Self Memoir

As a 24-year-old line cook, Ellen Marie Bennett couldn't stand the kitchen staff’s poorly designed, cheaply made aprons. So when her head chef announced he was ordering a new batch, she blurted out, “Chef, I have an apron company” - even though she had no company, no business plan - just a glimmer of a design idea and a business license. Through hustle and a willingness to leap into the unknown, time and time again, she built that first order into a multi-million-dollar company called Hedley & Bennett.

Several years ago, Patrick J. Kennedy shared the story of his personal and family challenges with mental illness and addiction—and the nation’s—in his bestselling memoir, A Common Struggle. Now, he and his Common Struggle coauthor, award-winning healthcare journalist Stephen Fried, have crafted this powerful new book sharing the untold stories of others—a special group who agreed to talk about their illnesses, treatments, and struggles for the first time.

Soulshaping is the inspiring memoir of an archetypal "male warrior" - a trial lawyer - who struggled to find his heart and a more authentic, soulful path. Rivetingly personal and profoundly universal, this book is for anyone who has heard a whisper of something truer calling out to them amid the distractions of modern life.

Elizabeth Arden was a household name on six continents and a millionaire several times over before her death in 1966. Arden counted British royalty and social elites from the overlapping worlds of New York, Hollywood, London, and Paris among her clients. She revolutionized skin care and cosmetics, making it acceptable for all women to embrace glamour and wear makeup—not just actresses and prostitutes. She created a successful international business empire before women gained the vote and at a time when virtually no woman owned or ran a national company.

In the 1990s, Steve Farrell cofounded and led two high-growth technology companies based in Silicon Valley that were featured in the INC500 and spanned the United States and Europe. A New Universal Dream is the inspiring story of Steve's journey from the pursuit of wealth and traditional ideas of success toward a more fulfilling life of caring and service to others and to humanity. It's also the story of the potential each of us has for profound change.

The stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul will encourage listeners to stay upbeat, because there's always a brighter way to look at life. This collection includes 31 Stories on the true meaning of Christmas, Christmas through the eyes of children, and the spirit of giving.

Courageous, insightful, brave, and characteristically authentic, Let Love Have the Last Word shares Common’s own unique and personal stories of the people and experiences that have led to a greater understanding of love and all it has to offer. It is a powerful call to action for a new generation of open hearts and minds, one that is sure to resonate for years to come.

Like so many American women, Shauna M. Ahern spent decades feeling not good enough about her body, about money, and about her worth in this culture. For a decade, with the help of her husband, she ran a successful food blog, wrote award-winning cookbooks, and raised two children. In the midst of this, at age 48, she suffered a mini-stroke. Tests revealed she would recover fully, but when her doctor impressed upon her that emotional stress can cause physical damage, she dove deep inside herself to understand and let go of a lifetime of damaging patterns of thought.

Failure is no stranger to Amy Murphy. Born and raised in rural Nova Scotia, she left home to find a career in acting, which took her from coast to coast in Canada and even to Hollywood. While acting, she picked up side hustles to help pay the bills, with many of these side hustles ending up costing her more money than she ever earned.

You can change your future: You’ve just found the how-to-guide for women who are ready to ditch procrastination and paralyzing self-doubt, live in true self-confidence, claim heartfelt goals and dreams and make that ish happen! Yes, just ONE mindset shift can take you from “maybe one day...” wishful thinking, to a BOSS living her truth? Change your mindset: How could a teen single mom, recovering from domestic violence and poverty, go on to create a multi-million-dollar, national barre and yoga studio chain?

On January 21, 2008, a routine medical procedure left Mallory paralyzed from her waist down. Less than two years later, Mallory had broken eight world records, and by the 2012 Paralympic Games, she held fifteen world records and thirty-four American records. Two years after that, a devastating fall severely damaged her left arm. But despite all of the hardships that Mallory faced, she was sure about one thing: she refused to give up.

"With humor and lyrical grace," Kathleen Norris meditates on a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh, and forgiving, steeped in history and myth (San Francisco Chronicle). A combination of reporting and reflection, Dakota reminds us that wherever we go, we chart our own spiritual geography.

This is the story of one woman's journey to find herself. Armed with nothing but a love of food and the words of the 20th-century food writer M.F.K. Fisher, she travels from France to Italy, then the Congo, and back again. Along the way, she goes to pastry school in Paris, eats the most perfect apricots over the Tuscan hills, watches a family of gorillas grazing deep in the Congolese brush, has her heart broken one last time on a bridge in Lyon, and, ultimately, finds a path to life and joy.

How to Come Alive Again is a funny, honest, broken audiobook written by an author who could be described as the same. It is a combination of self-help audiobook, memoir and polemical lifestyle guide. It lays out the basics for mending your life, accepting yourself, changing what doesn’t work, killing the worst of it and learning to live through depression. It’s an audiobook about what to do when you’re an anxious, depressed, spaghetti-brained mess in a society that still prefers us to act normal and never talk about our mental health.

Paul McGowan tells all (and then some) in this riotous tale of misbegotten success that’s 99 percent true in all the best ways. From his not-so-innocent youth growing up in the shadow of Disneyland and summer evenings in the innocent 1950s, to his dope-smoking, snake-eating, draft-dodging, loony-bin misadventure through Europe, to his struggles to build a thriving enterprise from a stack of dusty albums - see how the CEO of a worldwide company took 50 years to become an overnight success.

With four years in the Parachute Regiment, 10 years in the SAS and two Everest summits to his name, no one is better equipped than Jay Morton to reveal what it takes to become the best of the best. Soldier is Jay Morton’s masterclass in mindset, strategy and excellence. Drawing on his extraordinary personal experience, it provides in-depth, comprehensive lessons and practical takeaways.

In this raw and poignant memoir filled with gorgeous insights, Leslie Reyes bares her highest highs and lowest lows on the long highway of humanity. And by applying the wisdom she gained in learning to ride a motorbike to her lifelong quest to conquer fear, she offers a guiding hand along the hills and valleys of an unpredictable life.

Writing has been medicine for Nancy Slonim Aronie. At nine months old, her son Dan was diagnosed with diabetes. Then, at twenty-two, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. During the years she and her husband took care of Dan, and when he died at age thirty-eight, Aronie could not find the book she needed. So she wrote her memoir. Over decades of writing and teaching, Aronie has created a set of prompts, directions, and examples that she shares in Memoir as Medicine. Listeners will learn how to write through where they have been and into understanding, healing, and even joy.

Here are 21 inspirational stories about role models and counting your blessings. The stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Positive will encourage listeners to stay upbeat, because there's always a brighter way to look at life. This book continues Chicken Soup for the Soul's focus on inspiration and hope, reminding us that each day holds something to be thankful for.

Remembering the truth of what it's like to be a kid is vital because most of us are stuck in some phase of arrested development, thanks to something traumatic that happened to us during our youth. Do you know what that trauma was and how it has affected who you are today? Understanding where you got stuck can free you to be the parent and adult you were meant to be.