Finding Identity is a collection of poetry and prose, marking the journeys and sentiments of life. The book starts with the feeling of being lost, the course of wanting to give up, to give in, and the persistence of beliefs. Roads of fire and wounds, attempts to make a stand on the ground, the search for a position in the infinite unknown.
This book records the view upon the city of a delicate soul from a sensitive human; it includes unique perspectives and theories. It ends with the approach of a clearer state in the identity search by gaining emotional independence.
Olive, Again continues the life of the beloved character Olive Kitteridge, a creation of Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout. Olive's journey is a profound exploration of human nature, filled with both empathy and brutal honesty.
In the town of Crosby, Maine, Olive interacts with a variety of characters: a teenager grappling with the loss of a parent, a young woman on the brink of motherhood, a nurse revealing a long-held secret, and a lawyer dealing with an unwanted inheritance. Through these stories, Olive's unique perspective offers insights into the complexities of life and relationships.
With her prickly demeanor and candid nature, Olive is a compelling force who challenges and inspires those around her. Elizabeth Strout masterfully animates the ordinary with an astonishing force, making Olive, Again a poignant reminder of the power of empathy in our lives.
The Dutch House is a richly moving story by Ann Patchett, exploring the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go.
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.
Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they're together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they've lost with humor and rage. But when at last they're forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.
The Dutch House is the story of a paradise lost, a tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance, love, and forgiveness, of how we want to see ourselves and of who we really are. Filled with suspense, you may read it quickly to find out what happens, but what happens to Danny and Maeve will stay with you for a very long time.
A powerful and practical guide to help you navigate racism, challenge privilege, manage stress and trauma, and begin to heal.
Healing from racism is a journey that often involves reliving trauma and experiencing feelings of shame, guilt, and anxiety. This journey can be a bumpy ride, and before we begin healing, we need to gain an understanding of the role history plays in racial/ethnic myths and stereotypes. In so many ways, to heal from racism, you must re-educate yourself and unlearn the processes of racism. This book can help guide you.
The Racial Healing Handbook offers practical tools to help you navigate daily and past experiences of racism, challenge internalized negative messages and privileges, and handle feelings of stress and shame. You’ll also learn to develop a profound racial consciousness and conscientiousness, and heal from grief and trauma. Most importantly, you’ll discover the building blocks to creating a community of healing in a world still filled with racial microaggressions and discrimination.
This book is not just about ending racial harm—it is about racial liberation. This journey is one that we must take together. It promises the possibility of moving through this pain and grief to experience the hope, resilience, and freedom that helps you not only self-actualize, but also makes the world a better place.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a poignant letter from a son to his mother, who cannot read. Written by Little Dog when he is in his late twenties, this letter delves into a family history that began long before his birth—a history deeply rooted in Vietnam. It serves as a gateway into parts of his life that his mother has never known, leading to an unforgettable revelation.
This novel is a profound witness to the complex yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son. It is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. The narrative poses questions central to our American moment, as we grapple with addiction, violence, and trauma, but it is underpinned by compassion and tenderness.
Ocean Vuong writes with stunning urgency and grace about people caught between disparate worlds, asking how we can heal and rescue one another without losing ourselves. The quest for survival and the pursuit of joy power this remarkable debut novel.
Repair your vagus nerve and experience amazing health and wellness benefits.
Your vagus nerve is the largest and most important nerve in your body. It carries messages to and from your brain, gut, heart, and other major muscles and organs. However, common issues like inflammation, stress, or physical trauma can interfere with the nerve’s ability to function.
Luckily, there are tons of quick-and-easy ways to activate and exercise the nerve, strengthening its function and restoring your body to good health.
Packed with easy-to-follow exercises and activities, this book will show you how to unlock the power of the vagus nerve to heal your body and get back to a state of balance.
I'm not crazy. I don't see what the big deal is about what happened. But apparently someone does think it's a big deal because here I am. I bet it was my mother. She always overreacts.
Fifteen-year-old Jeff wakes up on New Year's Day to find himself in the hospital—specifically, in the psychiatric ward. With the nutjobs. Clearly, this is all a huge mistake. Forget about the bandages on his wrists and the notes on his chart. Forget about his problems with his best friend, Allie, and her boyfriend, Burke. Jeff's perfectly fine, perfectly normal, not like the other kids in the hospital with him. Now they've got problems.
But a funny thing happens as his forty-five-day sentence drags on—the crazies start to seem less crazy. Compelling, witty, and refreshingly real, Suicide Notes is a darkly humorous novel from Michael Thomas Ford that examines that fuzzy line between "normal" and the rest of us.
How traumatic events can break our vital connections—and how to restore love, wholeness, and resiliency in your life.
