Disability Biography

On paper, Coach Rob Mendez sounds like any other football coach on any other field across America: passionate, authoritative, knowledgeable. But he’s unlike any other coach you know - in fact, he’s probably unlike any other person you know. Born with an extraordinarily rare condition called tetra-Amelia syndrome, Rob has no arms or legs. He moves with the assistance of a custom-made, motorized wheelchair that he operates with his back and shoulders.

In the fall of 1988, Sue Miller found herself caring for her father as he slipped into the grasp of Alzheimer's disease. She was, she claims, perhaps the least constitutionally suited of all her siblings to be in the role in which she suddenly found herself, and in The Story of My Father she grapples with the haunting memories of those final months and the larger narrative of her father's life.

An inspiring and unforgettable memoir that provides hope to others who are experiencing depression, mania, or psychosis, RESILIENT is a deeply personal account about life with mental illness, hearing loss and resiliency. Liz's journey provides encouragement for patients, families, friends, and healthcare workers by showing that recovery is possible.

Born in Ghana, West Africa, with one deformed leg, he was dismissed by most people - but not by his mother, who taught him to reach for his dreams. As a boy, Emmanuel hopped to school more than two miles each way, learned to play soccer, left home at age 13 to provide for his family, and, eventually, became a cyclist. He rode an astonishing 400 miles across Ghana in 2001, spreading his powerful message: Disability is not inability. Today, Emmanuel continues to work on behalf of the disabled.

Kathleen O’Neill courageously chronicles her journey through the turbulent realms of bipolar disorder, addiction, and recovery. With raw honesty and resilience, Kathleen shares the battles she fought within herself and against social stigmas, laying bare her struggles, triumphs, and the moments of grace that shaped her healing. This memoir offers a compelling look at the complex layers of mental health , the strength of the human spirit, and the transformative power of hope.

From the author of the viral New York Times op-ed column "To Siri with Love" comes a collection of touching, hilarious, and illuminating stories about life with a 13-year-old boy with autism that hold insights and revelations for us all.

Kevin’s life was forever changed on a random Wednesday when he was just 20 years old. An aspiring musician at the time, he was planning to attend music school and pursue his dream of becoming a composer. A stroke dismantled every plan and everything in his life. In Taken By Surprise, Kevin chronicles his battles with the stroke. After a risky brain surgery, he was in a coma for nearly a month and spent six weeks in an acute rehab facility to learn how to walk and talk all over again.

After 35 years, the author knows many of the ins and outs of living with Multiple Sclerosis. JJ Leander went from a promise of a wheelchair ride toward an early death, to a winning formula for surviving into Old Age that is anything but a quick trip to the funeral home.

As a deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness—much to the confusion of the world around her. And she knows how wrong our one-size-fits-all definitions of disability can be. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history of the deafblind experience, Being Seen explores how our cultural concept of disability is more myth than fact, and the damage it does to us all.

Ruth's tribe are her lively children and her filmmaker husband, Simon, who has motor neurone disease and can communicate only with his eyes. Ruth's other tribe are the friends who gather at the cove in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, and regularly throw themselves into the freezing cold water just for kicks. The Tragic Wives' Swimming Club, as they jokingly call themselves, meet to cope with the extreme challenges life puts in their way, not to mention the monster waves rolling over the horizon.

Before a surfing accident caused 33-year-old Devon Raney to lose all but 15 percent of his vision, he had already lived an extraordinary life. Time and again, he'd gone against the grain to maximize time for his passions - surfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding - bringing him into the direct path of colorful characters, unexpected adventures, and even the occasional brush with death. Through it all, Devon's commitment to outdoor adventure never wavered.

Love Is Blind is the memoir of Ruth Vallis. Blind before the age of three, Ruth was the youngest pioneer of integration in the public school system in Canada, blazing a trail for many to follow. At every stage of her extraordinary life, Ruth defied the low expectations of others, and took on such challenges as biking from Ottawa to Toronto, completing a master’s of science degree online before technology accessibility was legislated, and more. Through it all there was her tender, tough-loving mother, Peach.

Bárbara Anderson narra con brutal franqueza el día a día de tener un hijo con discapacidad: los retos dentro y fuera de casa, las complicaciones de salud y de vida; los cambios de prioridades; el Everest de cada día al tener un hijo con - hasta ahora - un diagnóstico irreversible como es la parálisis cerebral infantil.

As a child, Matt Hay didn’t know his hearing wasn’t the way everyone else processed sound—because of the workarounds he did to fit in, even the school nurse didn’t catch his condition at the annual hearing and vision checks. But by the time he was a prospective college student and couldn’t pass the entrance requirements for West Point, Hay’s condition, generated by a tumor, was unavoidable: his hearing was going, and fast. A personal soundtrack was Hay’s determined compensation for his condition.

The spoiler is that Platinum, the shiny precious metal we may associate with glamour and wealth, was an ingredient in one of the chemo compounds. In this context, it functioned as a poison, carrying out the bizarre miracle of chemotherapy where death and life meet. Tracing through the paradoxical tensions of treatment, healing from treatment, succumbing to medicine and claiming autonomy, Hannah Kate guides us through essential components of the journey. There are material resources that will support you—yet much of what is needed requires connecting with the fundamental elements of life.

يحكي هذا الكتاب قصّة حياة الملياردير "علي بنات" وهو أسترالي من أصول فلسطينية عاش حياة الترف والبذخ بكامل تفاصيلها فقد كان يمتلك كل ما يريد؛ شركات، عقارات، وأسطولًا من السيارات الفاخرة.

On October 3, 2005, Kapacziewski and his soldiers were coming to the end of their tour in Northern Iraq when their convoy was attacked by enemy fighters. A grenade fell through the gunner’s hatch and exploded, shattering Kapacziewski’s right leg below the knee, damaging his right hip, and severing a nerve and artery in his right arm. He endured more than forty surgeries, but his right leg still wasn’t healing as he had hoped, so in March 2007, Kapacziewski chose to have it amputated.

My name is Joseph A. Peragine. I am a paranoid schizophrenic. On October 22, 2000, I tried to kill myself in a severely hallucinogenic state due to undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. I was suffering from this illness for many years leading up to that day. Every October since I started my recovery in 2000, I reflect on my life and am extremely thankful that I was fortunate enough to have been given a second chance.

The Awakening of HK Derryberry is the inspiring story of how one man was willing to step out of his upper-middle-class world into the life of a young, disabled boy with a dismal future but an amazing ability. Little did Jim Bradford know the transformational potential of that friendship - for HK and himself.

My life has been nothing short of a miracle. A true triumph, even in the midst of adversity. In Deaf Blind Champion, I give you a front-row seat into how my life changed when I heard my diagnosis, and what I did to get through the depression that engulfed me to become an accomplished sportsman, a dad, life partner, son, brother, teammate, and activist.