Disability Memoir

Diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a child, Kyle Pease had grown up supporting his athlete brothers Brent and Evan from the sidelines. While his condition limited his ability to play sports, it didn't dampen Kyle's passion for them, nor did it stop the Pease family from including Kyle in various excursions. From rolling his wheelchair up Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite National Park to zipping down Colorado snow slopes, there was never a dull moment with the Pease brothers. Where there was a wheel, there was a way to adventure.

Waking one morning to find he has little to no motor control, Jamieson only wants the world to return to how it had been before. After a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, he thinks his life is over. What he doesn’t know is that it’s only just begun. Trying to navigate through the world in a body he no longer understands, Jamieson must travel through the dark forest of depression while waging a constant battle against himself. Over time, he learns what he’s truly capable of and what it actually means to be courageous.

Untether is the story of JT Mestdagh, a young man born with a death sentence and who is now an entrepreneur and adventurer on a mission to empower people to untether from limiting beliefs and to soar to their highest dreams...Untether tells a story of courage, determination, and overcoming. Young or not-so-young, you will come away with a renewed sense of hope and possibility. Learn that you are not a mistake; you are created for something amazing.

Emily Owen was a highly intelligent teenager who was also athletic and a skilled musician. Tragically, in her late teens she was diagnosed as suffering from Neurofibromatosis Type 2 (NF2). Since then, Emily has survived many complicated surgical procedures, been close to death, and seen the gradual erosion of all the abilities that defined her personality including the total loss of her hearing. Despite this, she has a remarkable sense of humor and has coped with everything she has been through due to her strong Christian faith, her supportive family, and indomitable personality.

Raising Will is a heartfelt, humbling memoir written by a Texan-turned-Minnesotan mother and child psychologist. Her heart breaks for Will when he is repeatedly banned from Fun Friday in first grade shortly after he is diagnosed with ADHD. The family zigzags through an obstacle course of therapy, medication side effects, tutoring, and sleepless nights, while shining a light on Will's inherent strength - blues guitar. Listeners will surely recognize themselves in this story and find solace, laughter, and hope as they celebrate the surprising blessings ADHD can bring.

In 2018, Joe Hammond, wrote a piece for the Guardian about the 33 birthday cards he was writing for his two sons. It was shared by thousands. In A Short History of Falling he tells the story behind that piece, about the experience of living with - and dying of - motor neurone disease (ALS). A Short History of Falling is not a lament. It is a deeply imaginative meditation on what it feels like to confront the fact that your family will persist through time without you.

In 1991, at the height of the Somali civil war, 12-year-old Abdi Warsame ran for his life through the streets of Mogadishu. In a flash, his legs were paralyzed and his cousin killed. With his country literally falling apart around him, Abdi had little hope for recovery. But, with his faith, his family, and his indomitable spirit, Abdi pursued every available route for a better life.

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.

By the time native Sicilian Mariagrazia Buttitta turned 26, she’d planned out the perfect life. After finishing her residency in Buongiorno Medical School, she’d be primed for a job at the prestigious Roma Hospital, the first step toward becoming an Italian Dr. Oz. Instead, she wakes up to discover a medical diagnosis that leaves her almost completely blind. Her family, frustrated and desperate, seeks medical aid in the US, but it comes with a steep price.

I am a woman living with cerebral palsy (CP) since birth. When I was prepping for graduation and finishing my final honors essay for school, I had a realization that based on experience, most of the world does not think or experience life the way I do. Despite my CP, the world still didn't seem to process experiences, feelings, or ideas the same way I've learned to be my normal way of functioning.

Life moves fast. Too fast for some people. This is the true story of what it's like to live in a world where you can't keep up. Bobby was ten months old when my mom and dad rescued him from birth parents who were slowly killing him. He was adopted into our family after a lengthy custody battle. Instead of that settling him, it set off a lifelong struggle to find a place to belong, a place to call home. Like an old-fashioned merry-go-round, the world moved at a speed that was just too fast for Bobby. He couldn't keep up, which prevented him from keeping a job.

In April of 2004, the long downward spiraling of Amy Bingaman's mental illness could no longer be hidden or ignored much less written off as a side-product of a colorful and quirky character. With no family able to help and no resources, she was involuntarily locked up in the draconian, archaic labyrinth that is the Wyoming Mental Health System. Armed with only a pocket dictionary and any paper she could find to write on, Amy wrote not only as a journal but at times as her only coping mechanism to salvage what was left of a breaking mind in a love/hate relationship with her alter-ego.

On June 10, 2008, Carol Decker walked through the hospital doors a healthy woman with flu-like symptoms and early labor contractions. Three months later, she returned home a blind triple-amputee struggling to bond with a daughter she would never see. Unshattered recounts Carol's fight for survival against sepsis and its life-shattering complications. From excruciating skin grafts to learning how to function in daily life without lower legs, a left hand, and her sight, Carol takes us on a personal and raw, yet inspiring journey.

Three months into her pregnancy with her first child, Hilary Yancey received a phone call that changed everything. As she learned the diagnosis - cleft lip and palate, a missing right eye, possible breathing complications - Hilary began to pray in earnest. Even in the midst of these findings, she prayed that God would heal her son. God could do a miracle unlike anything she had seen. Only when Hilary held her baby, Jack, in her arms for the first time did she realize God had given her something drastically different than what she had demanded.

The Invictus Games change lives and save lives. Created and spearheaded by Prince Harry, for whom this is a very personal cause, the games are for current and former servicemen and women who have been wounded, injured or sick. Most races are about who gets to the finish line first. At the Invictus Games, even making the start line is an achievement beyond measure. Triple amputees, cancer survivors, multiple sclerosis patients, PTSD sufferers and many more all compete.

Award-winning author Mark Richard delivers a fascinating and unique memoir. Born in the South with deformed hips, Richard was tagged a “special” child. Nothing was expected of him. But as a young man, he decided to strike out and experience as much of our strange world as he possibly could.

In the spring of 1974, as the last American troops were being pulled out of Vietnam, Ron Kovic and a small group of other severely injured veterans in a California VA hospital launched the American Veterans Movement. In a phenomenal feat of political organizing, Kovic corralled his fellow AVM members into staging a sit-in, and then a hunger strike, in the Los Angeles office of Senator Alan Cranston, demanding better treatment of injured and disabled veterans.

Prize-winning journalist and the coauthor of smash New York Times best seller I Am Malala, Christina Lamb now tells the inspiring true story of another remarkable young hero: Nujeen Mustafa, a teenager born with cerebral palsy whose harrowing journey from war-ravaged Syria to Germany in a wheelchair is a breathtaking tale of fortitude, grit, and hope that lends a face to the greatest humanitarian issue of our time: the Syrian refugee crisis.

"My name is Linda Buchan, and when I was 18 years old I died. It was Saturday, June 27, 1998, when my young life ended and my new life began. A life that was to be so completely different to the one that I had envisaged, the one that I had expected...." In Linda Buchan's raw and powerful memoir, she shares her journey from the terrible night when the life and future she thought lay ahead of her was shattered.

In Step Out on Nothing, Byron Pitts chronicles his astonishing story of overcoming a childhood filled with obstacles to achieve enormous success in life. Throughout Byron's difficult youth - his parents separated when he was twelve and his mother worked two jobs to make ends meet - he suffered from a debilitating stutter. But Byron was keeping an even more embarrassing secret: He was also functionally illiterate.