Disability Biography

Stephen Kuusisto was born legally blind - but he was also raised in the 1950s and taught to deny his blindness in order to "pass" as sighted. Stephen attended public school, rode a bike, and read books pressed right up against his nose. As an adult, he coped with his limited vision by becoming a professor in a small college town, memorizing routes for all of the places he needed to be. Then, at the age of 38, he was laid off. With no other job opportunities in his vicinity, he would have to travel to find work.

Wie können wir Inklusion endlich umsetzen? Eine so persönliche wie politische Geschichte. 2016 wird Hadija Haruna-Oelker Mutter eines behinderten Kindes. Immer wieder trifft sie auf Barrieren und trennende Systeme, die seit Jahrzehnten bekannt sind: Bürokratie, pseudoinklusive Schulen oder unhinterfragte Diskriminierungen und Abwertungen im Alltag.

The moving true story of a little girl with Asperger syndrome, controlled and abused by the one person she called her friend. Taylor had always struggled to make friends - she felt 'different'. Taylor never knew her father, and her mother wasn't around much. She just didn't understand people and was alone and scared most of the time. That was until, aged just 11, an older married man called Tom befriended her. She loved having someone who would talk to her, listen to her - a protector. But when he moved away a few months later, she was easy prey.

How I Became a Human Being is Mark O'Brien’s account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. In 1955 he contracted polio and became permanently paralyzed from the neck down. O'Brien describes growing up without the use of his limbs, his adolescence struggling with physical rehabilitation and suffering the bureaucracy of hospitals and institutions, and his adult life as an independent student and writer. Despite his physical limitations, O'Brien crafts a narrative that is as rich and vivid as the life he led.

This English professor grew up spacey and overweight. Drowning in the unrealistic demands of motherhood, Livingston steals her son's ADHD medication and watches it transform her life—for good and bad. She grows weary of subjective diagnoses and chemical treatments from traditional psychology experts, and experiments with functional medicine—brain mapping and nutritional supplements—as a way to understand her brain's potential, bio-hacking her way to a healthy body and mind.

Sally Hobart Alexander continues the story of her journey into blindness in this uplifting tale of a life rebuilt and love renewed. Suzanne Toren’s perceptive narration perfectly expresses the emotions of Sally’s sometimes fun, often arduous, and always interesting journey. Also available is Taking Hold, My Journey Into Blindness, which tells the first half of Sally’s story.

Normal. Who is to say what this word means? For Magda Newman, it was a goal. She wanted her son Nathaniel to be able to play on the playground, swim at the beach, enjoy the moments his friends took for granted. But Nathaniel’s severe Treacher Collins syndrome - a craniofacial condition - meant that other concerns came first. Could he eat without the aid of a gastrointestinal tube? Could he hear? Would he ever be able to breathe effortlessly? But Nathaniel looks at “normal” from a completely different perspective.

An unflinching and luminous memoir that explores a father’s philosophical transformation when he must reconsider the questions what makes us human? and whose life is worth living? Before becoming a father, Chris Gabbard was a fast-track academic finishing his doctoral dissertation at Stanford. A disciple of Enlightenment thinkers, he was a devotee of reason, believed in the reliability of science, and lived by the dictum that an unexamined life is not worth living. That is, until his son August was born.

Nach seinem Besteller "Setze dir größere Ziele!" beleuchtet Zitelmann in seinem neuen Buch wieder ganz ungewöhnlich erfolgreiche Menschen: Persönlichkeiten, die trotz Behinderung geradezu Übermenschliches geleistet haben: Ein Blinder, der die 7 höchsten Gipfel der Welt bestiegen hat, ein Weltreisender, der schon vor 200 Jahren blind 400.000 Kilometer zurücklegte, ein Motivationsredner ohne Arme und Beine, eine erfolgreiche Unternehmerin im Rollstuhl, eine Schriftstellerin - taubstumm und blind - und ein weltberühmter Schauspieler mit Parkinson.

