Disability Biography

For two decades a father kept a secret journal documenting the life of his only son, Christopher, who was born profoundly deaf. He had a simple dream of someday presenting that journal to Christopher as a special gift from father to son. But as each new challenge was surmounted, it became clear Christopher Caulfield’s story had to be shared.

A gorgeously crafted memoir about resilience, family, and forging your own way, by a woman born without legs. At the age of three, Eileen Cronin first realized that only she did not have legs. Her boisterous Catholic family accepted her situation as "God's will", treating her no differently than her 10 siblings, as she "squiddled" through their 1960s Cincinnati home. But when starting school, even wearing prosthetics, Cronin had to brave bullying and embarrassing questions.

Most would not expect a book about a stroke to be entertaining, but this memoir will force you to laugh through a tragedy, then cry, then laugh again. Avrel Seale was fifty, did not smoke or drink, had low blood pressure, and had hiked more than two hundred miles the year a stroke nearly ended his life. In an instant, he was teleported into the body of an old man—unbalanced, shaky, spastic, and half-paralyzed. Overnight, he was plunged into a world of brain surgeons, nurses, insurance case managers, and an abundance of therapists.

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.

My Autistic Fight Song is a memoir that follows Rosie Weldon’s journey from a college drop out as she tries to achieve her dream of being a qualified accountant. With the odds stacked against her and the stakes high, she refuses to give up on her dream. Of two things Rosie was sure. First, she wanted to be an accountant. Second, she was destined to be alone. But when life threw at her an autism diagnosis and a mystery girl, she was left asking: Who would employ her and was she capable of falling in love?

A raccoon bite on the arm doesn’t seem that serious, but it soon becomes a life-or-death medical crisis for Melissa Loomis. After days of treatment for recurring infection, it becomes obvious her arm must be amputated. Rewired is the inspirational, miraculous story of Dr. Ajay Seth’s revolutionary surgery that allows Melissa to not just move a prosthetic arm simply by thinking, but to actually feel with the prosthetic hand, just as she would with her natural arm. This resulted in what others have recognized as the world’s most advanced amputee.

Quentin Kenihan is living proof that superheroes don't need capes, just the right attitude. When he was a kid, Quentin loved Superman. Ironic, really. Quentin didn't need kryptonite to reveal his weakness - born with a rare bone disorder, osteogenesis imperfecta, his bones broke all on their own. When Quentin was seven, Mike Willesee made a documentary about him. Australians fell in love with his wit and never-say-die attitude. Over the years he grew up before our eyes. But there was a dark side to his life. The true story was never told...until now.

Jump in the passenger seat as I navigate you through my journey of blindness, sexual abuse, mental illness, and various other medical conditions and tragedies. I will take you on the twists and turns of single motherhood and dating with a disability, all while only having the use of one arm. Join me for an emotional, yet exciting, ride to see how I end up at my current destination.

For 20 years, Lisa Murphy, Jeff Murphy, and a group of volunteers traveled the world with the Mobility Project, delivering mobility to the poorest people on the planet. They helped tens of thousands of disabled poor to gain mobility and hope. The disabled received wheelchairs, walkers, and crutches from the United States, items they never would have been able to afford. Like Simon of Cyrene, we helped people carry their cross of disability. From the hot tropical jungles of Costa Rica, Thailand, and São Tomé to the deserts of Afghanistan, the disabled poor got a new chance at life.

From the time she was a toddler, Lou Ann Walker acted as the ears and voice for her parents, who had lost their hearing at a young age. As soon as she was old enough to speak, her childhood ended, and she immediately assumed the responsibility of interpreter - translating doctors’ appointments and managing her parents’ business transactions. Their family life was warm and loving, but outside the home, they faced a world that misunderstood and often rejected them.

Beyond Reality and Back Again: Lessons from a Lifetime is Kathy Anderson’s follow-up to her harrowing autobiography, Lilies in the Field, which details her battle with schizoaffective disorder. Drawing from her many life experiences and covering topics from religion to work to therapy and the military, Anderson shares some of the many life lessons she learned throughout her career as an Air Force captain—all while engaged in a decades-long struggle with mental illness.

Operated on as an infant, without anesthesia, Wendy P. Williams began life at war with her body. There were tubes everywhere, in and out of every opening, her mother reminded her on every anniversary of her surgery. Autobiography of a Sea Creature takes listeners on Williams’ difficult sensory journey toward healing, as she communes along the way with horseshoe crabs, dolphins, and other marine life that taught her the restorative power of beauty, resilience, and interdependence.

I matti ci incuriosiscono, ci costringono a riflettere, ci cambiano lo sguardo, ci mettono davanti ai nostri fantasmi, non ci lasciano mai indifferenti. La storia dell’uomo è costellata di individui eccentrici, bizzarri, anticonformisti, visionari, in molti casi con disturbi psichici gravi, ma altamente creativi in campo letterario, artistico, scientifico. Partendo da queste considerazioni, è nata l’idea di una sorta di calendario che racconti, al posto del santo del giorno, il matto del giorno.

Darryl Jefferson was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at the age of eight and encountered many hurdles in life due to the condition. Despite this, he persevered through many challenges in school, work, relationships, and the military. In this story, he takes us on a journey through one man's experience of living with autism and its effects on school, work, relationships, friendships, and many other life challenges.

Being blind, Debby has had many of those experiences, as a parent, counselor, grandparent and someone who simply loves life. Her faith in a God who loves us shifts that frightening scenario into one of confidence and peace. In this book, through stories and poetry, she describes some of those moments where she has walked by faith, not by sight, both spiritually and literally.

Desde muito cedo, Louis aprendeu a lutar. Lutou pela vida desde o nascimento. Com determinação e persistência, enfrentou e venceu, um a um, os obstáculos que o destino lhe impôs. Contra a previsão de vários especialistas, andou, falou, leu, escreveu, chegou à universidade. Aos 20 anos, nos presenteia com este audiolivro em que narra com otimismo, apesar de tudo, sua entrega ao jogo da vida, no qual cada minuto é importante para a vitória.

See how, throughout her life, she became a believer, and even with Kerry and Kaylynn's love and support, she had to find the strength elsewhere to get up each and every day to be the best mom she could be for Austin. Listen to how still, to this day, she struggles with negative emotions and guilt and needs to be reminded often that God is in control, and he will never forsake her, even when she feels she is alone.

I Kept Walking opens in 1940s Tehran when a misguided prank leaves three- year-old Minou frozen in fear. Days later, a doctor breaks the news to her mother: "Your daughter has polio." To understand why nothing is as it seems-the cause of her polio or why her dutiful Jewish mother, who was married off at 13, thwarted her dream of marriage, Minou must flee Iran and confront the psychological toll of her polio. I Kept Walking is the audacious account of a bold young woman who was unwilling to be crushed by polio or the prohibitions of a conservative society.

This is a story in Victorian England of how in 1884 Frederick Treves, Surgeon and Lecturer in Anatomy at the London Hospital arranged for the "Elephant Man" (whose distorted grotesque face and deformed body made him a "freak") to visit the medical college next to the hospital for the purpose of a lecture. They would later become friends and Treves the savior of the man named John Merrick. This is Treves' memoir.

In God’s Got Jokes, author Neosho C. Ponder, allows the listener into the most personal and vulnerable parts of her life. As she battled the hardships of cancer, she learned that some of those who supported her succumbed to their own battles of cancer. You will hear stories such as: Being evicted during chemotherapy, which finally led to her seeing the humor and not choosing to give up. The financial adversity that affects cancer patients too sick to work, those undergoing treatments, and multiple surgeries.