, one night, after hosting a party with friends, Shaina changes everything in an instant, a final act of self-harm, leaving Cameron in a whirlwind of loss, isolation, and destruction.

At the 16 week foetal stage, Paul Whymark’s brain development was frozen as a consequence of the drug, Thalidomide. His journey is one of considerable self discovery, but also reveals greater societal insights. “16 Weeks and Everything After...” uncovers the remarkable fact that over the last 50-60 years the establishment has failed to genuinely independently review Thalidomide, and as a consequence, harms on developing life continue to have the potential to occur into the future.

This book allows listeners to dive into a captivating exploration of resilience and personal growth. Through compelling stories and personal insights, you’ll join the author’s parents on a journey through the trials of WWII, the Great Leap Forward, and China’s Reopening to the World. You’ll also join the author on her path from childhood in China to adulthood in the US. These intriguing stories span three generations, two countries, and more than eighty years.

After witnessing the brutal, fatal stabbing of her mother and surviving being stabbed herself during the same attack at the age of nine, a young African-American woman’s struggle to live continues. Diamond shares the mental, physical, and emotional effects she has suffered and the challenges she has faced, including alcohol abuse, emotional detachment, suicidal thoughts and panic attacks stemming from post-traumatic stress disorders.

By day he made deals with giants that made headlines everywhere. By night he felt his family, who he loved so much, slipping away. From the first ventures in the 1980s that started things out to massive contracts with some of the most respected companies in America, here, in Joshua Wallack’s own words, is a 40-year adventure no one could invent: the true love that forged the meaning of his life, startups, partnerships, and battles for the soul of the family.

Gigorou (jig-goo-roo) means ‘beauty’ or ‘beautiful’ in Jirrbal, the language of Sasha Kutabah Sarago’s grandmother. Growing up, Sarago didn’t feel gigorou. At a young age, she was told, ‘You’re too pretty to be Aboriginal’. Since then, she’s been on a journey to reconcile her conflict with beauty. In this intimately fierce, funny and reflective audiobook, Sarago retraces her footsteps as a beauty assistant, model and magazine editor to find the answers she’s searching for.

In 2011, Jessica Buchanan found herself in the middle of a nightmare she could never have prepared for; she was a hostage in the desert, captured by Somali pirates, who held a 45 million dollar ransom demand on her head. Taken at gunpoint while on a routine field mission for her non-governmental organization, Jessica was forced to live in deplorable conditions, regularly tortured, and kept on a starvation diet for 93 days. On January 25, 2012, Jessica was successfully rescued by SEAL Team VI, upon order of President Obama, and finally brought home.

Broken Gifts is a horrifying look into the depths of abuse and addiction, yet every chapter also seems to shine hope into the listener's rapidly beating heart. Looking back on the trauma in his life, Tyler Auck finds beauty. This beauty is as miraculous as a flower growing in the crack of a sidewalk. His story is awful. But, by the end of the book, you will be cheering him on as he continues his journey in recovery.

A young New England woman with roots in northern Maine leaves her Connecticut childhood home, escaping first across the country after college, then across the ocean - chasing her inner demons. After returning to her country, landing in New York City in the mid 1980s, then purchasing a family home in northern Maine in 1997, she is finally able to dissolve the demons, sharing the tools that helped her along the way through first teaching and then, creating a retreat in the home of her roots of northern Maine - the whole journey about discovering and living your inner truth.

Wendy Tamis Robbins offers a window into the mental illness of an all-star athlete, Ivy League-graduate, and successful attorney. At just six years old, Wendy’s first panic attack sparked a 40-year struggle with a variety of anxiety disorders. Avoiding anything that could trigger her symptoms, she retreats into a box to contain and hide her condition. After years of living in the prison she originally constructed as her safe place, Wendy is no longer willing to limit her life to accommodate her disorders.

Called: A Memoir is about Mark’s experiences as a corporate dropout from Madison Avenue who then begins working with homeless young people, and how their strength, spirit, and courage - despite incredible odds - inspires all listeners looking for some sliver of hope in humanity today. This book illustrates through eye-opening stories his conclusion that all young people, even when the odds are stacked against them, have the ability to achieve a life of purpose and meaning.

The worst day of your life might be just around the corner. Are you ready? Mine came on June 10, 2017. We were on vacation in Michigan when my husband suffered a sudden cardiac arrest after a morning run. When he didn’t show up for breakfast at our inn, I called the police, and soon two squad cars roared into the driveway revealing what I feared. He had died, a witness had performed CPR, an ambulance had come quickly and a pulse had been restored after five shocks from an AED.

The Magic of Life explores how he overcame tragedy, grief, and depression throughout his life. Even though he lost his mother, he and his brother were raised by his father and an incredible Jamaican woman who stepped in to fill the mother’s role. Michael shares his unique life about loss and how he finally addressed his grief with a blend of humor and inspiration that will have you crying and laughing throughout the book.

The trajectory of Zahra Al-harazi’s life defies expectations. In this electrifying book that travels from a small village in Yemen to a small town in Minnesota to a Calgary suburb, Al-harazi describes surviving two civil wars, her years as a young, stay-at-home, immigrant mother with little education, and how she became one of Canada’s most successful businesswomen.