From our earliest years, we develop an attachment style that follows us throughout life, replaying in our daily emotional landscape, our relationships, and how we feel about ourselves. In the wake of a traumatic event—such as a car accident, severe illness, loss of a loved one, or experience of abuse—that attachment style can deeply influence what happens next.
In The Power of Attachment, Dr. Diane Poole Heller, a pioneer in attachment theory and trauma resolution, shows how overwhelming experiences can disrupt our most important connections—within ourselves, with the physical world around us, and with others.
The good news is that we can restore and reconnect at all levels, regardless of our past. Here, you’ll learn key insights and practices to help you:
"We are fundamentally designed to heal," teaches Dr. Heller. "Even if our childhood is less than ideal, our secure attachment system is biologically programmed in us, and our job is to simply find out what’s interfering with it—and learn what we can do to make those secure tendencies more dominant."
With expertise drawn from Dr. Heller’s research, clinical work, and training programs, this book invites you to begin that journey back to wholeness.
From National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Ada Limón comes The Carrying—her most powerful collection yet.
Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility—“What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?”—and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: “Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal.” And still Limón shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives. “Fine then, / I’ll take it,” she writes. “I’ll take it all.”
In Bright Dead Things, Limón showed us a heart “giant with power, heavy with blood”—“the huge beating genius machine / that thinks, no, it knows, / it’s going to come in first.” In her follow-up collection, that heart is on full display—even as The Carrying continues further and deeper into the bloodstream, following the hard-won truth of what it means to live in an imperfect world.
In this gorgeously stunning debut, a mysterious child teaches two strangers how to love and trust again.
After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises.
The girl calls herself Ursa, and she claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles. With concerns about the child’s home situation, Jo reluctantly agrees to let her stay—just until she learns more about Ursa’s past.
Jo enlists the help of her reclusive neighbor, Gabriel Nash, to solve the mystery of the charming child. But the more time they spend together, the more questions they have. How does a young girl not only read but understand Shakespeare? Why do good things keep happening in her presence? And why aren’t Jo and Gabe checking the missing children’s website anymore?
Though the three have formed an incredible bond, they know difficult choices must be made. As the summer nears an end and Ursa gets closer to her fifth miracle, her dangerous past closes in. When it finally catches up to them, all of their painful secrets will be forced into the open, and their fates will be left to the stars.
Hold Still is an arresting story about starting over after a friend’s suicide, from a breakthrough new voice in YA fiction.
Dear Caitlin, there are so many things that I want so badly to tell you but I just can’t. Devastating, hopeful, hopeless, playful... in words and illustrations, Ingrid left behind a painful farewell in her journal for Caitlin.
Now Caitlin is left alone, by loss and by choice, struggling to find renewed hope in the wake of her best friend’s suicide. With the help of family and newfound friends, Caitlin will encounter first love, broaden her horizons, and start to realize that true friendship didn’t die with Ingrid. And the journal which once seemed only to chronicle Ingrid’s descent into depression, becomes the tool by which Caitlin once again reaches out to all those who loved Ingrid—and Caitlin herself.
Book One: Sporadic Memories is a novel about a lifestyle that needs to be read about. Within the first few pages, you will realize there has been a loss. It is not sad, though; the narrator expresses with great enthusiasm the life they lived, which makes it nice during the times when it becomes difficult to read.
By the first few pages, I hope you can hear the narrator has been alive for a long time, explaining the way it is written. There is no distinction between the characters’ genders, which offers a personal experience for the reader. The part that remembers the time they gave bracelets to each other brings about another way of joining together in marriage … following how their courtship developed, and the apple tree that is depicted throughout the novel using its fruit in traditional family recipes.
It gets sad for a bit after this, but notice that it gets sad because there is so much more to why the one lost is worth writing about. It is partly a love story. You know for sure it is when you get to the parts about the piano played and songs written … you should at first read to the first song. The memory at the exhibition and recalling times in the rain and snow are next.
They traveled a lot together and you will read of a place if you read a little past the description of the surroundings of their home. If you read to the first birthday mentioned; you will find a recipe worth trying, a poem worth reading, and fireworks. The narrator is a playwright, so there is a play that is broken down throughout the novel … it is a difficult read, but it is important in showing how the two brought their work together, and what positive influences they made upon those they met.
Things are repeated to show how important positive repetition is, which helps to move past pain while remembering the passion. This novel is full of passion, carried throughout the life they had for each other, their work, and their friends … you might want to read through first until you hear about their friends. This novel completes the story as the pages turn; putting certain pages together will bring the memories in order. It is an easy read. It is written poetically, which gives it justice. It begins the way it ends …