One afternoon, Emma Nadler gets a call from her daughter's doctor that changes her life forever. Faced with the realities of raising a child with a rare genetic condition, Nadler must confront her preconceptions of motherhood and her perfectionistic beliefs. Nadler—who also happens to be a psychotherapist—offers a rare window into the unconventional ways she and her family adapt to their improbable path. Every relationship in her life—with herself, her husband, children, friends, and even clients—is reimagined as she navigates the heartbreak and hilarity of her daily life.

At a time when we are all more rudderless than ever, we look for the very best teachers and mentors to guide us. In Fully Alive, an unusual and gripping memoir, Timothy Shriver shows how his teachers have been the world's most forgotten minority: people with intellectual disabilities. In these pages we meet the individuals who helped him come of age and find a deeper and more meaningful way to see the world.

A serious illness destroyed Helen Keller's sight and hearing before she reached the age of two. At seven, she was introduced to Ann Sullivan, the beloved teacher and friend who helped Helen to make contact with her world. Through sheer determination and resolve, Helen learned to speak, read, and write, and prepared herself for entry into prep school by the age of 16. She later enrolled at Radcliffe and graduated with honors. Her motto: "There are no handicaps, only challenges."

In 2009 Cristina Nehring's brilliant first book, A Vindication of Love, was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. An important new voice had appeared in American letters. Just as suddenly, Nehring seemed to disappear—only to reemerge like a bolt from the blue.

It's not what I lost. It's what I've found. I was only 17, just a girl, when God asked me for everything I had...my health, my hopes, my independence, my dreams, my freedom, and my mobility. He took it all. I was so angry with him that I tried to push him away. God relentlessly held me more closely. Looking back, 40 years later, I understand that God has changed and healed me - my heart and my mind - in the most unexpected ways, giving me rubies of his wisdom about an unbending faith and an experience of his mercy I can now tell you about.

Rosemary Mahoney tells the story of Braille Without Borders, the first school for the blind in Tibet, and of Sabriye Tenberken, the remarkable blind woman who founded the school. Fascinated and impressed by what she learned from the blind children of Tibet, Mahoney was moved to investigate further the cultural history of blindness. As part of her research, she spent three months teaching at Tenberken's international training center for blind adults in Kerala, India, an experience that reveals both the shocking oppression endured by the world's blind, as well as their great resilience.

A short, inspirational audiobook from Henry Fraser, a young quadriplegic motivational speaker and artist. Henry Fraser was a 17-year-old sports enthusiast and senior prefect when he broke his spinal cord and was left paralysed from the shoulders down. Life as he knew it was over, and yet, through extraordinary determination and a positive attitude, he has forged a successful career as an inspirational speaker and an artist.

From Paralympic ski racer and YouTube star, Josh Sundquist, comes an always-funny (and sometimes-awkward) memoir about teenage misadventures. When I was 25 years old, it came to my attention that I had never had a girlfriend. At the time, I was actually under the impression that I was in a relationship, so this bit of news came as something of a shock. Why was Josh still single? To find out, he tracked down each of the girls he had tried to date since middle school and asked them straight up: What went wrong? The results of Josh's semiscientific investigation are in your hands.

Jeremy Schreiber was on top of the world—athletic, newly married, successful. And then something went terribly wrong. In this moving memoir, he shares his journey after he received a terrifying diagnosis: ALS. As the devastating disease robbed him of movement and speech, he was abandoned by his wife and betrayed by a society that shuns people with disabilities. But it’s not all doom and gloom. He found love, support, and a powerful purpose. While fighting for his independence and then for his life, Jeremy gave his all to the ALS and disability communities.

Adventurous international teacher, Amy Bovaird, is diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa, a hereditary eye disease that will blind her. In spite of that, she manages to continue teaching overseas. Then her father's final illness brings her back home for good. There, friends and acquaintances begin to notice that she doesn't always recognize them and sometimes stumbles as if drunk! Insensitive students ridicule her in the classroom.

Perhaps, you are one of three girls, or one of five boys that was sexually abused by the time you were 18 years old. Unfortunately, I fell into that nasty category. In preparing to write my first memoir, Identifying and Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse, I came upon a list of approximately 99 different after-effects that come as a result of sexual abuse. Finally, I held in my hands, a list of words that totally and completely described myself! I pray that this audiobook will give you the information that you need for a total and complete healing in your life!